In part one of this post, I gave some background into my national identity, or lack thereof.  I talked about the elusiveness of the moment in which it could be said that I became Canadian (having been taken to Canada from England as a child) and the decisive moment in which I later realized that Spain was home to a culture that felt like home to me.  What I didn’t do was answer my own question about why my wife and I felt compelled to relocate to Spain despite the deep feeling of home that we derive from simply being together.  I guess it’s time to address that…

Leaving home, finding home

I can remember spending hours as a child studying the dozen or so family albums that sat on a shelf in our living room.  From a very early age I incorporated this activity into my childly duties, as it were.  These albums were numbered; the first two seldom held my attention for long as they preceded me and I didn’t know who many of the people were (but my anal tendencies compelled me to start there virtually every time regardless).  Sometimes my mother would give me the guided tour and tell me stories about the strange faces in the familiar photographs but often these pictorial visits were mine alone.  I still recall with what muted reverence I gazed upon those images time and time again.

The pictures themselves are lost to me now but their impact remains.  I remember the many family stories that my mother told and all the faces that decorated the pages of those albums.  My past’s presence is a constant; what part it plays in my daily life and in my sense of self is hard to define, but it’s always there.  I think now, that what I found in those pages, and what kept me turning them for so many years, was a sense of home; the kind that many describe in association with their physical place of origin.

What I’ve come to believe is that for those whose memories are all tied to a single place, whose photo albums’ pictures portray the same familiar landscapes, the sense of home that comes from a personal and family history spill over into the physical surroundings that house them.  The people and the place mingle and interwine, their distinctions warmly blurred in a sense of belonging.

The pictures of my family’s albums framed English and Canadian landscapes and captured the bearers of diverse accents and cultural habits.  My family had left England behind to build a new and different life in Canada, and yet my mother always called England home.  The sense of home that I embraced had little to do with any one location; it was a warmth that came from people and stories and always included the romance of other, distant places.

With these remembered photographs and stories tucked away in my psyche I left Canada at the age of twenty-one in search of adventure.  Although I was leaving the country that had been my home since early childhood, I felt as though I were going home, in a strange way, as I set out on my travels, not because my first stop was England, but because, like my family had done, I was on the move, open to what may come.

The right place at the right time

As I’ve mentioned before and as is quite obvious given my current circumstances, I love Spain.  I don’t think that it’s a perfect place, but I forgive it its faults much in the same way I forgive my friends and family theirs.  Love is not for perfect things, but for things that have the power to affect us deeply and inspire us to happiness - at least that’s how I see it.

My wife, Katie, is fond of discussing the differences between Spanish Ivan and English Ivan (languages, not countries): it seems that different sides of my personality come out depending on which one I speak.  Perhaps that’s why I enjoy living in Spain so much, because it gives me the chance to express more of myself.  Or maybe it’s just a case of being in the right place at the right time.  I can see myself living happily here in Valencia for many years to come but I can also see a time when we decide that somewhere else makes more sense.  Our home is portable, after all.

There’s a small town in the interior of British Columbia, about 500 km from Vancouver, that was the right place for a short time.  Penticton is where Katie grew up and where her parents have lived for thirty-odd years.  We moved there thinking that it would be nice to be near them and that perhaps it would be a good place to have a child.  In the end, Oscar was indeed born there and spent the first two and a half years of his life in close proximity to his loving grandparents.  But Penticton just isn’t the right place for us long-term.  Its time has past.  Valencia is the place for us now and for the foreseeable future.

A Happy Home

I don’t know what Oscar’s relationship to ‘home’ will be when he grows up.  It looks like he will ‘be from’ Valencia; that’s where I envision us staying, though anything could happen.  Will he identify himself with Spain and Valencia?  Will he always be a guiri? (foreigner)  A Canadian? Will he share our appreciation of the moveable concept of home?  I have no idea - but I look forward to finding out.  What I do know is that he will always be loved and have the support of his parents, grandparents and others. 

But his grandparents live back in Canada, thousands of kilometres away.  And that fact brings me back to the contentious issue of why Katie and I felt compelled to leave Canada in the first place, and take our lovely child so far away from his lovely Aba and G, as they are called.  If home is family, as I have stated, why leave?

As I write this, Anne and Larry (Aba and G, respectively) are here in Valencia, a few days into a three-week visit.  Their enthusiasm for Valencia and Spain, and for exploring what this fabulous city and region have to offer, is both sincere and infectious - though we’re hardly short of enthusiasm ourselves.  Oscar is loving having them here.  Every morning, before his eyes are even fully open, he asks to go wake them up with delight.  And every morning his grandparents greet him with mirrored joy.  The three of them would like nothing more than to live together permanently.

Despite the limited frequency of these grandparental visits, our connection with Katie’s parents remains strong.  E-mail and Skype don’t replace hugs and kisses, but they help.  Thanks to our laptop, Aba can read her grandson a bedtime story from half-way across the globe.  Her biggest fear - that Oscar would forget her - will never come to pass.  He loves his grandparents dearly and for him they remain an important part of life.  For us it’s much the same.

I won’t try to convince anyone that Larry and Anne are happy that their only grandchild lives so far away; clearly they are not.  What does make them happy is the obvious happiness that Katie and I feel at living in this city.  It’s something that we didn’t feel in Penticton.  That place didn’t offer us a lifestyle in keeping with our personalities and goals and living somewhere you don’t want to be isn’t good for family life - it doesn’t make for a happy home.

Katie and I came to Spain despite the loss that proximity to her parents signified.  Their presence was the best part of life in small-town Canada.  Unfortunately, much of life in small-town Canada was less appealing.  For our family to be happy and for our home to be a wonderful place to be, Katie and I had to give Spain a try; we are so happy that we did.  We will always be happy with that choice, come what may.

Always new

The life that Katie and I have been buildling together - the one that Oscar later joined and became such a fundamental part of - requires continual renewal.  When we married, I vowed to Katie to live my life to the fullest so that I could share that full life with her.  She made a similar promise to me and we have been doing our best to keep to our word.  For us, a full life is one that challenges us and inspires us to evolve; one in which new experiences never cease.  This is the setting that makes sense for us and our portable concept of home.

We are lucky that living in Spain is a relatively easy option for us, based on my and Oscar’s British citizenship.  Living in Canada seemed more difficult in many ways despite us all having Canadian citizenship.  And when it comes down to it, our concern for nationality doesn’t go further than that paperwork.  Our family isn’t Spanish; it isn’t British; it isn’t Canadian.  Nationality just isn’t one of the criteria that we use to identify ourselves.  Instead, we rely on our experiences and what we learn from them to shape our concept of our selves, whatever the country in which they unfold.

Family before country: that part is clear, but individual needs also need to be honoured.  Finding the right balance between the needs of the family and the needs of its members requires constant and careful attention, and sometimes some difficult choices.  We’ve made ours and we think they are good ones.  Here we are, in Valencia, Oscar’s loving grandparents with us for now.  While they are here and when they go back, this is where we want to be.  This is home.