A Place for You

Dear Frances and Charlie,

I wonder often these days if we've chosen the right place for you. Cape Breton is a place of immense beauty and immense heart. Its history hangs thick in the air and is wise and comforting. But there is this sadness here too. And loss and grieving. Grieving is good, for those who can remember the times and the places they are grieving for, but what about you? What is it like to grow up in the sadness and heaviness? More importantly, what is it like to grow up among the things that we do to ourselves and each other when we are sad and heavy? The anger and the dishonesty and fear.

Tonight I had a thought though. A break from this doubt that follows me around more days than not. Maybe, the place is not as important as I've come to think it is. Not just this place, but any place. Maybe it isn't about choosing the very best place or this place over that place. Instead, it is about how you see this place and all of the places life will bring to you; a seeing informed by how you see the world, by an ability to find the beautiful and the brave wherever you are. By an inclination towards gratitude and a tendency to string together all that you find to be beautiful and brave and hold that in your heart.

I thought too about the places where we grew up, the communities we lived in. Or I tried too. But I don't remember much about them. I think, maybe, when we are little, our worlds, our communities are small. Crucially and beautifully small. My grandma's front porch small. The loft in the falling down barn small. The brook under the bridge in the driveway small. These are the places we lived. Not in boardrooms, or newsrooms or council chambers. And if it is the small places that you will inhabit for the next few years - the porches and brooks and barns and backyards and beaches  - well, they don't come more beautiful than right here, in this place.

With so much love,

Your Mama