Assignment 2.2: My Sense of Home

It wasn’t until I was eight that I finally saw Colombia. Finally. As if eight years is a long time. Well, maybe it wasn’t all that long for me, but for my parents, I can only imagine it felt like a lifetime. For them it had been close to fifteen years since they caught a plane out of Medellin. Sure, they’d seen their families and friends since. Sometimes in Canada. Sometimes in Florida. Sometimes in California. Even one trip in Alberta one year. But never going home.

And I don’t think they minded that fact all that much either. For my parents, and for my mom in particular, I think a lot of those fifteen years were spent putting distance between herself and a place she had no real fondness for anymore. Her mom had passed soon after my parents came here so I guess for her there really wasn’t that much of a desire to go back. For her, I don’t think, it was a place that felt like home any longer. Not that it ever really did at first. My parents will be the first to admit to you that, sure, they got married out of love, but it was also an excuse to get out. They were married in the December of ’89 and were gone by the next January. They wasted no time, and I can’t blame them. Medellin was far from safe.

Escobar wasn’t killed until ’93 and even then, the violence would continue. My mom told me once me, and she remembers all too well, of a classmate’s mother who came storming into their elementary school classroom one morning. She was covered in blood, not a drop of which was hers. The daughter knew what happened right away and left the classroom. Turns out, the girl’s father had been gunned down by a group sicario’s (“hitmen”) belonging to the Medellin Cartel as soon as he stepped out to work that morning. Also turns out, as a lot of people soon learned, he had nothing to with the Cartel and his death was no more than a wrong place at the wrong time sort of case, but the message was clear: nobody was safe.

My parents grew up under the weight of that fear. Sure, they were born in Medellin, they grew up in Medellin, they lived in Medellin and Medellin was their home but they knew, if they could do anything about it, it wouldn’t be anything permanent. By the time they got to Vancouver and settled down, had my sisters and I, and worked hard to make a life for themselves here, they were willing to give up one part of their lives to begin another. In a funny way, I can say my parents are more Canadian now than they ever were Colombian. Why? Because they found a home here.

When they made it back to Colombia in ’04 that fact was strikingly obvious. They enjoyed being back, seeing the faces of friends and families they had gone too long without. They walked the hallways of their old homes, dined in their old living rooms, and took us to through the streets of their childhoods. And when they got home, they were as happy as I’ve ever seen them.

My parents knew what they wanted. And what they wanted was a life for my siblings and I in place were we wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not our dad would make it home at night for dinner or if the car from our neighbours three houses down the street was a ticking time-bomb or if the plane we’d catch to go away on vacation would be our last. No. What they wanted was a life for us in a place were we could enjoy the freedom to not live in fear. My sense of home is guided by that. I am Canadian and I am proud if it for all the same reasons my parents are proud of it.

I don’t really remember all that much about visiting Colombia.  What I do remember are the long days of flying and the afternoons spent playing soccer with cousins I hadn’t met till that point and eating the empanadas and arepas at the farmhouse. But that was a vacation, not a home. And my parents learned that and happily accepted it.

What feels like home, in my mind, are the Saturdays of my childhood. Driving to hockey practice with my dad. The stop at Tim Hortons on the way back. Listening to the Vinyl Cafe as we drove. The anxious wait all afternoon for Hockey Night in Canada to start up. And the questions I’d field from both my mom and dad on the scores of the evening, who’s serving the penalty and what are the chances the Canucks can pull through.

That’s where home is for me.

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Medellin is a really beautiful city that I would happily go back to. And Colombia as a country is looking up on better days. As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown to appreciate where my parents came from and the stories of that place that feels unworldly in some instances and so familiar in others. But this assignment serves as a reader to me of how proudly, if not firmly, I share my parents attitude and identify as a Canadian.

Works Cited

Andrade, Fritzie et al. “36 Hours in Medellín.” Online video clip.
The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 13 May. 2015. Web. 7 February 2016.

McFadden, Robert D. “Head of Medellin Cocaine Cartel Is Killed by Troops in Colombia.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 3 December. 1993. Web. 7 February 2016.