Mini-Break

 I haven't posted frequently lately because my family's been on a short vacation, and I'm a little under the weather. It's not COVID; it's just a cold. No temperature spikes, no dry cough. It happens pretty much every year around this time, so it's not like it was unexpected. I hope it's gone by Sunday, though; I don't plan on missing work.

I said 'mini-vacation' because our plans for a bigger vacation have been put on hold thanks to the COVID panic. In particular, we were hoping to take a trip out east to Prince Edward Island, where I was born. Unfortunately, that's not an option at the moment; nobody outside of Atlantic Canada is allowed to enter any of those provinces yet. So much for a free country.

I haven't been back to Atlantic Canada for decades, except for a summer a few years back when I worked there. Other than that, it's been over forty years since I set foot in either New Brunswick or PEI, and I've never been to Newfoundland in my life. I'd like to go back and see them, if only to reminisce about some of the fond memories I have.

I find there are two kinds of people: Those whose parents served in the military, and those who didn't. Those who didn't often spend their entire lives, or at least their formative years, in one place, even one house. They grow up sleeping in the same bedroom their cribs were in, they have the same group of friends from kindergarten through high school, and they are as much a part of the community as their parents.

For us military brats, it's a bit different. I attended four elementary schools and four high schools because of moving all over the place. I lived in eight different cities or towns before I graduated high school. Some of that was after Dad retired from the military, but we were used to moving every couple of years anyway, so when he switched to another company, we just packed up and moved again.

In the military families, your friends were transient; your best friend in second grade might be living on the other side of the country in third. Just when you thought you had a good feel for the town you were living in, you were hustled off to another province because Dad got transferred. I didn't live in one place for more than four years until I was a father myself. So, it's been weird to live in this same house with my wife and realize that my twelve-year-old son has never lived anywhere else.

It's an interesting perspective, and one I still struggle to understand. I'm a tumbleweed by nature; my wife is a small-town girl who's happy to remain so. I've always felt the pull of adventure, exploring a new place and meeting new kids. She's always wanted that sense of security, that stability that I just never had growing up. It's a unique sort of personality clash, but we make it work.

So, here's hoping that the governments of Canada finally get over the COVID panic and let us be Canadians again, instead of Ontarians, or Westerners, or Atlanteans or Quebecois. The sooner that happens, the sooner we can get our lives back to normal.