July 21: Home sweet home

 My home - my apartment - is about the size of a two car garage. 

When you walk through the door, you are in my kitchen. Look to the left and there is a sink and counter and stove. Look to the right and there is a kitchen table. The table is flanked by two doors, one that leads to the bedroom and another that leads to, what I have started calling, "the blue room." I call it this because there is a blue carpet on the floor. The rest of my apartment has linoleum.

The blue room has had a number of functions over the years. Briefly, it served as my roommate's quarters. At one time it was going to be my kid's room but then he decided that he preferred the other room. The blue room has become my room now. I am writing this in the blue room. Immediately behind me a day bed I got from IKEA a couple years ago. It has become my favourite bed.

My apartment is not luxurious but I love it. I am aware that a large part of the world's population would view my four walls as sheer opulence.

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The other day, someone challenged me to count all the homes I lived in. Working backwards from memory:

This place - June of 2003 to present.

Stettler apartment - June of 2001 to June of 2003

Brighton apartment - January of 2000 to June of 2001

Abandoned retirement home in Montreal - January of 2000

Crappy shared apartment in Lennoxville - September-December 1999

North Battleford apartment 2 - July-September 1999

North Battleford apartment 1 - May-June 1999

Nah-lee's place in Regina October 1998 to May 1999

Live-in suite in Redvers, Saskatchewan September of 1999

House in Braeside, Calgary - Spring of 1993 to September of 1999

Darren's place - summer, fall of 1997

Apartment in scuzzy part of Calgary - spring to summer of 1997 

Boys' dorm, Rosebud School of the Arts - September 1991 until April of 1992

House in Canyon Meadows, Calgary - Fall of 1990 to Spring of 1993

House on Hooke Road, Calgary - 1980-1990

House on Hallbrook Drive, Calgary - 1977-1980

Some other house in Calgary - I don't remember

Apartment in Ste. Catherine's - I don't remember

House in Montreal - I don't remember

Apartment in Rosetown, Saskatchewan - I don't remember

So you get the point. I've lived in a few places. But the place I am in now, I have lived here for more than one third of my life.

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Since writing this, I have learned that my favourite Calgary Flame, Mark Giordano, will be calling Seattle his new home sweet home in the fall. He was taken by the Seattle Kraken in the expansion draft. This depresses me more than I thought possible. 

Last month, my sister and my brother and I arranged for Terry Francona, Manager of the Cleveland Indians, to send our father a personalized video for Fathers' Day. Dad was so happy that he cried and he has watched it dozens of times since. It meant a lot to dad because he is a lifelong fan of the Cleveland Indians. 

I am sad that Terry Francona might one day leave Cleveland and work for another team. Then my dad's video won't be magical anymore.

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They say you can't go home again. 

I tell people that I was born in Saskatchewan and I grew up in Calgary and that my fandom of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Calgary Flames is testimony to that. Before buggabugga hit, I used to visit Calgary twice a year. I loved every second of being there - I still consider Calgary to be the best city in the world - but it's not my home anymore.

The Calgary I used to know has changed. The Calgary of my youth had less than a million people and traffic, for the most part, was tolerable. Now, it's ballooned in size and traffic jams are a daily occurrence. I could not live there. I became a convert to small town living at the turn of the century. It is the lifestyle I prefer.

Ask me what I miss most about cities and I will say it's movie houses. I am an hour away from our nation's capital and an hour from Montreal. I can get a fix if I need one.

But this is home sweet home.