Toronto may be my mis­tress, but I still flirt with the idea of mak­ing her my wife. Wondering if I can escape the life and the mem­o­ries I have in Ottawa. I make the trip a few times a year, and some­times it feels like it’s more often than I see my friends here. If I still call Toronto home, maybe it’s time I should make it my home again. But I know it’s a dras­tic step for the sake of closure.

Christmas gathering

 

Sweet and creamy…Simon’s two great­est alco­holic adversaries.

It’s strange to have too many peo­ple to see and never enough time. Growing up as a socially awk­ward guy, it’s a prob­lem I never imag­ined I’d ever have. There hasn’t even been enough time for myself, although I sup­pose that’s the way I wanted it. I just don’t feel safe when I’m by myself nowadays.

lobster in black bean sauce

Lobster in Chinese is lit­er­ally “dragon shrimp”.

I remem­ber my dad tak­ing me to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese seafood restau­rant down­town1 once when I was a kid. It was one of the only things we ever did together, with­out my mom. We never went again either, although I sus­pect my dad went by him­self fairly often, and it was a small glimpse into one of his pri­vate rituals.

Also, my first real taste of lob­ster. I can still feel the slip­pery sauce on my fin­gers as I fished for morsels of flesh out of a lobster’s shell with my chop­sticks. Being there, shar­ing in one of his favourite dishes, was his way of bond­ing with me, even when there were no real words spo­ken between us.

So I treated my dad to din­ner the other night, and we bonded in the same way again some 20 years later, over an order of two Cantonese lob­sters in black bean sauce, and a plate of cashew chicken. I began to won­der if home is where I’ll always have a place to stay. Where I know some­one will take care of me if I need it. Where there’s some decent Chinese food.

mother and son

 

Sometimes I get plugged into a new cir­cle of friends, ones with lives far removed from my own. Most of them have reg­u­lar plans, long-term rela­tion­ships, maybe a child or two. John is espe­cially fun to observe with his son. He’s more of the provider than the care­taker type (a man who doesn’t even know how to feed him­self), so he’s awk­wardly com­pe­tent with cradling and other prac­ti­cal baby duties, but he most cer­tainly tries and cares and loves Will to death.

I can tell John tries and cares and loves me too. He once got me extra maple syrup for my waf­fles at the Picklebarrel, one of those things he didn’t need to do but did any­way. And since he’s usu­ally an obliv­i­ous, incon­sid­er­ate bas­tard, an extra blis­ter pack of maple syrup might as well be a new car. I have no roots at this point in my life, and it feels like there are more peo­ple who care about me in Toronto than in Ottawa. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to let go of it as home.

Toronto condo

My dream condo, 39th floor, with a view of the CN Tower and SkyDome only a few blocks away.

The hol­i­days are approach­ing, and the CN Tower is hung beau­ti­fully like a Christmas tree, strings of red and green lights cre­at­ing a spi­ral wrap. Even the con­struc­tion cranes are dec­o­rated. But they’re still a con­struc­tion cranes, and as seduc­tive as she is, Toronto is still a dirty, crowded city. A city I’d rather visit than live in, a place with as much to love as there is to hate. It’s a strange con­tra­dic­tion that’s left me unsure of where I belong.

  1. Quite a trek when you lived in the sub­urbs. [↩]