Welcome back to Halifax
How swift it all is
This morning we left Margaretsville, the familiar rushing-about of packing and cleaning and trying to occasionally eat something, the last load of sheets and towels in the wash, sweeping the floor, emptying the ashes from the woodstove, putting all the trash in the appropriate places per Nova Scotia protocol, and dealing with the passive-aggressive host, who first forgot what day it was and nearly showed up the day before at noon, then came over at 11 instead of noon today, which is when she said she’d come. She wanted to meet us, she said, but what she really wanted was to stare at us and check little things about the house to see if we’d broken anything.
It was obnoxious, and not entirely unlike our old landlord (both meanings there) who showed up at random times over the last few days of our packing up to nod and smile and look around and not really say much but to seem to be judging us mightily while we busily continued working through one of the more stressful experiences of our lives.
We finally got out of there, swung by Bee’s Knees one last time (this time they had strata with bacon, zucchini, dill and parmesan, and scones with blueberry, lemon and white chocolate, whew!) then headed toward Terence Bay to look at a house…
…which someone made an offer on before we could go see it. So, a stop in Wolfville it was, to give it another look and get me a third coffee.
Wolfville is to the east end of the Annapolis Valley what Annapolis Royal is to the west, though Wolfville is bigger and more bustling, with Acadia University at its heart. We stopped through briefly last weekend on our way up to Blomidon, the provincial park that stretches along a hook of the Bay of Fundy and features cliffs of red clay and mud flats at low tide in the place of the gray rocks of the west. The soil here is iron-rich and the area is full of apple orchards and vineyards.
A block away from the noisy and charming main street in Wolfville is a walking trail that wends along the Fundy shore; last weekend we were there at low tide, but today it was high, the water all the way in. We saw a tiny, tiny bird perched on a rock, calmly looking back and forth, and Seek told me it’s called a Least Sandpiper, which I found utterly adorable if a little insulting to the poor lil guy.
The moment of peace by that water—the least sandpiper, the pair of Acadians and their geriatric black lab, the breeze off the water and the fresh air—it was incredibly restorative. Yet as we pulled in to the hotel we’re staying at tonight (I messed up the dates and we check in to our place tomorrow), I found myself melancholy, disappointed and lost. It’s a crappy generic place that I got a deal on, and it’s on the outskirts of the city; as I said to my partner, “We’re going to Woburn,” which you’ll get if you’ve lived in the Boston area for any length of time. (If you haven’t: just imagine anyplace near a highway that perhaps loops around or passes through a city, a strip-mall-ridden no-man’s-land where they put industrial parks and chain hotels for business travelers.)
As we move through this journey I’m faced again and again with myself: myself and him, and no one else, with everything that entails. It means I can’t run from my feelings, I can’t easily distract myself, I can’t turn to my old habits. I just have to face what it’s like, here and now, and how that feels.
Last year when we were here, it was different for lots of reasons, not least because I knew we were here for a month only, and because we were only trying Canada on for size.
Now, I’m in a new reality. My partner has a three-year work permit. We’ve decided to move here. I still only have visitor status, but we’re looking at ways to change that. I’m still helping manage the chaos at my old place from afar, and I still own a stake in it. I haven’t left Boston behind for good. But it’s definitely Serious.
It’s all part of this huge attachment repair process, which, like the original attachment between parent and child, advances and retreats, reaches a new stage and then regresses. Now, here, in Canada, by ourselves, we must face ourselves. We must face each other. And that means all of it, even the parts I might not want to look at.
This afternoon, when we’d gotten into the room and I was simmering in self-hatred as I heard the roaring highway outside the window, the chattering housekeeping staff and their vacuums, and felt the disappointment-beast sit on my chest and whisper you fucked it up and now you’re never going to be happy and neither is he, my partner held me a while and then started looking up things to do in Halifax, tonight. Somehow, as he so often does, he knew what I needed before I did; I didn’t even consider doing more than grabbing dinner somewhere.
As it turns out, that’s all we did. But what a vital, intense delight it was to enter Halifax proper again. We came around a bend and saw the massive port with its colorful containers first, the first impression I had of the city the last time, too. “It’s not beautiful,” I said, “but I’m so glad to see it.” Then on through the neighborhoods to the Hydrostone, where we parked easily then stopped in at the Alliance Francaise, where my partner spoke animatedly to the welcoming staff and found out when classes start.
After, we sat outside at Salvatore’s, a splendid pizza place we’d ordered delivery from last year. It was delicious, I had a great beer, they make this in-house chili oil and we bought a bottle of it, it was great. But the remarkable thing was how it all felt: how immediately I fell in love again, how sweetly the city took me into its arms. As usual it was the people: the server with whom I had a hilarious miscommunication about the beer menu; the mother playing a little monster-struggle game with her son to keep him from dashing across the street; the people walking by who said our bruschetta looked good, and my partner answering because that’s how they do here. People seem…happy. Alive. And it makes me feel that way, too.
I’m sure we’ll discover the underbelly. I’m sure we’ll feel the squeeze of the housing market, the struggle of being a resident rather than just a visitor, the weakness of the Canadian dollar, some sourness behind the friendly Scotian surface. But right now I’m just grateful, and struck by how just a few moments in the right place can light me up, remind me why I came, and set me back on my feet.