To be standing in the middle of the Lone Star State on a New Year’s Eve and talking with Texans about Stompin’ Tom Connors and Knowlton Nash was, to say the least, surreal. Ordinarily, other than as the butt of occasional jokes on The Simpsons or Family Guy, the only time I’d ever heard my country mentioned in America was on local weathercasts when the temperature plummeted and everyone blamed “a cold front coming down from Canada.” It was bracing to hear these outside perspectives, especially since for most of my life I had found it difficult to identify with the idea of Canadian-ness at all. If anything, I’d felt a much stronger sense of identification with certain American values and sensibilities.
To my great surprise, this shifted in Austin. Sometimes what prompted my sense of belonging to another place was something as simple as having to pull out my Visa card when I visited a doctor, and finding the idea deeply foreign. Sometimes it happened when the two worlds were thrown into high relief. Shortly before I left home, for instance, the national outpouring of elation in the wake of Steven Truscott’s acquittal was much in the news. On the drive down, I heard a public radio story about a Texas case in which a young man who’d failed to prevent a murder as a teenager had been sentenced to death for the crime. His sentence was commuted to life in prison, but what caught my attention was the Austin lawyer discussing the case, who observed, “One should never underestimate the taste for the death penalty in Texas.” At such moments, I came to appreciate the place I was from.
After New Year’s, I started thinking about going home. I didn’t have to leave the US until late February, but aside from the fact that I was heading into the teeth of the most brutal Southern Ontario winter in years, I was looking forward to returning. I knew I’d face familiar pressures and problems, but I felt up to the task now. Objectively, nothing had changed; in every other way, there’d been a seismic shift. Something had recalibrated internally. For one thing, I felt as if I’d put an ocean between my past and me. For another, I didn’t expect to find in Toronto what I had in Austin, but I didn’t care. I had what I needed, and could carry it with me.
When I thought about going back, mostly I thought about making a real home again, having the opportunity to do satisfying, decently remunerated work, and reconnecting with my friends and family. I knew the benefits of intimate relationships, of having a mate you loved, but I didn’t have any specific interest in finding one. Maybe this would change and maybe not, but it wasn’t something I thought about at all.
Some people found this hard to understand — and even now I am asked the question a lot. Sometimes what I want is simply assumed. At a gathering shortly before I left town, a woman bade me farewell by saying, “I hope you find a guy.” I have no doubt that her intentions were caring and she believed that that was what my life was missing, but I found her words strangely beside the point. I didn’t go to Austin to find a guy; that wasn’t even on my radar. I went to Austin to write and to find an old friend. Against considerable odds, I had found her. That accomplished, I was simply looking forward to hanging out with her for a while.
I made it home in two and a half days. I crossed the Delta and the Mississippi, and headed up through Kentucky and the Midwest, and then I was in Michigan. The sky was blue and sunny, and the roads were clear the whole way.
I crossed the border at Port Huron. When I pulled up and saw the Canada sign, my heart fluttered. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. The depth of my feelings took me completely by surprise.
It was around ten on Sunday morning, and the border crossing was nearly deserted. I drove up to one of the kiosks and handed over my passport. The agent looked it over.
“Where do you live? ” he asked.
“Toronto.”
“How long have you been away?”
“Five months.”
“Where have you been?”
“Austin.”
“What were you doing there?”
