"This is really it?" I say looking around the empty apartment. Filled with the boxes that were to be picked up by the moving company on Tuesday, except we wouldn't be here. Dad and Shirley would get everything sent off for us, giving us time to be ahead of the game. A short stop in Toronto to visit Ken's parents, and then onto Winnipeg.
Seventeen hours to Toronto, and twenty-one to Winnipeg, if we survived this road trip it would be a miracle.
"Are you ready to say goodbye?" I crouch down to Owen who seems to understand that we would be no longer living here. We got her excited about the move, and tried to explain the distance and that Grammy and Pawpaw wouldn't be around as they have been.
"Bye-bye home," She says looking around the empty room.
Ken takes a final look around and we both look back as we lock up the door.
He takes a hold of my hand squeezing it. As he takes Owens in the other, and I have Jack on the leash.
Suitcases in the back of the car, Jack's bed, and food and water bowls, beside Owen's car seat.
The trip to Halifax is easy enough for us.
We hadn't planned on leaving from Halifax, but this year's Thanksgiving was moved to Halifax. Mom and Dad didn't want Nan and Chris to travel with Theo so young and not used to long distances. So it just made sense instead of paying the bridge toll to leave the island twice.
We sing songs in the car and point things out to Owen as we drive by.
Would she remember this place? Would she remember anything from her time here if I did well enough at the ballet?
"Mommy, what that?"
"Mommy I tooted!"
"Mommy I'm hungry"
I had a feeling that it was going to be a long two days of driving when we leave Halifax.
"You know I don't think I've ever been here," I say as walk into Jem and Faith's house. "I didn't even know you bought a house," I tell my brother honestly.
"Well you were rather self-absorbed for a while," Jem tells me as he rubs Poppy's back who was whimpering. "Plus it's technically Faith's house, she's the one who put the down payment on it."
"A kept man are you?" I tease him. "Bathroom?" I say motioning to my squirming toddler?"
"Second door to the right, and hardly. I still pay the mortgage, but between student loans and whatnot—Faith used her inheritance from her mother's death to buy the house a few years back," Jem tells me as he switches Poppy to his hip.
I nod my head and slip off my shoes and quickly bring Owen to the bathroom and wait outside the door as Poppy is disgruntled about something or another.
"Pass her here," I motion for my niece and he does what I ask. I take Poppy from him and settle her in my arms, rubbing gently. "Well, Miss you really hit the jackpot by taking after your Daddy didn't you?" She stops fussing to access me in an infant way.
"Hey!" Jem objects. "I make a very lovely female thank you very much."
"Well, you are a kept man, so you might as well be the homemaker if Faith is the one buying the house," I say wryly. "Did you wash your hands?" I ask Owen as she comes to the partially open door of the bathroom.
"I no reach?" She looks at me, and Jem jumps in as I have Poppy and picks her up so she can reach the sink.
He really is and will be a great father.
"So you're on call this weekend?"I ask him.
"Indeed I am, that is the life of an obstetrics doctor," Jem retorts as Owen finishes and he lets her go as Ken comes in with the suitcases and Jack. "Welcome, through the kitchen, down the stairs. Try not to have too much sex down there please."
I roll my eyes. "Clearly you have yet to reach the toddler stage," I say shaking my head. "She'll be sleeping with us, which means your furniture is safe," I pat his shoulder as I got to help Ken.
"Well, don't fall and break your neck in the shower," Jem calls out to us.
"We put you in the basement as it has more space, plus your mom and Dad will have the spare room." Faith tells coming from the kitchen and giving us both a kiss on the cheek and hugging Owen. "And ignore him."
"It's all good," I tell her. "Thank you for having us."
"It's nothing," Faith waves us off. "Given your setting off on new adventures on Monday, it will be nice for everyone to be able to say goodbye to both of you."
"It worked out for the best," I say to her, nodding my head. "If you need any help let me know?"
"I'll definitely be bothering you for that quinoa salad that you make?" Faith says.
"I'll leave you the recipe," I tell her. "Don't run on the stairs!" I call out as I see Owen in the corner of my eye and Faith laughs.
