Home and my Niece, Bean.

Today, I arrived home from my second day of shooting on a new gig…info to follow…
…Everything in this business is so secret-ie…but, there we are…
…ANYHOW…today, after I parked my car in the underground garage, I took the elevator to the main floor and walking to the mail area, I was reminded of all the other mailboxes I had to check last year on a regular basis, before I moved into my new place.
The one at my old house in Stratford.
The one at my old apartment on King East.
Then, at the end the year, this one…and as I walked towards my newish mailbox, I thought:

This is my home now.

It made me smile.
It made my heart beat a bit faster.
It made me…happy.

I was sitting out on my lovely new balcony earlier this week, and I realized that I have not REALLY embraced this new and wonderful place as my HOME.
I’ve had a lot of homes over the last 35 years since I left Hamilton, to go to school…and never looked back.
When I drove off to college in Oakville, Ontario, I was 17 years old.
THAT is not NEARLY as fancy as it sounds…wait, does it sound fancy? Maybe not. It seemed VERY fancy at the time, believe me.
Anyhow.
Since then?
I’ve lived in apartments, condos, houses, cottages, hotel rooms, dorms, and other assorted places, ALL OVER THE WORLD…and I have to say, it wasn’t until I had my house in Stratford that I really felt like I was home.
That little house on Albert Street, just by the Shopper’s Drug Mart, was a place that resonated with me.
Now, it’s the bar by which I will judge (terrible word, but I think you all get it) all of my future homes.
And, honestly, there was nothing that was truly different about it, but, for some reason, it just…felt like my place. Even though it wasn’t nearly the happiest place I’d ever lived.
Funny, that.

Then, last year, I realized, I needed to find a new place.
During a pandemic.
And now, here I am…all these months later, in my lobby, checking my mail…gloriously STILL feeling like a newly minted, Mary Richards…thinking, HOME HOME HOME…who can turn the world on with her smile…ME.
When I opened my tiny mailbox, there, underneath my new car insurance forms, was an envelope from my niece…and my heart warmed at the sight of it.
When I got upstairs to my apartment (FYI: I have decided to call my condo MY APARTMENT, the way people in NY do, because I can) I dropped all of my stuff in front of my kitchen island, and before I did anything else, I opened the envelope…knowing it held a SAVE THE DATE card.
My sweet niece is getting married.
Which is amazing and thrilling.

When she and her husband-to-be decided to get married, she didn’t tell me for a couple of days…and then, she texted me.
Why didn’t she call ME!?!?
I quickly realized that she might be afraid it would make me feel…something…
…that she was afraid that telling me about her impending marriage might make me look back at my failed experience and worry over…things.
The fact that she would so carefully consider my feelings surrounding such a monumental day, should tell you a lot about her.
But I did not worry over anything.
Not at all.
I was and am very happy for her.
She is a fiercely independent woman…who found a match. Her match.
I called her IMMEDIATELY and said,

“Don’t leave out a thing, PLEASE! I want to hear and be a part of everything that you want me to be a part of! Bean (the nickname that I gave her almost 38 years ago), you know…I still believe in love…and marriage. I do. I’m so happy for you. I really am.”

Their hope, their belief in a happier time, demonstrated by a SAVE THE DATE notice that is in THIS YEAR, makes me warm in the cockles of my healed-up heart.

(AND, after a bit of a think after someone read this and commented on the word failure…I have to say…I don’t think I would have considered my marriage a total failure, if we had somehow ended it in truth. And THAT’S the fucking truth)

So, here I am, sitting on the couch, with my coat still on, staring at the card, which I admired and then carefully clipped up on my fridge…in my newish home.
My fridge, the destination of all things that need to be featured, for me to see as many times a day as I’m hungry…in stomach and spirit.
The card is hanging alongside pictures of all my friends, family, poems I love, and hand written notes to myself (Create Confidence with Difficult Emotions, Sharron).
All these special treasures are held up by magnets from some of the places that I have lived and worked…South Africa, Scotland, New York, London, Vancouver…again, on my new fridge, in my new home.
My home. My choices. My desires and dreams. My family. My friends. My thoughts.
My life, there in front of me every time I grab some fruit…or pickles…or leftovers.
This life and it’s occupants, that both never fail to take my breath away, to confound, to be grateful for and to marvel over…sometimes ALL at the same time…hanging for me to see on my way to the bathroom, a reminder of all the love and joy I am blessed with.

