It’s cold and pouring with rain; what a perfect day to flee Toronto. I’m eating the last leftovers in the fridge, have washed my sheets, face cloths and comforter, put my nightgown and the last clothes into a garbage bag to stuff into the basement – will have lunch with my daughter, and then Sam is coming and we’ll get the subway and bus together to the airport. The weight limit per bag is 50 pounds, and I think I’m under with my two. But just. That means I’m taking nearly 100 pounds of stuff with me.

But a lot of that is gifts and books! Really! And yes, a pair of shoes or two.

And while I check in with my hundred pounds of stuff, the new family will open the front door and begin their life here.

Wayson came over late last night, fresh from several interviews, including a long one with Carol Off for CBC’s “As It Happens” that will air April 6 – I hope I can get it by podcast. Everyone who has read his new book “Not Yet” raves about it; I have my copy for the plane.  In the midst of the million things he is doing right now, he brought me a gift – a Moleskin notebook of perfect travelling size. He brought letter stickers and affixed a b and a k to the front, and then stuck several of his “wise saying” cards throughout, also for me to read on the plane. And I wanted to cry and say, “I won’t go, I’m staying right here, where there is such love.”

I feel myself being ripped away from the familiar – my children, house, neighbourhood, friends, routine. That’s exactly why I am going. But I have lived here a long time, and I’m 58 and settling in for comfort, so I feel this change to my core. This trip is about stretching, waking up, being out in the air, out in the wide world again.  My stomach is wobbly. I know, I’m not going to Kuala Lumpur, for God’s sake, or for five years – five months in Western civilisation is not a giant leap into the unknown. 

Yet it is.