There are moments when I visit Ottawa that I can barely choke down all of the memories, all of the dreams we had there, and so many -- too many -- changes. I never once dreamt in all those years that one day there would be children I would not know, or that some of the people I loved more than life -- people I once would have died for -- would vanish. I did not know that I would drive along the canal and irrefutably understand that I could never come back; that our small world would change in a hundred thousand ways; that there would be no more laughter at that kitchen table on Gilmour Street.
But there are other things I did not know, either. That I would hear the words of a little girl call out to me over the phone, "Grammie's coming on the train? Soon?" or that a child would run gleefully across the pavement in her rubber boots towards me when I arrived, the wind picking up the soft ends of her hair and blowing them across her baby cheeks. I did not know that I would sit in a bingo hall with Mary and my daughter, and with two of my daughter's friends -- young women I met so many years ago -- and talk and carry on and feel as if time had changed nothing.
I think I know why it is we walk around -- how we are able to walk around -- harbouring small injustices. It's because the big ones are just too much to carry. There are only so many tears a person can choke back before she drowns, and only so many more late afternoons where she can sit back and flourish in the sun.
