Two weeks ago, I came home from, what felt like, a "speedy" eight months of college. Classes that lasted for three hours, late nights with drinks in my hand, fun times with my college friends, and inside jokes with my roommate came to a screeching halt as soon as I saw the “Welcome To Bruce County” sign. Well actually it happened as soon as I turned onto West 5th street in Hamilton, but it really HIT me when I saw a sign that basically said “honey, you’re home”. It was a two and a half hour drive from Hamilton to Walkerton, and about every few seconds of that drive, I was wiping mascara stained tears from my eyes. (Waterproof my ass!). This college girl wasn’t ready to go back to return to her roots. I cried…oh how I cried! I haven’t cried like that in a long time. It felt good. Therapeutic. Made me look like crap, but it was a good feeling nonetheless. I scared the hell out of the gas station guy, who looked across from me from his side of the counter, gently took the signed receipt from my hand, and then said shyly "have a nice day". My cell-phone came in handy as my mother checked in every so often, to make sure that one of my emotional outbursts of sadness didn’t cause her daughter to take the wrong exit on the 401, accidentally drive to London, or worse (well at least in a mother’s eyes!) turn around and drive back to Hamilton to the life that was partly the cause of the cough/cold that wreaked havoc on her daughters health…and the bars that were partly to blame for her daughters lack of sleep, and her daughters lack of healing! (Yes, I went to the hospital. The doctor told me I shouldn’t have been going to bars sick like I was, drinking, and smoking cigars. I have a feeling that she’s a mother too!) The tears that I was crying were for the life that I was mourning leaving. Visions of stepping onto the “35” to go downtown to see movies with my friends, sliding through the eager shoppers at Limeridge Mall as I headed to the pet store to see the puppies, and sitting in i210 listening to a professor talk about how important it is to get your facts straight, ran through my head. I remembered little things like the way that the people waited outside my window at residence to catch the bus (one day, my friend Lisa and I peered out the window and watched a man played air guitar and danced as he waited), what it was like to wake-up staring at a grey wall with teal coloured speckles (not the colours I would have chosen, but hey, it’s residence!), how the door of my dorm room squeaked closed, and how my roommates television would mumble through the night (a sound I found quite comforting after a while). I remembered what it was like to pass room 223 and hear country music blaring, how the R.A. and I could “shoot the shit” until he eventually grossed me out. I remembered dancing down the 2nd floor with my roommate, as we performed some sort of a “hallway workout routine” singing “John Deere Green”. I remembered the time I got drunk and told the cab driver his taxi smelled like laundry (I love the smell of Laundry. Any man of mine doesn’t need cologne to have me all over him, just a good smelling detergent!), how I learned the hard way about too much peach vodka, and what it’s like to be in constant fear that perhaps that teacher you so pathetically begged, won’t give you that “pitty pass” they hinted at. Good times. I stopped in Elora for napkins to dry my tears. I stood in the parkigng lot of that place and I looked around. Elora is kind of the breaking point between the country and the city. It's the place that I've always considered to be the beginning to "the country". I looked like a confused, lost, passerby as I Already I longed for the social life I left behind me, and all the friends that I hugged goodbye. I already missed my friend Lisa who listened to my problems and offered sound advice, emotional support, and true friendship from the bottom of her heart. I missed my friend Theo and his roommates who threw good parties, offered kind words, knew how to make me smile, and provided me with great memories, and friendships that will last well into next year, and beyond. I missed my roommate who some called “The Bean”, and I called “My Little Bambeno”. She understood the value in the song “Build Me Up Buttercup”. She and I understood so well how awesome that song truly is…to the point where we text messaged each other the lyrics coming back drunk from The Ranch, a country bar. I missed Dan, Meg, Andy, Wymon, Nova, Shane, Mike, and other people from my journalism program, who I can’t wait to see this summer, and who I can’t wait to go to school with again in the Fall. I missed my future roommates, who will make next year a blast. I stepped back into my Explorer from Tim Hortons, catching the eye of a concerned, what looked to be, grandmother looking up at me from the passenger seat of her car, and started the engine. The tears rolled again, and I wiped them away as soon as they fell. Some