by Lana Groves
The last time I was in Ontario, the place I used to call home, I knew that I wouldn’t be going back. The more my mobility declines the more I accept that I very likely won’t be travelling anywhere again.
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Isabel Huggan in her book Belonging describes driving Ontario roads to visit places she has lived, I realized I would love to rent a car and visit Roncesvalles and College Street in Toronto. I could drive up to Bracebridge to visit Cynthia the friend I came with to Vancouver in 1973. She went back but I stayed in Vancouver. I could drive up the Southern Bruce Peninsula along Lake Huron and visit my older sister at her cottage where we used to have sister weekends.
I still fear the road South to Windsor where all the ugly happened and where I spent the most time growing up. I still haunts me. I don’t think I could go back there. Was it ever home?
Huggan writes: But it is home I want, home I lust for, home I want to remember in perfect detail…actually it is not that small white house I mean when I write the word ‘home’ but the subtle kinetic familiarity that comes from knowing who you are.
For me, it is not riding on the floor of the back seat as my father sped drunk down the centre line of the highway. It is not standing on the foot board of my bed when the pub closed trying to get a view over the treetops as he staggered home. I was relieved when he made it safely but then waited for the crashing sounds as he threw furniture or my mother against the wall. That was never home.
The kinetic familiarity comes to me when I sit with my Callanish people in person or feel them in my heart. That is when I connect to me. To the me before Southern Ontario. To my soul. To the me before my father tricked my mother by changing the name on my birth registration to that of his favourite movie star. That is not me. That is not home.
When I am at Callanish I know who I am. I can be angry or sad, fearful or full of fun and it is all okay. I put all my worldly worries in the Callanish vessel and I am home.
Lana Groves came to Callanish as a participant back in 2015, and has been attending Meditation and The Writing Group even since. She loves the wisdom and kindness of others who attend Callanish circles.