Debrief

How do you know when your blog is finished? How do you know what you’re supposed to write about next when everything you’ve written doesn’t even sound like it’s come from your own head? How do you sum up a year when you can’t think about it without your eyes filling with tears?

I’ve begun this post over and over again. I can’t believe we’ve been in Canada for eleven months already, living a life that is more or less exactly the same as the one we left back in 2011. Back then, about a month before we left, I wrote this:

“I know that there’s so much good stuff coming in the next year and that all these lasts will be replaced with firsts. And I know I need to remember that most of these things are only temporary lasts. But all through this process it’s been very hard to not focus on what we’ve given up in order to make those good things come true. We both make comments all the time about what we’ll do when we come back and what we’d buy if we weren’t going. I know it will all be worth what we’ve given up but sometimes it’s hard to not let the doubts take over.”

Now, I can’t help but see the similarities in this paragraph and in one of the last I wrote about leaving Scotland. How is it possible that in just one year, we were able to create a life that was just as hard to leave as Canada was?

Part of it was the friendships we made. We left people behind in Edinburgh that genuinely cared for us. We felt loved and accepted and given the fact we were thousands of miles away from our family comfort zones, this was wonderful.

Brandon found a place in the piping community that spread further than just his band. He spoke to fellow pipers daily, spouting off stats and contest results like sports fans do. They have a language all their own and I often found it easier to make myself busy elsewhere when Brandon, Lachie and Calvin started speaking bag pipes.

I also had a pipe band family in Edinburgh and without it, I wouldn’t have had a social circle at all. Wendy, Kirsten and Rachel were such important people to me. They gave me someone to have lunches with, someone to hike and shop for camping gear with, someone to take me on drives to small towns and make crafts with. They also stuck up for me in what turned out to be some nasty situations with someone who was not so nice at band practice. They helped me to navagate through so many little parts of Scottish life, and laughed at my complete Canadian-ness.

And then there was Jesse and Katie. They provided us with so much knowledge and really, were rather instrumental in our decision to set up in Edinburgh instead of Glasgow. Without them we wouldn’t have known how to take the bus, which grocery store to shop at, which pubs to frequent, and we never would’ve found Craigmillar Castle. We also wouldn’t have had a betrothal ceremony or spent a fabulous weekend in a magical little cottage on a Perthshire estate. We are so lucky to have had them and as with all the friendships that grew out of the Scottish soil, we treasure them deeply.

Another part that made Scotland hard to leave was that we carved out employment identities for ourselves. I had a terrible time letting go of who I was when I left Coast Paper. I cried myself to sleep so many nights because I didn’t have any idea where to even begin looking for a job. And when I did finally get some calls back and eventually even interviews, I had a hard time getting excited about the fact that I could actually get a job. Thankfully when I was finally offered a position just before Christmas at Paperchase, I felt like I’d been given a lifeline. This was something I could do – I could help people find what they needed, I could talk about paper and cards, I could stock and clean shelves. And finally someone took a chance on a foreigner who just wanted so badly to go to work every day. I made friendships at Paperchase that I also value very deeply. I very quickly developed a loyalty to the company and especially to the Edinburgh store. I was very sad to leave.

But I think the biggest part of why our life in Edinburgh was so good was that we did it ourselves. We rallied time and time again against adversity and struggled through times when we had no idea where we were going or what we were doing. We found ourselves often in a place where payday was still miles away, our bus passes were expired, we had groceries to buy and exactly fifty pounds to our name. I’ve said it before but we started completely from scratch with little or no idea what we needed or where to go to find out. Brandon loved it, I kind of hated it, but I learned really fast how to rely on him and trust that he would figure it out. As much as we had gained new friendships, we really only had each other. Every decision we made was made together. We became a solid team and true partners in our journey. Now that we’re back in Calgary where everything is familiar and we have so much support around us, things are a bit different. It’s not that we no longer a team, we just don’t need to be so dependant on only each other. I miss the way it was before.

In a very strange way, we’ve found it much more difficult to fit back into Canadian life than it was to find our niche in Scottish life. I know part of that is due to how much we miss Edinbugh and how much we talk about it. It’s also due largely to the fact we don’t like how easy it is to get caught up in consumerism and the endless push for wealth and possessions here in Calgary. We lead a very simple existance in Edinburgh and for the most part, we did just fine. That’s not to say we didn’t want to have nicer things and that we didn’t miss some of our posessions, but we did quite well with the bare essentials. One frying pan, three pots, four plates and 2 bowls. The contents of our cupboards here in comparison is disgustingly opulant. We miss so much and talk constantly about what we had and wish we could’ve brought with us.