made it onto the seat belt, and my halter top. Those were the tears that were just too much to keep held in. A pink tote bag (one that my dear friend Caylz gave me, after she was tired of it, and decided that it was ugly, I called it “unique”) was full of little sentimental “things” that would remind me of something so much bigger. The Smirnoff Ice bottle cap, the ticket stubs, the bus transfers, the pictures, and two large pieces of paper with “Me love you long Tim” and “Build me up buttercup”, the “Happy 20th Birthday Laura” paper that my roommate taped to my door and I left taped there until move-out day, the white t-shirt that drunk people scribbled on at Graffiti Pub, the “I hope you had a great night…SLUTT!” note that my roommate left on my keyboard for me to find when I returned from a date with the boy down the hall, the Mohawk College Teddy bear I named BJ (Broadcast Journalist), the “Martha Would Die Here” nick-knack sign that I set-up in my room, a napkin from “The Egg and I”, and two pompoms that my mother, to this day, refuses to hear how I got in my possession, were just a few of the sentimental things that I plan on scrap booking….well except for the teddy bear, I’ve grown attached to BJ! Following my day of constant waterworks, it was three nights of falling tears, as well as coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, so I can’t get on with my day flu, that followed my return that Saturday. When I felt up to it, I ventured forth with my hometown friends to a bar, where we caught up, like old friends do. “You’ve changed” was what I heard from two of my hometown, best, friends, as they listened to my bar, boy, school, and roommate stories over Martinis one night. These stories put a “what the hell was she thinking? Doesn’t she know that that is how you get cancer, fall on your ass, waste your money, and get your heart broken” looks on their faces…well, especially Caylz. They care, what can I say, they’re true friends! What they said, stuck in my head. Those two little words were tossed around until finally, I lay them to rest enough for me to shower, Facebook, and then hit the hay. But the next day, when I got up, they were thrown right back into my thoughts. Thank you Claire! Thank you Caylz! But what can I say, these young women know me well. The girl that left Walkerton, slightly shy, cautious, ready to learn but scared to do it on her own, returned a fearless young woman, with a backbone bigger than an ass on an elephant, a confidence that says “I know who I am”, a brain that can think, act, and do, without the influence of others, and a personality that was quickly moulded into the spitting image of a young, confident, girl with dreams of her own, causes to pursue, and a heart that is still just a poundin’ for those important in her life (friends and family). You know that song by Destiny’s Child that goes “all you women, who independent, throw you hands up at me”? Well throw your damn hands up in the air!!!! So, the drive story, concludes with this. The toaster oven in the back of my Explorer is making a really annoying rattling sound, which I disguise with really loud country music. I’m doing that sob cry where your entire body shudders with your sobs, and your mouth makes an upside down half-moon shape. The skin on my face has never been so dry (from the tears), and yet my forehead has never been so oily (from adolescence). I’m coughing every five seconds, my voice sounds like it’s going to stop at any minute, and to top it all off, the brakes aren’t doing so good, and the light that says so just came on…and it’s flashing! All I needed was to get pulled over. Sure enough!!! Just kidding. I drive through another little town, like mine but smaller, and come to a set of lights. To my left is a Ford Dealership, where I once thought my parents might surprise me someday by giving me a car they just freshly purchased from there (parents: don’t let the fact that I know stop you from committing such a wonderful deed! Stop laughing. It’s not THAT funny!). I turn left, and to my right is a gas station/place where my friends and I would go out for breakfast sometimes back in the high school days. I drive past the Toyota Dealership (yes, I know, Walkerton is just boomin’ with dealerships!), and drive a little ways more to see the rolling fields and houses spaced out between fields. I pass one country block, and then another. This time, I slow down, and take a right. There it is, my humble abode. There they are, the fields that I used to run ramped with four wheelers when I was a kid. There it is, the garden that my mother takes pleasure in. There it is, my Dad’s truck, parked in the exact same spot it always is. There is it, the place where I’ll be living for four months. There he is, my father, playing on his Waldon Loder. My cell phone rings. There she is, my mother. “Where are you?” she asks, sounding concerned. “In the drive-way,” I answer, half amused.
