Leaves

For most of my adult life, I have made references to myself as fractured. I've lived all over Canada, plus time in Europe and Asia. It doesn't matter where I go, I have people and memories. Places left behind. I carry them with me always. I am just as much the little girl who played in mud puddles under rainy November skies on the northern tip of the Vancouver Island as I am the young woman who swam in a waterfall one summer in Newfoundland. Once, I was a teenager with clear blue skies above me and waves of wheat and flax around me.  Today, I am a mother, a writer, a friend, a runner in the suburbs of the most populous city in Canada.

I've made reference to this, all this time, as being fractured. Broken into pieces.

Sounds grim, doesn't it?

I see why I did that. I cannot choose one over another. I cannot deny that there is appeal to living in New Brunswick, where I once walked the ocean floors and cried at the beauty of the wild edges of this country. But choosing a life where that is my every day and my every breath means that the big skies of Saskatchewan that sustain my soul and the winds that rustle the prairie harvests and whisper to me through time and space are even further from my reach. I felt like I just could not have ALL of it.

Sometimes, I envy my friends who have lived in one place their whole lives and have parents, siblings, and extended relatives down the street or a few miles away. I can barely wrap my head around that concept.

Except today I woke up and realized that these pieces are not a fracturing of myself. I am not broken. I am a representation of all of the pieces that make up our country. I have tundra and rocky mountains in me. My feet have touched both oceans. I have literally flown over our country from one end to the other. I have experienced the hottest summer nights and the coldest winter days this land offers. These pieces are more like leaves. Sweet bits that make up the depth and breadth of the whole tree. Layers of story, experience, life.