Tag Archives: Toronto

Home Again…

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Hello everyone!

I’m back from my adventure. The jetlag has worn off, the laundry is (mostly) done, and the holiday seems almost like a dream.

Yet it was real, and it was fantastic – I saw so much and have so much to write about I hardly know where to begin (there will be many blog posts!). New York was everything I’d imagined. I felt immediately at home there, perhaps because it’s a city that’s so pervasive in popular culture – yet it felt as though I knew it, as though I’d been before and was just being reminded of where everything was.

We wandered as much as we could in four days, including a walk through Central Park, where we took in the amazing skyline and I found the obelisk, partner to London’s Cleopatra’s Needle. We saw sights large and small, and didn’t let the weather, which included torrential rain and a snowstorm, stop us from getting outside and experiencing as much as we could.

The weather followed us, snow falling in Toronto on our first day there, Niagara Falls creating ice sculptures, the sun peering out from behind shifting clouds. Yet I basked in the warmth of family and old friends (and by old I mean fabulous), reforging connections and visiting familiar haunts, sad to leave when the time came.

But Boston, and the New England coast beckoned. We walked the Freedom trail, spent time in Salem, then followed the coast southwest through Plymouth, Newport, Mystic and Milford, finally ending up back in New York on a hot and sunny afternoon, ready to catch our overnight flight home.

And now it’s back to reality. The recent warm weather was a wonderful welcome home, and I’m away again this weekend, on a long-planned writing retreat with friends. Stories beckon….

It’s nice to be home x

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Memory Box

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The other day I opened a box full of memories.

I’ve been having a big clearout recently, inspired by Marie Kondo’s ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying‘. Even though I’ve moved a lot in my life (twenty-four times at last count), clutter still tends to accumulate, especially when you have children.

So into cupboards I went, discarding clothing and dishes with abandon. Then I found this box. I should mention that I love trinket boxes and have quite a collection of them – this was one of the more unusual additions. I was about to put it back in the cupboard, when I decided to open it and look inside.

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And I found treasure.

A photo of me with a friend from Grade Nine. My University Library Card. A note from my brother, over twenty years old. A birthday badge saying ‘I am 24.’ A flower which I think is from my parent’s wedding cake. A necklace I remember playing with as a child, several stones missing. A small velvet bag, full of buttons. A book of matches from the CN Tower, ‘Top of Toronto.’

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All things that, at one time, were part of me.

As mentioned, I’ve moved a lot, with several of those moves being across oceans. And each time I moved, I had to discard bits of myself. Make adjustments. For many years I tried to ‘fit in,’ wanting a sense of belonging that always, despite dear friends and family, seemed just beyond reach. For a while I almost lost myself completely, but I found the road back to discover, like my old friend Dorothy, that home was inside me all along, and all the things I’d experienced were what made me who I am.

So finding this box at the turning of the year felt particularly poignant. It’s a time when I look both to the past and the future, gathering all that I am and all that I have been to carry into the new year. And this box, with its small collection of trinkets, reminded me that, even though I’ve moved through time and space, I don’t always have to look far to find myself.

Sometimes, all I need to do is open a box.