De-Visiting The Past

One of the nightmares I most dread -- after a second term for Rob Ford and my father's hitherto recessive baldness gene  -- is the prospect of moving back to the town of my childhood.

Now, it's not so much that said town is a yawning pit of mediocrity whose main distinction is the staggering volume of drive-through anythings. Or that the ancient downtown mall, partially housed in one of the town's few remaining heritage buildings, is now home to dollar stores, a yarn shop, and perhaps the worst Greek restaurant to ever serve tinned black olives. It's not even the fact that most downtown restaurants close by 8pm on weeknights, or that VHS rentals are still widely advertised.

Okay, yes, it's actually all of those things.

But it's also the memories associated with the town that act like emotional kryptonite on my psyche. I'm actually quite lucky that we lived in the country, in a small development nestled by a large, placid lake. The city was twenty minutes away by car, a rare treat for the occasional shopping trip or jaunt to the movies.

A good thing too, as stories of my less-fortunate LGBT townie kin are rife with tales of verbal abuse, stalking and drive-by eggings. I was relatively safe in the countryside, accepted (if occasionally grudgingly) by neighbours, and surrounded by lots of woods to escape to when things got tough at home. 

Home life was, well, not good. My folks wasted no opportunity to disparage gay people (men in particular), so the effeminacy that plagued my every move and syllable from toddlerhood onward did nothing to curry favour in their eyes. Add to that a sister who was a genius at both academics and managing our capricious parents, and you have one oddball of a gay kid left pretty much to his own devices.

Not actually me. This kid has way more style.

Now, as an adult, I still have trouble feeling affection or affinity for that struggling gay boy. I find it hard to like him, to like myself as a child and teenager. I suppose it's my fear of sliding back into that life, and that persona, that makes the idea of returning 'home' anathema to me. I didn't like who I was then, or my role as the weak and fearful misfit within my own life. But return I did, last week, with my 3-year-old son. 

It was an interesting experience, seeing the town through the eyes of a financially secure, relatively confident adult. Driving down the main street felt much the same as it did when I was 11 years old, suffocating quietly in the back of our family car as my parents puffed cigarette after cigarette. Back then, any request to open the window was viewed as criticism of their smoking habit, so I admit reveling in all four windows being down as Pre-Schooler N and I tooled around town singing at the top of our lungs. 

Lucky kids. We had to breathe through our shirts or suffer.

We visited a childhood friend, now raising her own family in a subdivision just outside of town. Her life seems idyllic enough: carefully potted plants, loving children, handsome husband and well-appointed home. She was always the star of our childhood, with cute boyfriends and model good-looks that still make her seem ten years younger than her drivers license claims. I lived vicariously through her triumphant high school life, never feeling her equal but grateful for her friendship at the time. 

That's changed, of course. Chatting with her for a few hours, I realized that I no longer felt the need to impress or flatter her. We spoke as equals, and I left feeling as though I had lain to rest the insecure child who had always viewed her with such awe and envy. I no longer want her life. I much prefer my own.

That evening, Pre-Schooler N and I had dinner with a woman who had stood in as a defacto mother for me after separating from my own family. She's nearly 80 now, but seeing her joyfully discover my son's sweetness and sense of fun was magical for me. It was as though my son was meeting one of the truest members of my family, someone who was excited to meet him and celebrated his presence. Again, I felt the needy, grasping teenager that she first reached out to recede a little more into my past.

Our final stop was my childhood home, now up for sale. This was the biggie, as part of me yearned to make an appointment to tour the place under the guise of a perspective buyer. What would it be like to tread the stairs, open my bedroom door, and remember the scared, unhappy boy who once live there?

The temptation was so strong. I could have done it. I could have re-visited who I had been and where I had begun to become who I am today. But I didn't. I drove past, I pointed it out to my sleepy son, smiled as he yawned, and left it behind as we drove home.

And for the first time, I felt real affection for the boy who survived his family and his environment. So now those pieces of him that I still carry in my body and in my mind sit perhaps a little more comfortably. Maybe I don't need to say goodbye to him, so much as blow a kiss and show him how grand it all turned out.