Cross country

May 5, 2026, near Revelstoke. It's nice to be in the mountains, smell pine trees, walk over pine needles on dry earth, pass snow, roaring rivers, tree lines that stop at stone ridges. I think of Utah. I’m experiencing this crazy mashup of nostalgia for lives I’ve led on the West Coast and in the West, and an eastern life that’s fading in the rearview mirror as I look forward into the past.

The Vancouver apartment I'm returning to was carefully curated over the years to make it home. The family photos came down when a renter moved in but the impressions the frames left on the wall remain. The shadow of that homeliness, that visual representation of lineage and belonging, of parents and grandparents, of their youth. All that was personal was stripped from the apartment, but ghosts hold on. They stay in homes. I stay in the apartment, parts of me, parts of my history and upon return I must prepare to encounter the ghost of the self, to merge with it and hold it again as me. As I reject the home, I must also embrace history. To find joy in it would be the best. To hug the ghost, welcome it.

I understand why my aunt returned to Utah after over 60 years in NYC. It was deeper even than seeking the comfort of family. It was seeking the ghost of the past who lives in the land we come from. The Rocky Mountains, the smell of pine needles, the passing seasons, the sound of snow, the dryness of the desert.

On every part of the Vancouver seawall are memories, traces of myself, bits left behind, inhabiting space without my physical body. It is with all of this that I must integrate, observe, embrace, allow. It is with all of this that I will be overwhelmed, held, rejected, loved, hurt. Emotions are high, tumbling, uncertain, vivid, pulsing, fearful just above my heart.

Homes are so many places I have been. A townhouse in Utah, apartments in New York, in Cambridge, Milan, and Alicante. But all of these fade in the mirror, even the apartment in Toronto or mostly Toronto, as I drive toward Vancouver.