Fresh Start

Last year I decided I wanted to live in Sidney. A lot of change was happening at the time – I had also decided to retire and moving from Esquimalt was becoming imperative (but that’s another post). I wanted to start my new life in a new home in a new community where my old routine had never been and therefore establishing a new one would be easier. I envisioned a slower pace, taking long walks along the water, hanging out at a café with a chai and my book or journal or card tag, baking cookies, rebooting my library card … Basically letting life happen at my speed rather than struggling to keep up with it.

Sidney seemed a perfect choice. It was different without being unfamiliar, close enough to town without being in town and far enough from town to be somewhere else. The “somewhere else” is key.

Turns out I actually wanted to escape. I wanted to put distance between me and my past life, which was a good life but a demanding one. I was buckling under the stress of carrying on with limited Ru time – my self-care practices were aimed solely at surviving and, as Star Trek TNG noted, “survival is insufficient.” Retiring from the public service was one thing, but I also felt the pressure of staying in touch when I really wanted to go dark.

And Ter and I absolutely had to get out of our living situation. She was at her wits’ end coping with the troll above us and I was losing my mind trying to compensate. But that’s another post. Maybe.

Decision made, we proceeded to scout possibilities in Sidney. Weekend road trips were inconclusive. If we were looking for a definitive yea or nay from the Universe, it wasn’t coming. Vacancies were scarce and the rents as ridiculous as they are in town. We had a few pleasant visits – it’s a tourist town and folks are friendlier than in Victoria, plus the bakeries are notoriously good – but as the summer wore on, it seemed less and less plausible that we’d find a place to call home.

Then, waking up one Friday morning, in the 17 seconds of neutral space before my mind kicked in, I distinctly heard the words “Oak Bay.” Oak Bay? Yeah, right. Oak Bay is the one part of town we couldn’t afford and therefore hadn’t considered when discussing possibilities. Yes, we love the area. It was a favourite haunt when we were at Rockland and in Fairfield, but it’s Oak-frigging-Bay. Land of the whining rich, the privileged few, the upper tax bracket. It wasn’t, well, possible.

But the Universe knows better than I do, and I know enough to pay attention when I think I hear something. I also know to bounce these things off Ter before I dismiss them. So I mentioned this to her, whereupon she confessed she was okay with Sidney but would really rather stay in town. In fact, she’d become more nostalgic about the area since we – I – had decided to leave it. That was my second hint.

The following Monday I started looking and immediately saw a listing for a 2-bedroom flat in Oak Bay that we could actually afford. It was an older building, circa 1969, and we’ve always shied from cookie-cutter situations, but I told Ter about it anyway, figuring she’d dismiss it sight unseen.

She didn’t. In fact, her little voice warned against dismissing it. Long story short, after a series of minor miracles that propelled us forward, we arranged a viewing, went to see it and signed a lease the next week. We moved in on June 12, six months to the day from my last day at work in December, and while it doesn’t really look like what we envisioned, it certainly feels like it. There is no doubt it’s where we are meant to be. In fact, it recently occurred to me that it is exactly what I asked for: north and east facing, lots of light, right on the main drag, walking distance to everything … pretty much what I imagined in Sidney, only not in Sidney.

It's home.

Aqua Aura

This is how conversations go in our house: 

Ter:     Where do you want to go on our drive tomorrow?

Me:     I thought we were going to hit the farm stands on Old West Saanich.

Ter:     You still want to do that?

Me:     I know you’re out there every day, but it’ll be a novelty for me.

Ter:     Okay. Which ones do you want to see?

Me:     I dunno. Whichever. I thought we could just drive out, have lunch and take a few unexpected turns on the way back.

Ter:     Okay, we’ll do that. 

Next morning: 

Me:     I’ve been thinking about our day trip. Let’s go to Sidney, look at the shops, have lunch, and hit the stands on the way back.

Ter:     That’s what I thought last night! Go to Sidney.

Me:     Why didn’t you say so?

Ter (shrugging):      You seemed to have your mind set.

Me:     Well, now that we’re agreed, let’s do Sidney. 

To the uninitiated, this probably seems fairly predictable – one so concerned with pleasing the other that she doesn’t speak her mind freely until the other expresses the same thought. That happens a lot with Ter and me. One of us inevitably has the same thought as the other within everything from a few hours to a nanosecond. An almost daily comment is, “I was just thinking that!” But my birthday trip to Sidney last week had a purpose unbeknown to either of us at the time we decided to make the town our destination. 

There used to be a great card shop out there. I play card tag with Nicole, so any time I can hit a good card shop is a bonus, ergo I got all excited at the prospect of picking up some dandies in Sidney. Alas, the only thing constant is change. The card shop no longer exists. It’s been split into three shops, one for kids’ clothes, one for ladies’ wear, and one called “Pitt and Hobbs” that appeared from the sidewalk to house cards of some sort. So in we went. 

I did get some neat-o cards for tag, but I also spied … in truth it spied me and sparkled up a storm to get my attention … a piece of aqua-coloured quartz that shimmered like iridescent gold in the light. It sat among less glorious minerals in a curio cabinet and I immediately thought, Ter has to see this. If she liked it, I’d buy it. Well, she liked it, we bought it, and now it’s sitting on a table in the Ocean Room, radiating beams and shooting stars from every angle. It’s beautiful, gorgeous, and apparently we were meant to have it else we wouldn’t each have been prompted to go to Sidney—a town where we shared our first apartment, but where we visit maybe once every two years. 

A shiny piece of stone may seem a trivial thing. I have no idea of its greater purpose, but the way it came to us is significant to me. A lot of my life with Ter—and with others—has been lived by mutual consent. What fascinates me is how we arrive at that consent. More often than not, it’s with silent prompting on either side. We’ll each have a thought yet not speak of it until the other one blurts it out some time later. We communicate like ordinary people every day, but on a deeper level, we’re this close to telepathic with a brief satellite delay. In truth, I’m less mystified by it these days, but when Ter looked up “aqua aura” online, she discovered that our new treasure’s primary property is to open and strengthen lines of communication. 

I can feel that satellite delay getting shorter. I wonder when we’ll start getting radio signals from Mars.