AN ODE TO OTTAWA

It seems that people often wait until an experience is done and a chapter is closed to mark what that season or space holds. I decided to try and mark this, here-and-now moment while it remains my every day in all of its dear particularity...

When I think back to this season in Ottawa when I am grey, I will remember late nights with shoes piled onto the landing so high, they had to be moved outside the door all together. I will remember people spilling out of my bedroom, smoking on the porch, and staying way too late to talk theology. I will remember the hum of a dishwasher crammed full of glasses, dessert plates, and small spoons used to stir late-night, turned early-morning coffee. 

I will remember the corner coffee shops that double as living rooms all winter long, summer patios that hosted conversations both earnest and honest. 

I will remember the squirrels that bound across my path, the neighbourhood dog named Gladis, and the grey Irish wolfhound named Gwendolyn. 

I will remember our treehouse, the apartment we affectionately call the Cottage (which others jokingly refer to as the Convent), and the leafy neighbourhood we call home. I will remember the tiny corner park, the stretch of the trees, and the canal glittering two minutes from our front door with a clear view of the Chateau Laurier turned Disney castle at dark. 

I will remember the glorious string of neighbours - punctuated, of course, by a few bad apples - that have helped this neighbourhood feel like home. Little R who perched on the front porch with his mum for his first three years earthside. G & R who adopted their cat Meryl Street and ran up tins of soup or cups of sugar at a moment’s notice. We will remember U & A screaming about our latest raccoon and squirrel infestation in rapid-fire Spanish while I giggled helplessly. We will remember the feeling of knowing the little boy downstairs was calling this building his first home. 

I will remember candlelight, crooked bookshelves, and how long it took me to settle into my room. The one that people walked right into from the front door, composed entirely of roadside furniture and pieces installed and/or donated by dear friends. 

I will remember countless overnight guests, on the couch, the floor, sleeping bags, spare ‘ooms, and even two to a bed when we got desperate. To host cost us something in this space and there’s nothing quite like seeing each other’s unbrushed hair to seal the deal on lifelong friendship.

I will remember Ottawa as the biggest small town I may I ever live in. Where everyone (well, almost everyone) is a transplant. Where people include as a reflex because the memory of lonely and new is never far. Where people show up to paint and move each other, even just one week into friendship. Where a 20 minute walk between friends' apartments is marked as the edge of far. 

I will remember Friendsgiving. The first one most fondly of all. The one where I first fell in love with the place I didn’t then know I would call home. The evening when I cooked 10 pounds of beets. But also the second Thanksgiving too - where we filled two floors of apartments, one proper and one rowdy. Okay, the third one too. When we blasted Needtobreathe, deep fried a turkey in the backyard. and the neighbours - instead of reporting us - came out to watch. When we watched our two friends fall in love and everyone stayed over and we set the exact number of places back on that table for breakfast too. 

I will remember Easter, when we put our kitchen and dining room table together in a long line in the middle of our living room. We set it with sunflowers and I remember marveling even then that love is a stubborn thing that could be found in two places at once - home and then here again too.

I will remember transplanting our entire friend group (almost) not once, not twice, but three times, for what became an annual wedding pilgrimage across the country. Crowding onto the same flights and into the same cars, all of us lined our sleeping bags onto the floor of a dear friend's parent's home, generously opened only to return again the following summer.

I will remember the delight of snow, the sound that the plows make, beeping late at night, and how the sound of clearing snow sends me into the deepest kinds of sleeps. I will remember that winter entrenches rather than separates people, the young glibly aiding the old and each other, playing hilarious games of chicken through the increasingly impassable streets. 

I will remember the high ceilings of the art gallery, free to the public on Thursdays and the awe that space never fails to inspire. I will remember the wealth of memorials, parades, and motorcades that reminded me always to see myself as merely one part of a larger domestic and global story. 

I will remember Wednesdays that saved me for years over and over again - the belonging and the safety and the understanding that the friends you make in your mid-twenties can teach you how to love the world and even yourself all over again.

I will remember glorious public lectures, the hush of a post-concert crow in the NAC, what flushed faces at a carol service look like, and the smell of cider and Christmas trees all December long. 

I will remember the awe I first felt when I saw people skate as a way to commute to work and place their small children on rounded disks to slide through the snow behind them in the market. 

I will remember Ottawa by the bars and the coffee corners and the restaurants which held the ideas and plans and relationships, the belonging and unmaking and dreaming of the early twenties in a city of deep winter.

I will remember Ottawa for teaching me the magic of a weekend getaway - to the cabin, the cottage, the woods...any small village or town deep in Ontario or Quebec tucked away especially for the mischief and coziness of old friends.

I will remember that this is the city that taught me to celebrate well and often, to rally, to show up. And show up we have - to engagement parties, job transitions, moving days, renovations, medical appointments, funerals, graduations, and all the small and large crises and celebrations in between. 

I will remember the Ottawa airport - the exact location of the only Starbucks, the short security lines, the famous Thursday “Member of Parliament Express” flights, and the number of times I ran into people I hadn’t seen in years. I will remember the magic of a well-appointed train ride. The delight of a cafe au lait en route with a good book as the landscape flew by. (Is there anything better?)

I have loved the apartments and the pews, the corners and the hallways, the forests and the open the roads. But I have loved you most of all, Ottawa, for teaching me that I am a home to a life and that this liminal thing - home - is something I carry with me.