Wind in Her Hair
Two decades had passed before I returned to live back in my homeland of Nanaimo, B.C. Life as I knew it had ended, its remains sorted and rendered down to bare bones in boxes. A friend who lives in Nanaimo insisted that it would be impossible for me to find a place to rent because of an over-crowded housing market. “People live in hotels for months while on waitlists,” she said. “You need a place to land first.” But on the day my realtor listed my house in Alberta as sold, I got an offer for a condo rental in Nanaimo. And right in the place I most needed to be. In mid-December of 2021, I arrived to my small condo unit on Jingle Pot Road. The lofty ceilings made it seem even emptier during those weeks alone before my furniture arrived. But I came prepared: in my car I had packed my Christmas decorations, basic dishes and cookware, a couple IKEA chairs, an air mattress, and a tiny, wrapped present from a friend for under the tree. When I arranged to have my things shipped