"Be prepared," I warn her jokingly. "You're coming up to it soon enough."
"Owen, come on, which one?" I sigh trying to get her to get dressed.
"I can do it!" She says haughtily as she grabs the one dress from my hand.
"Okay, Okay, but what tights do you want to wear?" I ask her. "You can were your ones with kittens on the knees or your lace ones?" I give her two options.
"I can do it," she tells me clearly annoyed that I was trying to help her. "This one leg, that one leg."
"Honey, you can't wear them both," I try to tell her gently.
"I do it!" She shrieks at me and I take a deep breath.
"Sweetie, you can't wear two pairs of tights, it won't work like that. Let mommy help you okay?" I ask her gently. So maybe she wouldn't be standing in the middle of my brother's kitchen half-naked in just her underwear?
"No, I do it both!" She stomps her little foot, and I hear my father laugh in the other room. They just got in not long ago. "Pawpaw not talking to you!" She tells him off next and the next thing I see is my father's face in the doorway raising an eyebrow.
"Hey little lady, we don't talk like that to people," I tell her quietly.
"Need a hand?" Jem asks coming down the stairs, freshly showered out of his scrubs. "I already birthed two baby this thanksgiving, I can probably dress a toddler?'
"We are good thank you," I tell him as I try to get Owen dressed.
"Really? It looks like the half-naked toddler is winning."
"Oh just wait, and we'll see how well you do," I tell him. "You're time is coming."
"Yes but Poppy is a little angel, like her mother. You weren't exactly the nicest toddler either," Jem tells me. "I watched you a fair amount for Mom and Dad when Joy was in college and you could be just as bad."
"I'm sure I wasn't that bad," I tell him.
"You were a holy terror with your independence," Dad tells me taking a sip of his coffee that is strongly smelling of Irish cream. He's laying into the holiday spirit and being off the island. "Still can be." He adds on with a chuckle and twinkle in his eye.
"Remember the time she refused to let anyone dress her and she kept wearing everything inside out," Mom says with her second glass of wine. "Screamed bloody murder every time we tried to fix it.
"Sure let's all gang up on Rilla then," I say under my breath as I manage to get my stubborn daughter into her clothing.
I've rarely ever seen both of my parents drunk, mom, more so than dad over the years. Seeing them so relaxed as they were right now was strange.
"Oh we are just teasing," Mom says shaking her head. "What else are we supposed to do? Send you off to another province thinking we won't miss you?"
"I don't know, sounds like you're doing the opposite and driving me away faster," I say sarcastically. "Okay, please try and stay clean?" I tell Owen and I pat her bottom before she runs off as the doorbell rings.
Shirley and Wynnie were already here with Di, as they were bunking at Di's apartment. Though they drove in with mom and dad, leaving Tank at doggie daycare for the night. Joy and Matt drove up that morning with the children, the elder set of twins at their mother's house this year and already here as well.
It was Nan and Chris who came with the largest diaper bag I have ever seen, it reminds me of the early days. Unsure of what you may need, want, or be desperate for.
Faith, Mom, and Di have already met Theo multiple times, but it was my first time.
"Oh my goodness," I say as Nan hands me her son. She has blossomed into a mother over the weeks. He was chunky and had a good weight to him at this point. Far from the little thing that I had seen the day he had been born.
"Hello Theo," I coo at him. "Are you happy to be home with your mommy?" He looks up at me with dark eyes. Probably wondering who in the hell I was!
"That is your Aunty Rilla," Nan says. "She'll have to make sure to come to visit you, or maybe when you drive us up the wall one day we'll ship you out west so she can deal with you," Nan jokes.
"So are you ready for the real fun?" I ask her as I cuddle the cuddly boy.
"He sleeps decently well already," Nan tells me. "It's odd having him home, I keep waking up to check he's breathing and when he cries I'm still sort of in a daze of why is a baby crying?" Nan tells me."Deborah—Chris's mother comes over to help. Often bringing food for us, and of course, the church got us a tonne of donations and baby things. It does come along with mentions of marriage of course, but Chris usually tells her that we will decide that for ourselves."
