My Way Home

Published in Mary Jane’s Farm magazine 2022.01.20

When I was small, I was wild. My dad told me it was because I came from the wolves. They gave me to my parents because their lake in Northern Ontario needed children to enjoy it. He said my twin still lives with the wolves. So, if I am ever lonely, I can paddle to the next bay where the steep cliff rises high above the lake. If I call out to her, she will echo back to me.

My first home was a small, screened cabin built by my great-grandfather. He was a fisherman and a radiologist, more apt to reading scans than building plans, so our cabin was built backward. We always walked on the walls. My mom was wild like me but hid it better. Many did not know that her favourite place was a drafty, crooked cabin with a biffy and no running water. She was born of the lake, gazing at sunsets, picking blueberries, and massaged by the warm south-westerlies with her toes dipped in the water.

At two weeks old, my mom presented me to Fox Lake, knowing that the lake had demanded me, so I belonged to it. She did not speak of the wolves because the wildness came from the woods, not the wild dogs that howled now and then across the lake. I was of the warm granite stone resting beside the lake. I was of the soft currents within the warm healing waters that flowed around our bodies like warm melted butter. I was of blueberries and the sharp juniper bushes. God formed me, and I grew in the pine humus of the boreal woods. I was baptized in the healing lake, and my godparents were the summer breeze and the violent thunder. I was a Gemini formed of the tumultuous air and the calm, warm earth. She said this was why I was wild, not because of some wild animal gift.

As I find my way back to the lake each year, I say a quiet prayer of thanks to my parents for my life spent here. As much as I love the origin stories they created for me, I know where I come from.

I was born of a woman who kept the fire going and drinks flowing for anyone who needed warmth and friendship. A woman who understood the necessity of early morning blueberry picking so her children and any cousins or friends who stayed the night would wake to the smell of hot blueberry muffins. A woman who spoke to the grey jays, loons, and chickadees in their own languages. A woman who understood the primary purpose of mid-afternoon was for gin martinis with a splash of vermouth and three olives. In our home, there was always room at the table for more. If company stayed late, skinny dipping in the dark was a requirement for all women remaining.

I was born of a man with busy hands and eruptive laughter, who created a safe place for anyone needing comfort. A man who was at his best tinkering with an antique boat engine, chopping firewood, reconfiguring a neighbour’s Servel fridge, or cleaning his beloved Aladdin kerosene lamps. He was a storyteller who wove his ridiculous fantasy world into our daily realities, ensuring that our lives never had a hint of mundaneness. A man who always had time for hugs and far too stimulating bedtime stories, regardless of whether we wanted them or not (They usually involved a ridiculous monster).

Each spring, I find my way home, and my family of four opens our three-season cabin. Each time, I feel childlike joy intertwined with loneliness. I run down to the dock to say hello again to the lake just as my mom always did. She’d stand at the end of the dock, peacefully watching and listening and breathing in the lake. After a short while, she would return to us and tell us about all the changes she noticed. My dad would laugh and marvel at the strange relationship she had with this place. These memories are still so clear even though they have been gone for so long. I am thankful they left so much of themselves in me.

So, I talk to the birds in their own languages. I let the little rock bass kiss my toes. When I find a good blueberry patch, I hide, hoping no one searches me out until I've picked it clean. I soak every bit of the sunset into my entire being. I call up to my wolf twin, and she echoes back to me. My cozy porch and the smell of freshly baked blueberry pie or muffins drift on the warm south-westerlies, inviting any wanderers of the woods in for comfort and usually craft beer (I never got the taste for gin martinis).

The ashes of my mom are buried in a small rock garden behind the warm, sloped granite of the Canadian Shield. My mom often sat here with her toes dipped in the water watching my sister and I swim. When my time on earth has ended, I too want my children to give me back to the lake and the forest, where I began. I insist my ashes are to be scattered in the one blueberry patch where the blueberries are always pink and mauve, never changing to blue but just as plump and sweet as the others.