Home

One of the oldest buildings in Alberta, the Father Lacombe Chapel, was built in 1861.

1861.

I find this astounding - that we are so young. All of our longings and ideals and dreams of home must have root in places we do not live. Not only that, but for most of us, in places we've never been. So many stories here, even now, even still, are comprised of the word "home"which means "not here", and "home" that is not elsewhere, either. We are still caught between worlds, rubbing at pictures of home, not sure what we are looking at, for.

My mother was born in Holland, my father in Canada. My mother speaks a language I've never learned and my father was raised on a farm, speaking a physical language that I have never experienced. His childhood was measured out in bushels and acres, seeding and harvest, her childhood in cups of coffee, speeculas, Zwarte Piet, and shoes filled with straw. I do not understand my world through either of these pictures.

We are so young, here. So new to this land and the cutting and building of lives on empty prairie landscapes. No longer identifying ourselves as pioneers, we live in cities that spring from the ground like sporadic outbursts and know that we've been told how many acres to a hector, but cannot remember the ratio, and wonder how it might translate to a city block.

I am so young, here. Looking for home in a homeless landscape. I've traveled three thousand kilometers over the earth that hangs the backdrop of my identity, and I found home, but not home. The stories of my upbringing are told in flame shaped words, smoke drifting upward, burning incense, burning soul prayers. They are devastating and refining, pulling me through the houses, the languages, the roots, into the hollowed out place that is purified black from the coals, drawing me up, drawing me up, drawing me home.