Six days after my marriage ended, I found myself standing in the middle of my old apartment, listening to the silence.
Which was as loud as a bomb.
I could hear my heart racing in my chest…and in my ears…and this sound fought the explosion of silence.
It was all too very much.
I walked over to my computer, slumped down into my sublet apartment stool and after some looking around, I found a little image/quote that featured an arrow pointing to the future…I imagined that the right direction was the RIGHT direction towards the future…and over top and underneath the arrow were these two simple words:

BE BRAVE.

I printed it, rummaged for some scotch tape and put it up on my rental apartment fridge.
It was THE ONLY thing hanging on my fridge.
And I took a picture of it and put it up on my INSTAGRAM, for good measure.
The post was immediately liked by the man who had just recently walked out my apartment door.
The little red heart that signalled his attention, with his name beside it, irked me to no end.

TO NO END.
FUCK.
OFF.

By the end of that first month, my fridge was covered with quotes, inspirational writings and poems, and pictures of ALL the people I loved.
The people and words that got me through every single day.
I would stare at that fridge for hours, in the continuing silence of my apartment…and just do my best every day to hold the FUCK ON.
There was not one inch of the front of that fridge that did not have something on it that was an important part of my daily armour.
That fridge became the food-filled-frame for all my love and hope…and heart…and guts…and fortitude.

And now?
In my new home, my new fridge holds the same expressions of love.
Not as desperately populated, the pictures are not as plentiful…but this fridge is a focused and edited version…because NOW, I have shelves filled with framed pictures and mementos…rocks from beaches that I walked on during vacations with my sister, a red wooden heart that my niece gave me for Christmas one year, a statue that I got in PEI many eons ago, my Dad’s cherished GULF OIL pin from his trucker hat and objects that I saved from my home…from all my years of growing up to the age 52.
I kept the stuff that mattered.
At some point this past few months, I decided that I get to keep things that make me happy, even IF they are from the years my marriage. I get to do that. I was married a long time…I don’t have to trash the life that I lived during it, because it didn’t work out.
Nothing gets that kind of power.
No ma’am.
My home…my new home…my specially considered and curated new living space is filled with joy, memories and…again…love.
My home.

And, now that I have distance and space, I feel like I can sit down in my new home, in peace, and finally write about things that I have not, as of yet…things like this…and that also feels like home.
Saying them…writing them down, gives my spirit one less measurement of weight…and hopefully reminds someone else out there in the internet world of the following words that I sang over and over again (because they are the title and the chorus of what used to be my GO TO audition song) TIME HEALS EVERYTHING.
It really does.

Tonight, as I stare at my fridge for a very long time, listening to the comforting sound of the street cars passing by down on the street, I realize that I am constantly coming home now…coming home to my actual home, coming home to myself more and more everyday, coming home to a life that is focused on the truth of who I am and what I want, a home that is pretty much worry free…coming home to happiness and a love I am experiencing, virtually on my own.
Imagine.

When I was standing in my old apartment three years ago, staring at the one little sign…that arrow and those two words…I could never have imagined that I would be where I am today.
I knew I would be somewhere…but the place where I am, is so much grander then that day could have ever suggested.
Be brave.
Be hopeful.
Hold on.

And i look at that SAVE THE DATE card, and think of my niece.
My hopeful niece…who sent me a meme that said:

Britney made it through 2007, you will make it through this.

…the same niece that took me to a lawyer friend’s office, one early evening, to get end-of-marriage type advice, a week after the debacle.
My niece who sat by and watched me drink a gallon of champagne in said lawyer friend’s office, then poured me into her Nissan, took us back to my old apartment VIA a drive thru, force fed me a burger because I’d not eaten for a day or so and now had a stomach filled with sparking wine (I think we can ALL agree that this is never a good thing) and then walked me up to my apartment and put me to bed, tucked me in and waited till she was sure I was asleep before she locked me into said old apartment…is taking a leap of faith towards something new and exciting.
Not that she needs to be brave, her fella is pretty special…but after seeing a lot of women she knows experience loss and betrayal…she believes in love…and she IS very brave anyway.
And I will be as close to her as she will let me on the day of her marriage, and all the days leading up to it.
Cheering her on…celebrating love…celebrating a hopeful future…and feeling like I’m at home…even out in the world.

Namaste, Humans.

May 29th, 2021 – Toronto, ON.

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