"We have enough freezer meal to last us months though," Chris chips in. "Those old ladies know how to cook."
"Even if it contains a pound of butter or lard?" Nan says shaking her head.
"Mommy, who is the baby?" Owen asks as she comes in with Ken and Chris. Her vocabulary has been exploding lately that is for sure.
"This is your cousin Theo," I tell her. "He's ten weeks old."
"He small?" She looks at him curiously.
"Go ask Daddy to help you wash your hands," I tell her and she nods her head and Ken takes her to the washroom of the room and makes sure their clean.
"Kisses?" Owen asks next when she comes back.
"Not right now, Theo is a little too young for kisses from other people who are not his mommy," I tell her and I see Nan breathe a small sigh of relief. She didn't mind kisses from Mom, or us girls, but Owen was another thing altogether. "He'll hold your hand though," I tell her as she climbs up on the couch beside me and holds out her little hand.
The clutch is almost instant, his little fingers wrapping around her one of her fingers. I sigh as she looks at him with curiosity babbling. Am I really taking her away from all of these chances?
"You're going to do amazing things," Nan tells me, she must have read my mind by the look on my face.
"Does Theo have a boy peepee?" Owen asks with all the three-year-old seriousness that one can have.
Nan lets out a laugh and the men stop talking, I shake my head silently groaning. I don't want her to feel chastised for such a simple innocent curious question, but even Mom and Dad were laughing out loud and I'm pretty sure Jem and Shirley snort loudly.
"Don't be rude!" Owen chastises them.
"Hey, hey, that isn't nice of you either," I tell her trying to correct her.
"My god, she just jumped on the sassy vocabulary ship hasn't she?" Nan stifles her laugh. I nod, my shaking head to my sister.
"Answer please?" Owen says out loud.
"Yes, dear Theo is a boy," I say quietly to Owen who was looking at me still.
"We've been working on body parts," I tell Nan. "It's been an experience, to say the least"
"Next thing she'll be going around kissing boys at nursery school," Nan says with a laugh.
"God no," I hear Ken say from his chair.
"Could be girls," I tease him. "Could be boys now, and realize it's girls later down the road. Look at Walter, he was a little ladies' man until he realized he never wanted to kiss them ever."
"What about me?" Walter asks coming from the kitchen with a beer.
"She was saying that before realizing you were gay, you went around kissing girls," Shirley told him.
"Oh yes, I didn't realize what people meant about fireworks until I kissed a boy and suddenly felt so many unfamiliar things," Walter says nodding his head. "I still feel bad about Alice Parker."
"What happened with Alice Parker?" I ask confused never heard this story before.
"She had a huge crush and kept trying to hold his hand and get him to take her to a dance. That all stopped when she found him kissing another boy under the school bleachers," Jem says for Walter. "Granted they weren't really dating," he adds for Rye.
"Thanks," Walter groans, taking a drink of his beer. When did Walter drink? I think about it, but no one else seemed to be worried or even noticing so maybe he always had?
Dinner is one of chaos from crying babies, sassy toddlers and drunk parents. The food was good as it always was, and the table was picked down to bare serving platters. Wine had been replenished multiple times and the pumpkin pie had been cut and served.
"Oh, I do remember once when I think Rilla was about five or six. No maybe four, she wasn't in school yet, she got into the under-the-sink cabinet and had stuck pads on the bottom of her feet," Mom says when Jem was telling a story about a horrified husband who didn't realize that his wife postpartum pads would be the size of the baby itself.
"Is this weekend going to be torture Rilla before she leaves?" I ask the table.
"Well if you weren't moving halfway across the country it wouldn't be," Jem grins and I roll my eyes.
"How did Lucan get out of this Di?" I ask her.
"He has his own family?" Di says simply.
"So not fair," I groan.
"Oh live little," Shirley says passing me the bottle of wine. "Mom can't be the only one crying and drunk tonight, though Joy is pretty close as well"
"Didn't you get stuck in the bathroom once?" Joy asks Shirley. "See I'm far from being intoxicated, but if you wish to keep going I'll tell the crusty sock story?" Joy threatens him.
