Month: January 2019

Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

Home is a funny word, you know? Is it a place, or a person? Physical, tangible: that last step on the way to the basement that you trip on every time, ever so slightly? Or a feeling: fearless; incorrigible? Or perhaps a familiar smell, when you walk in the door, nine years old, haphazardly spilling wellie boots, mittens, sopping raincoat, and a half-opened backpack onto the floor as you breathe in Mama Bear’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?

Can you have just one, Home, I mean? When you happen upon a new one, does the old one get discarded? Or can you collect them, pocketing the good ones and turning away from the darker ones, questioning if they’d ever even counted?

There’s a place I call Home, and it moves, it moves within me, behind me, and beyond me. Like it’s waiting, waiting for me to make my next, almost always exceedingly deliberate move, but waiting patiently all the same.

First, Home was a house, a house in the prairies, on a tree-lined street, hipster adjacent to the somewhat more trendy Old Strathcona in Edmonton, Alberta. My neighbourhood was Hazeldean, a word which became the first “big” word I could spell without cheating, without whispering into the ear of my three-years-older sister for help with a letter here, a letter there. Home had a big backyard, filled lovingly with flowers by my gardener extraordinaire of a father. Flowers whose delicate petals became occasional casualties of the many soccer games I held there.  

The inside of Home belonged to my mother, a sometimes stay-at-home mum, a sometimes nurse, an always baker. Home was cozy couches, always covered in cat fur; spilled grape juice, staining favourite dresses. Home was “the swoop,” an extravagant jump my sister and I invented, where we’d careen off one of our loft beds into a sea of pillows, coming quite close to peeing ourselves with laughter.

Home shifted as we got older. Home fractured as half of our previously inextricable unit moved to the west coast. Home adapted to this new way of being, together but apart. Home strengthened when its value became even more acutely obvious.

Then again, four years later, Home offered itself yet again, in a new, more exciting, more terrifying way. Home became a new country, a new way of living, an inviting blend of sangria, foreign tongues, ancient architecture; but above all, Home became a new feeling – independence.

Two years later, homesickness hit. Casually at first, like an ignorable fly, but then, with more meaning, a buzzing manifestation of all that I missed: my language, my family, my trees, my ocean. By this time though, Home was complicated. Home had become a new person; home had become a new, ecstatic, previously unfelt feeling. But Home had also become confusing, disjointed. Parts of Home were here. But parts of Home were there.  

But you know what? The funniest thing happened. I got lucky. I got to bring this foreign Home, the Home I fell in love with, yet wanted to leave, home with me. Home took the form of a person, a person who somehow, and I still can’t fully comprehend how he did it, managed to encompass all that I loved about my adopted country, the bustling streets, the cantankerous bartenders, the always better tasting oranges, the unorthodox drivers, never not laying on the horn… And this new Home transformed me once more, extending its arms around me and pulling me close. Home illustrated again how truly enormous, yet somehow also infinitesimally small this planet really is.

Home became a person who gave theirs up, who traveled across oceans and prairies and mountains to preserve this newfound interpretation of the word. Home became a shared life, in a tiny, overpriced one-bedroom, blanketed with books, a kettle perpetually ready for more tea, an occasional meow, and a neverending lesson in Spanish.  

 

Works Cited

Hyndman, Nikole. “5 Of the Most Inspiring Architectural Sites in Madrid.” IEUniversityDrivingInnovation, 29 Sept. 2018, drivinginnovation.ie.edu/5-of-the-most-inspiring-architectural-sites-in-madrid/.

“A Trip Guide to Old Strathcona, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.” To Do Canada, Todocanada, www.todocanada.ca/city/edmonton/listing/old-strathcona/.

I have a great story to tell you. This is a story about stories. It is a story about how evil entered our world. It was a child. Not a malevolent child. Not an angry child, not even a sad child. A curious child.

The children came to the same park every day, to climb the trees and to play in the snow. One day, because it was the dead of winter, night visited earlier than expected, and the children, not yet ready to return home for the evening, instead sat together around a small fire under their favourite tree. They sat in a circle and the oldest proposed a contest. A contest to see who could come up with the scariest thing. Some children made faces, contorting themselves into expressions of absolute agony and the most heinous of hideousness. Some of them screamed, shrill shrieks that echoed over the dusk laden land. Some of them left, feigning tiredness, but doubled back to pounce on the others.

It must have been exciting to watch.

Until finally, there was only one child who hadn’t yet taken their turn. The child was smaller than the others; scarf wrapped tightly, oversized hat slouching low so that none of the children could tell who this child was, or if the child was a boy or a girl. And all the child had was a story.

Unfortunately, the story this child told was full of new words, words previously unbeknownst to the group of children. The child talked of murder, bloodshed, and betrayal, sadness so gutwrenching it brought tears to the children’s eyes, hatred so unadulterated that the children could do little more than gape noiselessly, words lost. When the telling was done, the other children nodded, still wordless, in consensus. This child had won the prize.

“Okay, you win,” they said. “[B]ut what you said just now – it wasn’t so funny. It didn’t sound so good. We were doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back. Call that story back.”

