Every good story is a trilogy
I’m coming home, as the bubbly attendant at the gate is announcing, “If Calgary is home”, I couldn’t help but wonder, is it? Is it still?
The pandemic has been hard. Marriage has not been easy. Jobs changes have not been easy. Losing friends and not having time for the ones we still have not been easy. Life, in general, has been challenging.
The worst part of all that is our inability to create new stories. Sheltering in place and not going out, not traveling, we missed the endless blue sky and the endless possibilities of meeting new characters and learning new stories from others. Sitting on the couch and doom scrolling through the newsfeed robs us of the awe of a community mural, the refraction of sunlight over tinted church windows. Being comfortable with the familiar narrative of Calgary and Alberta being a conservative, Oil & Gas beholden town stole our opportunity to be creative with our revitalization, to be truly ethical (not just ethical oil), to truly be the pioneer in innovation, progressive policies, and reconciliation.
So, is Calgary still home? Can I continue to grow and learn and write new stories in Calgary?
The answers lie in the 2 elements of stories: the characters and the scenarios.
I keep saying, again and again, Dan is my home. Maybe I need to remember that. It doesn’t have to be Ottawa. It doesn’t have to be another place, another town, another country. As long as we are together, I am home. We can write stories together. I know it. We write amazing stories. We write stories with our contradictions. We write stories about our growth towards each other. We write stories about how we push and pull and challenge and are unrelenting in our pursuit of excellence. Maybe he got comfortable with the existing stories we have. Maybe I need new stories to be woven so often that it is exhausting and unrealistic. But we have more stories. I know we do. We have more stories for another 20 years. For another 40 years. For the rest of our lives. I know it. I have faith in it.
And all that is left, is the scenario. My life. My work. My friends. My activities. I have control of them (to a certain degree). And the things I don’t have control over, I am equipped in my ability to cope with them. I can write better stories. I can continue to write stories.
The next few chapters will still be about the joy and the sadness, the challenges and the triumphs, etc. Because at the end of True North, the character didn’t find happy ever after, he found an empty canvas where anything could happen. And it was a happy ending.
At the end of my last chapter, I found Dan. I found home. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t at all what I expected. And it was a happy ending.
Here to many more bumpy middles and horrible false starts, as I head into many more of life’s happy endings.
I don’t know if Calgary is still home. But as long as Dan is there, and as long as I can continue to write stories, Calgary is a setting for happy endings.
And that would be enough.
Pace Fine Arts 