"The door handle broke it wasn't my fault!" He rebutted, "Plus wasn't it Nan who drank mom's perfume once and was forced to throw up?
"I only drank it because Jem dared me to," Nan says across the table. 'God I still have dreams about that. Though nothing was worse than those nightmares Rilla used to have about those cupcakes that she threw in the creek once?"
"I didn't have nightmares!" I huff.
"You screamed bloody murder from the guilt over that cake because you were embarrassed to let, well, Ken…see you bring cake into the church," Di chirps. "And now look at you, you're together and have spawned a child and you actually bake him cakes these days."
"Then you cried for days when the chocolate duck he gave you, disappeared and all that was left was its little ribbon," Shirley says next, wrapping his arm around Wynnie who was just watching this all do down.
"Also what happened to that duck!" I accuse my siblings, who all look sheepish. "Or did it mysteriously go into the land of the blue velvet elephants that also disappeared?"
"You never had a blue elephant," Walter tells me.
"I did! He was velvet and blue I did not make him up!" I retort, exasperated that none of my siblings ever believed me. "I would sleep with him every night."
"He wasn't real, though the length of time you sucked thumb for, was real enough" Jem teases me next. "I'm surprised you never needed braces."
"I did not suck my thumb!" I whine at all the injustice.
"Oh you did, you were still sucking it well into kindergarten," Dad says. "Finally we got you to just do it at night, and it eventually tapered off, but my lord, I never met such a stubborn child attached to her thumb the way you were."
"I think the best moment was when Rilla thought Gilbert was a murderer after seeing the news and an old photo of Gilbert with a moustache and beard, it took everything in me to not laugh at the insanity of her wandering thoughts until I got her up to bed. God, I laughed for ages, and so did your father when I told him about how long it took to get you to calm down." Mom cackles, tears escaping from the corner of her eyes as she laughed
"Okay okay, I get it," I say huffing once more, I look over a Ken who was trying not to laugh too much through all of this. . "I was an impressionable child, forgive me. Also, it is not fair that Joy has dirt on everyone, but we have nothing on her really"
"That is the beauty of being the eldest child," Joy grins, and no had proof of my high school shenanigans."
I didn't think it would be this hard to say goodbye but is. Much harder than I ever thought it be.
Dad looks like he's about to cry, my siblings are all sullen. No one has ever moved so far away before. Mom is, quiet, and probably more hungover than she is willing to admit. If anyone was crying last night, it was not the baby.
Everyone is here minus Joy who went back home last night after some tears and hugs. Now it is the rest of us taking turns hugging each other.
"Here," Jem says holding out a gift bag. "Just don't open it until you get on the highway all right?" He says gruffly.
"Fine," I say nodding my head. I hug my brother and Faith tightly before moving down the line.
Walter and Rye are next, "Be good to yourself," he says with tears in his eyes.
"For the trip," Rye says handing over what looks like a gift card and I hug him in thanks.
"Call me anytime," I tell Nan, "If you need anything or just someone to talk to," I tell her quietly. Hug her and kiss the top of Theo's head. Chris awkwardly hugs me next, before shaking Ken's hand.
Di hugs me swiftly. "Glad to know that someone is leaving this part of the world to follow their dreams. I am proud of you." She tells me.
"You're welcome to visit anytime," I tell remind her.
Shirley and Wynnie hug me next, and Wynnie gives me a medicine bottle. "Sleeping pills, and anti-nausea just in case the car ride gets a little rough for Jack,"
"Thank you," say, pocketing it.
"Some mixed cd's because you know me, I still burn CDs," Shirley says with a grin. "Though dad asks you to listen to this one, first if you will?" He says holding up one that had 1 written on it. I nod my hood and put them in my purse.
Next, I watch all my siblings hug and kiss Owen goodbye, all telling her that they would miss her and they would always be there for her to talk to. They say goodbye to Ken as well, while my brothers make thinly veiled threats about taking care of me and Owen.
