Why Am I in the Guest Room?
of a house I once called home?
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to come back to anything that resembles home on Vancouver Island. At some point, the house where the family lived will be gone (sold? demolished to make way for… something else?), my daughter and her husband will be living on their canal boat in Europe, and the last few things I have in storage here will be - in storage somewhere else? Sold? Given away?
For today, though, I’m here in the room currently used as a guest room sleeping under a painting of the mountain I see every day when I’m back in my house in Canmore in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. Dad did at least two versions of this painting - different seasons, different light, same spot.
He didn’t sign either one, which makes me think he was trying to capture something of that place but hadn’t quite found what he was looking for.
I can relate. Each time I come back here, I find myself looking for something - but not quite finding it. I lived in this house for 20 years - the longest stretch with the same address in a lifetime of roaming. Weirdly, when I left Vancouver Island, it was to return to the Bow Valley where I had spent the best years of my childhood. When I first started going back to the mountains, I kept searching for the ghost of me as a happy kid - riding my horse along the trails in Banff, wandering up and down Banff Avenue noting what remains the same, what has changed, or hiking to a favourite picnic spot behind Tunnel Mountain (through which there is no tunnel… a name change is in progress with Sacred Buffalo Guardian Mountain and Sleeping Buffalo both under consideration as new/ancient official names).
For the past eight years I’ve been crossing back and forth between the mountains and the sea, feeling vaguely unsettled, one foot in the recent family past, the other marching forward into a future linked through memories to the past of my childhood. It’s all felt circular and confusing, a perpetual push and pull toward and away from all the best things (and saddest times) of my life.
Here at the house, I keep expecting to hear my roosters crowing… when I ran a small farm on this land, they were part of my soundscape along with goat bleats, turkey gobbles, and horse nickers.
Dad loved to draw and paint the roosters and, when he returned to printmaking in his later years, did several lino-cut prints of the bantams. Seeing the paintings here at the house reminds me equally of Dad and the farm - and those memories are both warm and sad.
The soundscape has changed. I no longer hear Dad muttering to himself as he’s making a cup of coffee (instant, two spoons of sugar, lots of milk) out in the kitchen and outside the open window it’s quiet. No roosters. No goats. No agitated turkeys warning of a possible intruder.
I suppose there’s no way to feel a sense of deep loss if one has never had much to treasure. Embedded in each rich, pleasant memory is a corresponding melancholy or sense of empty space, something missing. The original moment/time/place is gone forever and yet - it is only because I passed through it back then that I am able to stand here now and appreciate that invisible overlay/underlay which uniquely colours my present experience.
After arriving here on the Island for this trip, I learned that a dear friend from many years ago has passed away. An unexpected aggressive cancer swept in and made future memory-making impossible.
I’m keenly aware that I’ve now entered that phase of my life when I’ve lived longer than I’m likely to last. As I look ahead to that unknown length of time remaining to me, I suppose I’m also searching for the person I now have the opportunity to become.
Dad loved sunflowers - painted them often - we both have dozens of photos of their bright faces in our collections. We grew them wherever we had gardens with room enough to plant seeds. The largest we ever planted surged skyward in the most unlikely of places - a variety called Russian Giants Dad and I planted in Fort McMurray and which we watched with astonishment as they grew so tall their massive feathery petals brushed the eaves of the house.
Back and forth in time I go… my gaze coming to rest on another piece of art in this guest room.
This is a piece (large, too large - Dad, where am I supposed to put this??) Dad painted as a birthday present for me. It’s a giant version of his (great?)-grandfather’s business card. Edward Stephen (Steven?) Williams was a saddler and harness maker and somehow that calling card (soft, fragile, fits easily in the palm of my hand) has survived for almost 150 years. Dad was delighted by that card and the way it connected him directly to his past. I’m delighted by Dad’s reimagining of the card as a large piece of art and how that connects me directly to my own fragile history.
What’s a meta for? Why are you a guest in your own home? Because we’re all just temporary inhabitants here, occupying space that we’ll have to surrender to someone else one day soon. All the more reason to be good guests, and preserve the space for the next caretaker!
I have had the same experience of sleeping in the guest room of the house that was once m6 home. A lovely piece, and beautiful paintings.