Once a week I share studio space with several women potters. We aren't a chatty group, tending to get caught up in our work. But occasionally we sit back and talk.
Two of the women are immigrants who have lived in Canada for many years.
Where are you from? one asked the other last week, and the conversation turned to political problems that country had gone through.
Well, I was born in Canada, I confessed, but I've never felt any place was my home.
Being a government city, people come and go, one of the women replied. Ottawa can feel like a transient place.
I sometimes think it's because I moved a lot as a child, I said. In the 18 years I lived at home with my parents, we lived in 7 different houses in 4 different towns. My father loved to move.
Long after the conversation was over, it continued to play in my mind: Why do I feel I so rootless?
Later on, the realization struck: I had moved - changed towns - at two critical stages of life: when I started school (away from all my friends) and again when I was 13, an age when every child longs to belong to a "group."
I still remember the loneliness of being the "new kid" in class...
Is this why I still feel so "rootless"?
No comments:
Post a Comment