Moving – Bye Bye Waterloo

It’s finally here. I remember feeling excited on the day I kissed Waterloo goodbye and moved into my new Toronto life. My heart had been experiencing a tug-of-war of emotions over moving, yet the “city girl” eventually beat “country hick”, and I was looking forward to Toronto. I still to this day have no clue why I changed my tune and became excited at the notion of public transportation and smog and homeless people and my ‘work in progress’ apartment. But I did. I think it was probably a combination of my mother’s repeated comments on positive thinking and my father’s lectures on the working world. His spiel goes something like this:

“Sometimes you have to do things you don’t like. That’s life. So put in your time until you retire, then you can move. Yes, you might not like Toronto. Personally I try to avoid the place whenever possible. But you have to live there.”

Thanks dad, for those warm words. I understood what he meant though. And I digested it as sounding something like this:

“Toronto has lots of wonderful qualities. You are so lucky to be working there. You may not know it now, but you will make the most of your life in the city. I don’t go to Toronto that much, but I wish I could go every single day”.

Ok, so I was stretching. I hear what I want to hear. Regardless of why, I had pumped myself up into a state of excitement. When the moving company sent a couple of people out to help me pack up, I wasn’t even sad. When the movers showed up the following day and carted off all of my possessions, I was not upset at all over leaving my home for the past 4 years.

When the movers told me that they were familiar with the area I was moving, and the group of them started laughing, I became slightly concerned.

“We call that place the Twin Towers”, one laughed. “From what I know, it’s a rough building. Keep your door locked, and maybe invest in an alarm or two”. My mother looked as if her right arm had been twisted and snapped off. I was dragged back into the reality of Toronto. We aren’t in Kansas anymore.

In the passenger seat of my parent’s car I sat as I watched the moving truck leave my Waterloo apartment, followed by my dad who was driving my car. Cradling a bucket filled with aquarium plants and my two adorable frogs Dixie and Hugh (I had to hold them! I would not trust anyone but me to guard my babies on this journey), I waved good bye to my Kansas.