"The oil is good?" Dad asks unsure of how to do this, and how to go about saying goodbye.
"It is," Ken says to my dad. "I got it changed the other day."
Dad nods his head and looks at me. "If you need anything, on road or when you get there. Also, don't forget to get your prescription transferred over and don't forget about Dr. Chang and the referrals," he tells me. "That aside, be safe, be happy and take care of yourself. Don't let anyone tell you that you aren't enough."
"I'll be fine dad, and I'm about the same size as most of the girls in the company," I try to make him feel better about the decision that I-that Ken and I made together.
"I know, but it feels like I'm watching my baby away to never come back. Winnipeg, it's so far away." Dad says.
He hugs me tightly, "Stay safe, be safe and let us know when you reach the hotel," he whispers kissing my air.
"Take care of them, Ken," he adds gruffly as his eyes go misty, looking back to my mother who was standing thing quietly with Owen in her arms. Trying not to cry as she kissed her granddaughter goodbye.
"I always will," Ken says.
I look to mom, unsure of who was going to speak first.
"I have college to fall back on," I try to tell her. "I need to do this, I want her to be proud of me, just like Joy is proud of you every time you publish something because she knows what it means to you" I try to explain.
"Mom?"
"You were always my baby who was always the most independent," she said softly. "You always did things your way and that never changed." She cries tears streaking down her face.
"I'm not moving across the ocean," I remind her. "Plus, you'll have to come out at some point and watch a real ballet, and you won't have to be worried about Dad's phone going off either." I try to make a joke.
I take Owen who Dad stoops down low to hug. I wonder when it will hit her that this is goodbye, that the next time she might see them is an indeterminable amount of time.
I hug mom, her sobs soaking into my sweater as she hugs me tightly and Dad joins in which only makes fighting back tears even harder.
I wave to all of them after we get Owen buckled into her car seat there wasn't a single face that hadn't been stained with tears in my family.
"Are you ready?" Ken asks me, hands posed to turn the ignition of the car.
I can only nod my head.
We make it out of the city, coffee acquired when I remember the CDs.
I pop in the first cd as Shirley told me to. If I had known, I probably would have waited a little longer.
.
She's gotta do what she's gotta do
And I've gotta like it or not
She's got dreams too big for this town
And she needs to give 'em a shot
Whatever they are?
Dad always enjoyed music, and of course, he would find some sort of song that would make me bawl like a baby. Because a duet between a father and daughter on this day to remind me that he loved me would make anyone cry
I choke back a sob which makes Ken look over at me. I used to sing this song around the house as a child, back in the days of Hannah Montana. Now the song filters through the stereo of Ken's car.
Tears flow down my face. '
I'm at the startin' line of the rest of my life
As ready as I've ever been
Got the hunger and the stars in my eyes
The prize is mine to win'
It was Dad saying he understand, as much as it hurt him, them. They understood in their own way. It may not what they wanted for me, but it was what I choose for myself.
She′s waitin' on my blessings before she hits that
Open road
Baby get ready
Get set
Don′t go
This is where you don't say what you want so bad to say
This is where I want to but I won't get in the way
Of her and her dreams
And spreadin' her wings
I'm ready to fly
I sing out loud, why did this hurt much more than I expected? Ken takes my hand with his right hand and squeezes it. He's the one who tells Owen that Mommy is all right and that I'm just having a moment.
"Open Uncle Jemmy's gift," Owen tells me, and I don't know what else to do so I reach for it.
I pull away the paper, and inside on top is a photo from yesterday that someone already got printed out. The last time we would be all together all of us as a family for who knows how long.
Underneath though is something I never thought I would ever see again.
A blue velvet, a well-worn blue velvet elephant, with a note pinned onto it.
'He was mine first, then he was yours—but I found him in a box last night that mom brought for Poppy that held old baby things. I don't think she knew it was in there, but you can have him in back since you still remember him.'
I find myself crying even harder as I hug the old familiar elephant.
I'll be alright.
I'll be okay
Know that I'll be
Thinkin' of you
Each and every day
Song--Ready Set Don't Go by Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus.