A Blending Of Identities

I head north on 395, window open. Soft music is playing in the background. Yiruma on piano, the kind that tugs at my heart strings and makes me want to cry every time. The kind that makes me think of sitting in my parents living room, listening to Travis play, with my heart aching at the thought of leaving again. It’s picture perfect here- the sky is blue, clouds are white, grass is green, the sun is shining so brightly. The mountains rise up in the distance. This view is so familiar, so like home.

Memories of driving these same roads ten years ago. Who was I then? A seventeen-year-old girl, trying to figure out her way in this world. Not knowing what the future would hold. Wanting to heal, to be whole. To explore and to live. To love and be loved. And yet these memories are now covered with a light layer of something. What is it? It almost makes the memories prettier than they were as they happened. The nostalgia of that time in my life. The freedom, the youth, the innocence. How beautiful it was!

Reality is that those were hard times too. It’s easy to forget how hard, as I look back now. My mind wants to coat them with this layer of happiness – to not focus on what wasn’t good then. And that’s okay. It’s so amazing to live in these memories for a week now, to feel that different life once again. And yet not be that same person – I can’t. My mind is constantly going eastward, to home. I think of my babies, and that familiar sensation of let down comes. How could I ever forget that I’m a mom now, that I am lucky enough to have these children to care for, that I have a husband who is waiting for me when I get home?

It’s not forgetting, but it’s a remembering. A blending. To live in these moments of the past as they come up; as a new scene, another spot triggers another memory. And taking these things from who I once was, bringing them into me again. Bringing this me back to Toronto, and breathing it into my life again. I am a mom, but I am not just a mom. I am still me, every version of me, combined together.