I just reviewed my last post, and I realize that nothing has really changed.
I'm in a new country, new city, new job, new people - and I still want to go home. But its not 'home' that I miss - its... I think its the place where I once felt safe, and not all alone in the world. I'm trying to figure out this feeling. This empty, aching feeling inside. It's like there is a big whole in my body, and in my mind I call it 'home', but in reality its the feeling of being taken care of, the feeling of security. Which is funny that I equate 'security' with 'home', because I'm not sure that my home in reality had that; security I mean. Although, nobody could get at me there. I would walk into that house, and no one from Elementary school could get me. No one from the school bus knew what that house held; it was in a sense, a magical house. One that has fantastical stories - from owning our own beach, and a view of a lighthouse with its very own frog-horn, to containing a bear rug - a real (once live) bear rug, and a library, and a shop large enough to house a sailboat, a car, and a whole lumberyard all at once. It WAS secure I guess; secure from other people's knowledge. It was a world unto itself - and one I'm sure, people were very unlikely to have guessed that I lived in.
No one knew that my brother had made a real ham radio, or that my dad had his father's train set, and his great grandfathers walking stick carved for him by a P.O.W in the Boer War. No one knew that my mother had oodles of Depression glass, and wedgewood, and willow-ware. It was not conceived that in my mothers side of the house two pottery wheels and a kiln existed - although I don't think the Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and George Harrison records would have been surprising. However to the naked eye it was pretty obvious that my father had a penchant for collecting Volkswagens on their last legs, marine engines that were no longer sea-worthy, and propellers for monstrous ships that he would never own.
That house was such a safe-haven in a way; I never knew it was poor - it was the grandest house that existed. It was made of all wood, all wood my dad had chopped down and milled in his portable saw mill. The fireplace was made of rocks collected from our beach, and a 20 foot piece of Arbutus driftwood propped up our vaulted ceiling. The cracks in the arbutus, and the holes in the limestone rocks of the fireplace were the best for holding chocolate Easter eggs that my mom would place all around the house (and I imagine her doing it gleefully) to accompany the 'Easter Bunny poo' (AKA chocolate raisin trails) we would find. And the Arbutus tree was the perfect pole to decorate for Christmas with the reams upon reams upon miles upon miles of paper chains we were tasked to make each year.
That house had the perfect stairwell from which to drop thrill-seeking teddy bears precariously attached to silk parachutes; a stairwell which also doubled quite well as an excellent cardboard-box luge chute for either of us wishing to try our hand at handling through the foyer. The hallway behind the kitchen and the buffet was an excellent haven for kids; the lower sliding cupboards held hundreds of board games, and when mixing up all of the pieces got boring, the bookshelves above them became the best means to climb up to get into the loft from the back. I remember looking at that hole when I was 15, and realizing that it was barely 1 foot square.
Up in that loft, we were kings of the world. We could see down upon the kitchen, the living room and dining room. People didn't know you were watching them, and if we got bored of watching our parents turning the pages of their books, looking out through the front windows was a viable means of entertainment. The loft provided a breathtaking vantage point of the view from the house - one you could only get from that height. You could see all the way across the Strait of Georgia, to Vancouver Island; we could see tanker ships, and self-loading log barges, cruise ships and tugs pulling log-booms. The southern tip of Thormamby was always the destination for little motor boats zipping past, and once in a while, an old BC Forest-ranger boat with an Easthope engine would come put-putt-putting its way up the Coast, giving my dad heart palpitations. As he leapt to his feet, he would excitedly whirl his hands around and shout at us to "...come look through the binoculars!" (binoculars, which I may add, never fit our faces, weren't adjusted properly and were frankly pretty damn foggy on the inside. To this day I believe a Forest-ranger boat looks like one big white blur with a dark bubble in the corner).
Once, I remember, I saw a flying squirrel from that vantage point. I'm pretty sure it was the very last one in history. He looked pretty lonely.
However - we could never tire of that loft. I mean, the far side was a pretty huge risk for any self-respecting, spider-fearing seven year old, but the part above the kitchen - that was the money shot. That was where a whole new world came to life; a world with a train. I don't think it whistled, but in my imagination it does. My favourite part was turning the big orange knob as high as it could go, to make the train go as fast as it could. At that point, my
brother would have heart palpitations, start whirling his arms and shout at me to " STOP TOUCHING THAT!". Then I would get relegated to my regular, plebeian post of reattaching the train wheels to the tracks. BORR-ING. I always thought even if the whole train wrecked, the thrill of turning that knob up the highest would make it worthwhile. Apparently not. Besides, I knew if I had done that, I would have had to clean up the mess, give my brother my left kidney and be sent to the poorhouse while he charged me interest on the damages. Upon further thought - I like my left kidney.
And aside from all of this - the house had the most AMAZING colour coordination. If you could call it that. Orange accents, turquoise carpet (oh yes - turquoise), harvest gold appliances, blue accoutrement's, and an all -out, full-on, saddles blazing, plethora of sea-horse & clam shell door handles.
There is no other kid in the WORLD who lived in a house like that.
