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Every time I come back to BC, I wonder if, when I arrive, I’ll realize how much I miss the west coast, and want to stay.  I do miss the proximity and accessibility of art in Vancouver; the way that art is so alive here, and so integrated into daily life—if only thanks to the size of the population, and the colossal wealth that shifts a culture’s values away from, well, survival. Lee and I took the kids to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, and, well, I don’t know what to think. Racism and privilege are in some ways, more openly discussed now than in past years, but there is also a lot of rhetoric and repetition around “unpacking”, that might obscure some of the even more difficult issues.  I don’t know how to respond to the breathtaking beauty and majesty of the story poles in the glassed-in gallery of the MOA.  I don’t know how to respond to the beauty and majesty inside of each of the human beings (many of whom are first nations people) I saw lying on the pavement tripping, or huddled together in sleeping bags, as I drove through East Hastings in my rented SUV. The legacy of my people is colonization, destruction, acquisition, and romanticization. There is something obscene about my children  rubbing up against the artifacts of the living culture that our ancestors did their best to undo.  But there we were, with reverence, whatever that’s worth.

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We spent a day on Granville Island admiring pottery and fibre art and craft, while chasing kids around which was less fun than it sounds.  Then we took the ferry from Horseshoe bay over to Gibsons and then Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast, and we drove by the house where my first baby was born.  I wondered before we arrived, if it would be hard to see the place, but when we pulled into the driveway of the little log cabin surrounded by cedars, it was just nice to witness it—weathered, and scruffy—and only a little nostalgic.  The workshop is a glassblowing studio now, which made me glad, because when I lived there I was just starting to lose the hope that I could make something (with my hands, of my mind, as an artist, from the land) and desperately lonely, and becoming increasingly depressed.  I knew then that I wouldn’t survive the marriage or the coast without terrible sacrifice.  It was great to be on the Coast, and to visit with some beloved friends, and we even made it to the beach on what turned out to be a glorious day.

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We will be flying home in just a couple of days, and I don’t know what to think of our visit, overall. The usual family dramas, I guess, and the resurgence of the sad little lonely angry girl I will always be, never getting enough cake, twisted with the guilt of how obscenely lucky I am.