Head under water and you tell me to breathe easy for awhile.

My Mom is old. She’d kill me for saying that, but she is. My Mom was born at a time when I would have killed to be born. She was a teen in the sixties, spent her twenties in the seventies.

In 1970 when my Mom was seventeen years old, she packed up her shit and moved to Toronto. Considering she spent most of her childhood in Deer Lake I can only imagine the adjustment that must have been.

My Mom (along with the rest of my family) hate talking about the past, it’s the weirdest thing. When I ask my Poppy about his parents and family his reply is usually along the lines of “Now, why do you want to bring that up?” Either my family has intense secret keeping abilities, or we’re all so forgetful that we actually don’t remember anything that happened over a couple of months ago.

But I always wonder what my Mom was up to for those few years she spent in Toronto before she met my Dad. Who’d she hang out with? What did she see? Where did she live?

It would have been an awesome time to live in Canada’s biggest city. The Beatles had just played for the last time. The focus switched from helping the world to helping yourself. Drugs were rampant, disco was winning.

Sometimes I wonder if my Mother’s adamancy about me living here has anything to do with her stint as a young girl in a big city. It’s definitely a theory that should be explored.

But for now this city is lonely, and when I’m alone I think about what a mistake all of this is. I become restless and uneasy. Am I really spending my best years learning about dead Prime Ministers in my least favourite spot in the world?

I wish for a second that I could be as brave as I come across. Make a decision to leave and run with it.

Make my own secret stories.