But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

 

I found this assignment really tough. I don’t consider myself a storyteller or a writer, and words often fail me when I’m forced to speak about something I’m not entirely confident with, so this was a new exercise for me. I found it easier to memorize a story when I broke it down and made the sentences simple. Most of my writing is academic, where the placement of a semi-colon can continue a sentence for lines and lines and lines, but I knew that that wouldn’t work for this exercise. Instead, I attempted to keep my sentences simple and to use alliteration (because it’s rhythm helps me to remember things) to my advantage. I stumbled a bunch while sharing this story, even in front of those people I’m most comfortable with. Sharing my own work is something I seldom do. Usually, my writing is shared only with the professor marking it, and so this entire course with it’s blogging and commentary, is new territory for me. I’m enjoying it though; it’s an encouraging way to ease into the sharing of one’s work. I’d run out of the room if I was asked to read this story in front of our whole class in a lecture hall, but there’s a comfort in being able to share and learn from others while still maintaining a degree of anonymity.

I also found it difficult to decide how to change the story. I thought about using animals as characters, but that felt like some vague form of appropriation because I’ve read so many indigenous stories about animals and their parts in creation stories. I settled on children because the dialogue in Silko’s story “‘Okay, you win,’ they said. ‘[B]ut what you said just now – it isn’t so funny. It doesn’t sound so good. We are doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back’” (King 10) reminded me of some of the conversations I overhear in the classroom, so I took that and ran with it.

 

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Words. Chamberlin talks a lot about language, in particular the strangeness and wonder of how language works. Stories, he says, “bring us close to the world we live in by taking us into the world of words” (italics mine,1).  He describes learning to read and write as learning “to be comfortable with a cat that is both there and not there”  (132). Based on Chamberlin’s understanding of how riddles and charms work, explain this “world of words.” Reflect on why “words make us feel closer to the world we live in” (1).

I was drawn to this question for a couple of reasons. I’m an elementary/middle school teacher, and I’m fascinated by the minds of children. To sit back and watch the madness happen in a primary classroom, to see the connections, the battles, the daydreamers, the mathematicians, the artists, is incredible. In reading Chamberlin’s chapter “To Be or Not to Be” I found myself thinking of Piaget’s theory of assimilation and accommodation in cognitive development. Basically, assimilation is the easiest, we add new information to our existing knowledge base, with occasional reinterpretations, whereas with accommodation, one’s existing schemas are altered, and new information replaces old information. When Chamberlin describes his first experiences with school where it takes him a “couple years to develop faith in…[the] nonsense” of a cat being a cat while also not being a cat (131-132), I found myself considering how school, with its facts, binaries, and rules, might make it more difficult for children to comprehend these contradictions. Perhaps, if children were left to their own devices, we would not, in fact, end up with a Lord of the Flies situation, but one that embraces contradictions. Young children appear to naturally embrace the “both/and [mentality] rather than “either/or” (Chamberlin 127).

As a lover of words, I have always been drawn to rhymes and riddles where one has an opportunity to play with language. Rhymes and riddles are commonly filled with contradictions (a personal favourite: what gets wet while drying? A towel) and we are forced to think outside the box, to suspend our belief in what is fact and what is fiction. The nuances of language and the diversity in sound, rhythm, intonation contribute to our feeling at home with our words. Chamberlin introduces anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner’s work with Aborigines in Australia, explaining how the words we have for “home” in English cannot compare with the links Aborigines have with their homeland (79). Thinking closer to home, I considered how the Inuit have many more words for snow and ice than we do in English. Words make us feel closer to our world because languages develop to match the ideas and needs of its speakers; our values, beliefs, and ideals are reflected in our words

Our world is built around the shared belief in words, the “meaningless sign[s] linked to…meaningless sound[s]” (Chamberlin 1). When I first moved to Spain, I experienced the dislocation that arises when one is unable to communicate in our “world of words,” where I became one of the Chamberlin’s “babblers” (1). Our “world of words” can be both a welcoming and an isolating place. In reading Chamberlin, I found myself thinking about other instances where words influence how closely we feel to the world we live in. My mind wandered to preferred pronouns. As a teacher and a crisis line volunteer, it’s become more clear to me how tremendous of an effect these words can have on a person’s sense of belongingness and connectedness to the world. While not particularly related to Canadian literature, this example kept coming up as I was reading because, as Chamberlin illustrates with the dispossession of indigenous peoples lands, Jewish exile, and slavery, feeling “homeless” appears to be a common affliction for so many minorities, whether they be minorities because of race, religion, or sexual orientation. The “discounting of other people according to arbitrary categories of entitlement continues” today, and I think it’s worth thinking about how we function within these systems in our everyday lives (Chamberlin 49).

Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Vintage Canada, 2004. Print.

Cherry, Kendra. “Assimilation and Jean Piaget’s Adaptation Process.” Verywell Mind, Dotdash, 8 Oct. 2018, www.verywellmind.com/what-is-assimilation-2794821. Accessed 13 Jan. 2019.

“Inuktitut Words for Snow and Ice.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 9 July 2015, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/inuktitut-words-for-snow-and-ice. Accessed 13 Jan. 2019.

Robson, David. “There Really Are 50 Eskimo Words for ‘Snow’.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 Jan. 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/. Accessed 14 Jan. 2019.

“University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.” Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center, uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2019.