Way Up In The Back Of Beyond

I sometimes feel like I live way up in the back of beyond. Today, Sweet Davey, who is my cousin from Newfoundland, gave me a call and it was really great to have a chat with him. He's been threatening to call for weeks now, and every time he would try my number I would be away from the phone (most likely in the bathroom or some equally mundane but necessary evil). Getting a call from a cousin who you haven't heard from in a while can be like opening Pandora's box... it was a little bit like that today.

Sometimes I feel like living here in the north country is really the back of beyond. Now I know that I could be living farther up and out than I am... with technology these days the whole world has become a wee marble. But it's when you chat with someone that you haven't seen in years that you are reminded of all the things you have lost by moving away. It's then, that you want to sit down and have a good cry. It doesn't matter how close technology has brought other parts of the world. When you haven't been home in many years and you talk to someone who is still living there, it makes you feel lonely and away from everything that you love.... that you are way up in the back of beyond.  It's not that I didn't enjoy the phone call.... I did... it was lovely to spend an hour yaking away about good times and old times as well as new times and even about people you'd love to see again. No it's more about the small things.... the accent that sounds so strange which once was so familiar.... the choice of words used to describe and talk, which mainlanders don't use. Intangible things that you can't see or touch but are as real as crest of a wave,... that are here and gone in an instant, but remind you of who you used to be.  And it leaves you wondering how it is that you have come so far from what you once were.... from what your expectations in life were. I mean if you had asked me 20 years ago what I thought my life would be like when I was 46, I can surely tell you that I would not have said, "I will be a great fat old fart who lives her life diabolically through the internet and spinning"... as a matter of a fact I probably would have wondered what spinning was! In those days I thought my life would be terribly different from what it actually is... and I certainly never thought I would be an ex-patriot Newfy.

No indeed... I was going to save the world.... I was going to work for an NGO in Africa (with a home base in Newfoundland)... I was going to teach people how to help themselves because I knew everything... I knew that my life was there to help those in need. I was so privileged (having come from Newfoundland cause it is such a jewel of a place) that they would only be too glad to say thank you to the help that I could offer.  Now-a-days, I realize that I was carrying around  a very great bulbous ego. I might not have been so overweight but I made up for it in having an over inflated head.  Still, I knew nothing and I'm not a whole lot better now except I recognize the signs of bulbous-headitis when it creeps up on me sometimes.

But those were times of great innocence. I thought I could do anything.... I thought I was important... I thought I had the world by the tail.... because the world was mine for the taking. But though technology has given the world this wee marble aspect... it still is the whole world. Newfoundland, not only the place but the culture and all that was, seems very far away these days... and that makes me sad.

So I sit here way up in the back of beyond and I realize how one phone call can somehow bring it all back... back from the recesses of your mind.... and boom.... there it is, just as real, just as prevalent, just as in your face as it ever was.... a wave cresting and rolling over on itself.... and I wonder how the immigrants to Canada survived knowing that they would never again see their dear ones on the other side of the ocean. But like the wave, it is here now... tomorrow is another day... and tomorrow it will be gone again the ocean will be flat and wave will be just a memory... and I will be caught up in the whirlwind that is my life now. Newfoundland and all that was will be lost in a sea of wool, and animals, and Daughters, and Teapot, and hauling water, and watching over parents.... cause that is what my life is all about now... is it good enough... could there be more to life than this... and does it matter....

Ask me when I'm dead.... I mean, what does any of it matter.

And to Sweet Davey... Teapot will be glad to have a hug from you... he's just that kind of guy! ; )

Reflection can be such a maudlin past-time!