To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. ~ Samuel Johnson

The odyssey that is my life leads me to the home I left
and I wonder at my surprise foresight,
never dreaming the dream I’d embarked upon
would bring me back where it began;
a cosmic orchestration not the plan.
Someone said you can’t go home again.

Though they weren’t there then,
they’re the seasoned streets
where my past and present meet;
“the end to which every labour tends,
of which every desire prompts the prosecution,
to be happy at home, the ultimate result of all ambition.” 1
I can’t believe I’m here and a new home near, again.

The old house hefty in memory,
modest by bricks and mortar measures;
the old neighborhood not as shabby as it should be
to the snob in me who fled
the painful and mundane parts of a sort-of poverty;
the shame, the shyness I assumed;
the Mountain Gardens highs all the lows overrode
from Parkway Drive, Rolling Meadows to Mountainside 2
for Metro’s 3 loftier hopes of finer things
on streets as tree-lined trimmed
as these saplings-turned-sentinels dwarf their surrounds.

Now the sights and sounds are different and the same:
Sidewalk seams garbed rich greens;
the roads replete with silent echoes
of the growth pangs and enthusiasms
cum staccato at that stage;
like the kidding with the sibling for attention,
the quibblings grown-ups fashion,
the giggles that the facts of life induce,
the chatter, sobs, and laughter stamps of youth.

In a corner lot in the core more than fifty years before,
as more housing tracts transformed surrounding lands,
a postwar migration found its destination,
our family’s first place to call our own
in a blue collar world planted by Ford 4
in the days of the breadwinner for a time working-poor,
the brand-name milieu new and unadorned,
among fields and woods and streams to be explored,
the best playground in the world at my back door.
Wildlife lessons among fondest recollections;
best girlfriend ever, first boyfriend best there could be.
First love, first loss; mixed blessings;
most of the finest and worst ever happened to me.

And here I am in a brand new space overlooking the vicinity
where nobody’s here I know anymore, so far as I can see;
perhaps there never will be. Still, I’m beyond happy.
Half-a-lifetime of turbulence on a roundabout route
is an arduous trip to see who I could be --
--the arrival's worth it.
A seventh heaven I must have envisioned, it’s so perfect for me.
Embarked on a new chapter in an old story
I wrote a long time ago, the ending unbeknown
until I’ve lived to see.

© Helga Ross 2005


1. Samuel Johnson: The Rambler #68 (November 10, 1750)

2. Street names

3. Toronto

4. Ford Motor Co. Oakville, Ontario