A knock at the door

It is seven in the evening. Still daylight. A man I don't know knocks on my door. He wants to know if I want to change internet providers. I don't. I look past him at the Spruce trees and I am reminded that he is from half way around the world. That he has a hard job. Still I don't want to change internet providers. 

I am kind and tell him so. He is gracious and goes on his way. 

And I remember that people have hard jobs, and that it is not easy to start a life so far from home.  And I also remember that I have never been far away and alone and starting over in another country. I would be too afraid to do this. 

I would have been afraid to do this at twenty four, at eighteen, and I am still afraid to leave where I feel I belong because belonging is so elemental to how I see myself. I grew up in a village really, and was raised by my parents and everyone in it. There were neighbours whose houses I lingered in after school. There were nuns and brothers and teachers who taught me what to believe, and what they believed I should know. 

There were grown sisters who had moved away and would come home on trips. Surely they showed me what it was to go out into the world. But no, it was not for me.

There were boats crossing the bay bringing in a load of cod that taught me that the sea could feed you. There were women walking home in bloodied aprons and rubber boots from the fish plant that taught me that I did not want to work everyday with my hands frozen in a pile of fish guts.  

There were stars at night above the green hills that taught me there was a world beyond the one I could see  around me. There was a lot to learn in that place. And slowly I edged away from it. Never wanting to leave. Knowing I had too and so I did.

There was education. There were no jobs.  Newfoundland in 1983 was all about the leaving. There was no making do. You left. And so I did. 

And I did not go far. I settled in Nova Scotia.

And I have only known these two places. I have never started over somewhere else and had to learn a new language. I have never had to be alone without support and begin again. Still I can feel it when I see the young man at the door. I can feel what that would be like for me. And I know it is not this way for him. I know I do not know his experience. That is his, his story.

But I do know, in the warmth of my kitchen, as I place a piece fish that has been dried and lightly floured into the sizzling oil that I am home.  And that I appreciate the sizzle and the crackle, and smell of the fish as it fills the kitchen, and I hear my husband walk into the room.   I look out the window I see the young man get in his car that is parked by the side of the road and I hope for him that someones tonight needs an internet connection.