I'm going home for Thanksgiving, and I'm really looking forward to going. I haven't been home for years, lots of years. Now I'm probably confusing some people right now, since I spent Christmas with my family, and was back east for my brothers wedding, and my fathers funeral. There's a simple explanation for this. While my family is from and still lives in Ontario, I've never considered it home. I grew up in Fort McMurray Alberta. From grades 2 to 11. I consider Fort McMurray home. Like I said before. I haven't been there for a long time. Far longer than I care to admit, but I feel far more attachment to this place than anywhere in Ontario. So my mother will be up visiting long lost friend for 3 weeks in the fall, those 3 weeks will include Thanksgiving weekend, so I'm going up. I'm going home.
It's weird that I'm the only person in my family that feels this kind of attachment towards Fort McMurray. My sister is going back in July for a few weeks, and my brother was born in Fort McMurray, but I'm the only one who feels a real connection. Sure my mom is talking about finding our old house, and I plan on doing that myself, but she doesn't feel like it's going home. It's not her home. It's my home.
When we moved back east, I did not take it well. In fact I made my parents life a living hell. I look back at how I acted soon after moving back east to Sturgeon Falls Ontario, and I realized that those days were not my proudest moments. However they failed to understand that they took me away from my home and brought me to a town that to this day that I don't like. Now my parents understand that I feel no attachment to that town, but back then...I was an asshole, and admit it, but to defend my actions. They took me away from my home one year before I graduated high school, As a result, someone screwed up my school transcripts and I had to do an extra semester of high school, I ended up going to school in some stupid Northern Ontario community college. Life did not go the way I wanted it to. For the record, I do not blame my parents for things not going the way I wanted them to. I blame Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. I also blame myself for listening to my parents.
Fort Mac is an extremely expensive place to live these days, but it's still home. I still want to go there. I want to relive my childhood, by visiting my old schools, my old Elementary, Jr High and High School. I want to see my old house, I want to see the bank where my mom used to work as a Loans Officer, I want to see Syncrude, where my dad worked. I want to see the Oil Barons play hockey again....I want to go back in time and relive the good parts of growing up. That's what happens when you go home. Back to Fort McMurray.
My 2 Bytes