Something somewhere

 

If you haven't figured it out already, I will spell it out for you: I am a small-town girl.  I grew up in the heart of the Kootenays in British Columbia.  I was born in the same hospital my dad was born in.  I had the same teacher for social studies in grade 10 as he did too.  It's one of those communities where everyone knows your name, or at least knows someone in your family.  "Who are you related to?".... "Oh yes, I used to be good friends with them! We used to play pictionary together every Sunday night while the kids watch the weekly Disney movie on CBC.  How are they doing?  Tell them I said hi!"

When I was about 19 years old I decided I had enough of the third-party identification through my parents.  I wanted to be known simply as myself, and not as the daughter of so-and-so.  That's one reason I decided to move to Calgary.  It wasn't a place I necessarily wanted to go.  It was the big-city, too big, and I was a small town girl.  They had divided freeways with four lanes!  I remember the wonder and awe I felt the first time I drove up the Deerfoot, my brain trying to compute the logistics of four lanes all travelling in the same direction.  When I finally found a place to live, I decided to limit my experience of the city as much as possible.  If I was going to live in the North-West quadrant, then I was going to work in the north-west, and I was going to church in the north-west, and I was going to shop for groceries in the north-west, etc., etc.  I was going to join a small church and go to a small Bible college and lead as quiet and sheltered life as I could within the big city.  You can take a girl out of the small-town, but you can't take the small-town out of the girl.  Touché.

As the years went on I began to develop an attachment to Calgary. At first it was really hard for me, being away from the mountains and everything else familiar.  But as I began to explore and expand my horizons and take beautiful pictures like the one I posted above, of downtown Calgary from Edgeworthy park, the city began to feel more and more like home.  That process only took about 7 years.  Some things have taken longer, like a raising a child.

Now I am back to living in the small town that I grew up in.  And, to be honest, there has been a bit of an adjusting period here too.  Like the first time I went for a walk downtown after 5pm and realized that absolutely everything was closed.  It was a tragedy!  There wasn't a single coffee shop open, with the exception of Tim Hortons or the newly branded McCafé.  My broken heart is still trying to mend.