I think there’s a country song that says “you can always come home.” That may be true but I feel there should be a disclaimer at the end that says “but it won’t always be easy.”
Last summer my husband and I along with our three kids moved back to Vancouver. Vancouver is my hometown but we had spent the past seven years living elsewhere. One year we spent in Cork, Ireland as my husband Leo finished up his medical schooling there. I was on maternity leave and I took our five month old son over to join Leo. I had a lot of fun exploring the Emerald Isle with my baby in tow and I certainly learned a lot about travelling with kids. After medical school Leo matched to an emergency medicine residency in Ottawa, so instead of heading back to Vancouver and back to my former job at Global News, we moved to Canada’s capital (somewhere I had never even visited before!)
We spent six years in Ottawa and in that time the city was a lovely home to us. It felt so welcoming because of the wonderful people we met there. One of my favourite things about being a mother is being able to meet and form friendships with other moms. I sure met a wealth of amazing mothers in Ottawa. They were there for me when I had my second baby and had to learn how to tackle bedtime alone with a toddler and newborn, and they were there for me when my third pregnancy ended in heartbreak. It was these wonderful friends that made leaving Ottawa the hardest, but when Leo’s medical residency was finally finished our plan was always to move back to Vancouver.
Home has always been Vancouver. I never stopped missing the ocean, the mountains and my family and friends back on the coast. It felt so good to finally be coming back home and start our life in the place I always envisioned raising my kids. However, I never imagined moving back in a pandemic.
Due to covid and the shutdown that followed, my kids never got to say a proper goodbye to their friends, classmates and teachers. They came home for Spring Break and just never went back. It was not the big goodbye I had envisioned and it certainly made moving that much harder. We felt very uncertain about flying with our kids at the time, and how safe air travel during covid would be, so we decided we would drive across the country. That plan, of course, came with it’s own covid challenges. There was a lot of eating take out from the trunk of our car, and bathroom breaks along the side of the highway. When we finally rolled into Vancouver there were no hugs with grandparents, aunts and uncles. No big reunions with friends.
That feeling of being back but not really being “back” haven’t gone away yet, even a year later. Sometimes it still feels like we are back for a really long visit. Most of my life as a mom has been spent away from Vancouver. My son Lucas was only 5 months old when we moved away. Things have obviously changed since then. Lots of friends have moved out of the city. People who I saw on the regular before kids now have busy lives with families of their own. Other friends have gotten closer to each other over the years, leaving me to play catch up on everything I’ve missed. Not everything “fits” exactly as I remembered.
It certainly was a difficult year to start at a new school. It’s not easy to make new friends and adjust to a new environment when everyone is in masks, play dates are not allowed, there is no gathering on the play ground after school, and no school activities or gatherings where parents could get to know other parents.
I keep telling myself we just have to be patient. Everyone has felt those feelings of isolation and uncertainty during this pandemic, even if they didn’t uproot and move across the country. I think it’s just going to take a little while. What is special is that my Vancouver happy places are still there – walking out at low tide on Spanish Banks Beach, hiking the paths of Pacific Spirit Park, and people watching while eating my favourite Lee’s Donuts at Granville Island. And now, I get to share this all with my kids.
