escarpment blues.

What a difference a few years make. The last time I was home in Hamilton for more than a couple of days, it was summertime, and I was working on the Bookmobile (best job anywhere, ever, hands down). At least twice a week on our route, we'd drive past the Red Hill Creek and the site of the proposed expressway. The Creek was this awesome refuge in the middle of the city, the kind of hidden secret that makes Hamilton such a great town to live in, a spot that at least three generations of people remembered playing at as kids. They'd been loudly threatening and then promising to destroy the place to expand the highway, but the voices of the people involved in the protests against the destruction were even louder (at least among the people I was talking to). It was a cause people believed in, a crusade to save the land, to protect the fragile ecosystems of this little golden horseshoe of ours. It was a fight that seemed close to being won.

Eight years later, I'm here again, and last week I had to drive on the Red Hill Valley Parkway to get to a meeting. I can't believe they have the gall to name it after the natural landmark they decimated to create it. It didn't help me shave any time off my commute, but it sure did make me feel a little weepy. I threw on Escarpment Blues by Sarah Harmer and had a bit of a moment. Sometimes you can't even win the good fights, even when it seems like everyone's on your side. At least there's some hope in the fact that people still keep fighting.

Home is where the TV is.

Thomas Wolfe once wrote that you can't go home again. Clearly he never had to move back in with his parents in a pinch, like I did last week. I know there's this whole pop culture thing about skulking home, this notion that it's supposed to be funny-sad, like when a clown has to move back in with HIS parents. Iain Reid captured that sense of feeling like the butt of your parents' jokes in his hilarious, wonderful, heartbreaking memoir, One Bird's Choice, which I read in preparation for my own move back to the nest. Everyone should read his book, because it is fantastic, and he is a solid dude, as I learned when I interviewed him for last fall's Kingston Writersfest. He writes about how his father spends an afternoon shredding all his elementary school valentine cards and then drags him to the gym, and about the post-it notes his mother leaves on the cheese drawer so he'll know which cheese not to feed to the cats. Seeing as how I am sitting at my parents' living room table surreptitiously drinking their wine and eating a mango because my mom left a note next to it instructing me to chow down, these stories make me feel like I am less alone.

All self-deprecation aside, though, I worry that I might actually fall on the other end of the spectrum. I don't really mind being back home. In fact, I kind of love it, to an alarming degree. After years of living alone, I love coming home to some company, and some dinner on the table. I love basic cable, although my addiction to Come Dine With Me is reaching fever pitch. I love walking down the street with my dad to go skating at the park. I love hanging around on Sunday mornings drinking seventeen cups of coffee I didn't have to brew myself. I love that nobody knows my phone number. Friends, this is getting dangerous.

In conclusion, hey there, Hamiltonians. We should really hang out. My parents are away till Friday--want to come over tomorrow night? I can offer you free Grand Marnier and a television that will not migrate too far from the Slice network.