EXCERPT FROM SARA’S
JOURNAL
September 27, 1998
London
4 am
The Art Of Leaving Home
Can’t sleep. Rich lies beside me and breathes rhythmically through
his nose. This room is half-lit and I am a princess atop the expanse that is James’
towering mattress. I’m remembering the first time I left home. Ontario was the
manufacturing centre for Cheerios and that was about all I knew. Queen’s University
was the great unknown and I was waiting for my parents to break down and acknowledge the
momentous occasion of my departure. Instead, my Great Grown-Up Getaway was turning into an
anticlimactic shove from a nest where the permanent residents were ready to get on with
the next phase (See You At Christmas). My parents are busy birds and the confidence in
their offspring- rearing was enough to make me misjudge their happy nonchalance for waning
devotion.
It’s eight years later. I’ve been back to the province of
breakfast cereals more times than I can count. We’ve traveled through Western Europe
and met several holiday and hiking destinations in between and still Friday counts as the
largest entourage of airport well-wishers to date. My parents raised me to look around. I
was brought up in a house where getting up and taking a trip is second nature. But
suddenly, at twenty-six everyone wants to know what will happen to Christmas. Perhaps it
has something to do with the open-ended nature of the trip. At any rate, it was a farewell
that tempered my enthusiasm for our adventure three years in the waiting, with a longing
for the comforts of our dependable friends and family.
At any rate, today we begin.