I miss being able to walk everywhere I needed to go. Or if not walk, then hop on a bus that would efficiently get me there. And I stress efficient. Because though I could take a bus here, in no way, shape or form would I describe Calgary Transit that way when compared to Lothian Buses.

I miss the sense of identity that the Scots have. We are seriously lacking in pride here in Canada. I truly believe that most Canadians will never completely understand or appreciate how good we have it, and how awesome it is to have that blue Canadain passport, until they spend an extended amount of time out of Canada. I know it’s not really our fault that we have no sense of pride. Afterall, our country is a baby compared to so many others. But the Scottish people embrace their history, bloody and turbulant as it is, and have no problem telling you they have the right to drink that pint wherever they like because William Wallace won the battle of Stirling Bridge, etc, etc. Now their proof may not actually have anything to do with the situation at hand, but their facts will be right and they’re damn proud of them.

I miss being able to spend 10 Pounds on groceries and have two dinners covered with nothing left in the fridge to go bad. You just can’t do that here. Everything is packaged much, much to big. The best example of this is milk. I pour soured milk down the drain all the time now because we don’t even finish a 1L carton before it expires. In Edinburgh we bought a pint of milk and always used it up. You can’t buy a pint in Safeway. At the ScotMid around the corner from our flat I could buy half a cucumber or half a loaf of bread. Six free range, organic eggs cost 1 Pound. And my most favourite meal, especially when Brandon wasn’t home for supper, consisted of a bag of pre-steamed noodles, a bag of stir-fry veggies, and two packets of sauce that I could buy for less than 5 Pounds.

I also miss the hospitality that we encountered time and time again. For the most part, we were greeted warmly wherever we went. Often too warmly and had a terrible time getting out of conversations that seemed non-ending. And I don’t doubt that as much as the pub and shop owners hate the tourists that swarm the streets during Festival time in August, they would share a pint with them and tell them their life story and that of their great uncle who went to Canada once in 1962 as well.

Overall, I miss the atmosphere. It didn’t happen all the time, but once in a while everything would just feel…different. I don’t know exactly how to explain it and I know that it was probably because I was foreign, but sometimes the air would feel thicker, charged somehow, and with a scent of earth or dust or sometimes the sea. And I would kind of feel like I was part of something and I would be filled up. I breathed a bit deeper, my vision was sharper, my sense of touch was oversensative and I would become overly emotional. And this felling could happen anywhere. Most obviously it happened when we were standing on the battlements of a castle ruin, sitting on my finally found highland hill, standing under our tree at Craigmillar Castle on our betrothal day, or sitting on a bench petting William the cat at Rosslyn Chapel. But also, and more remarkably, it also happened on many occasions on the Royal Mile, often on my way home along London Road Gardens, once or twice on George Street, and always when we visited Queensferry. It could be that I was taking my good friend Karen’s advice and being careful to be present in every moment so I was being ultra sensative. But I do know that it’s not a feeling I’ve often felt here. Once or twice in Jasper, but even that was different.

There’s no one thing I can say to sum up the year Brandon and I spent in Scotland, but saying that we lived there comes pretty close. It deeply offends me when people assume we were on an extended vacation in Scotland. Yes, we traveled and yes, we saw fabulous places while we were there. But what we did was far from the definition of a holiday. We experienced life in another country that turned out to be much more foreign than we expected it to be. Because of that, created a foundation for our relationship that has been put through test after test and has never cracked or even shown a scratch. I feel a little like that one year gave us about 10 years of experience. Looking back now on what we gave up in order to make the life we lived in Scotland happen, I know that it was all worth it. The tears, the stress, the doubts were all worth it and more. We will forever look back on that year as one of the hardest, but very best of our lives. We came back changed people and I hope that some of the things we loved about our lifestyle in Edinburgh came back with us and that they won’t fade away.

And now finally, eleven months later, I guess I’m finished this blog. Thank you to everyone who followed along and couldn’t hardly wait for the next post. In a way I feel like we carried you all along with us on this journey.