In 1985, I had been accepted to the Foundation program at the Emily Carr College of Art + Design.
The idea of being an art student was terrifying to me, and also exciting at the same time. It felt such an accomplishment to be on a positive new path! At nineteen, it would be a new start in a new world for me, in the familiar neighbourhood of Granville Island. (As a pedicabber, I’d probably ridden past Emily Carr College a hundred times, but the inside of the buildings and the people inside remained mysterious and yet to be revealed.)
Ron, my old boss from the Granville Island summer pedicab job, rented a big panel van and helped me move into my new place. By the time Ron arrived at my Hornby Street apartment that morning, I’d been up sick with nerves for most of the night. I hadn’t done much packing and was a groggy, scatterbrained mess. I just couldn’t deal; I hated and dreaded moving.
It was a tense and frenzied pack-and-go situation, frantically stuffing anything fabric – clothes, towels, or blankets – into glad bags, and throwing kitchenware into boxes. The only thing I’d been able to take care with was my parent’s China set, which I’d wrapped in newspaper.
We got everything loaded into the rented panel van. I knew it was really a big inconvenience to Ron, and I felt like a total goof and super guilty for not being more prepared, but I let him know how much I appreciated his help. My head was spinning all day.
My new home was Unit 17 in Park Place, a three bedroom townhouse. After about a year, I was actually back in my old neighbourhood! It was an amazing bit of goodwill or good fortune, all thanks to my friend Kuan and his very patient family. They’d taken some pity on me and rented their old place to me for very cheap, after they’d moved to a new house in south Vancouver. I now had a very spacious and familiar roof over my head. I shall always appreciate their generosity and patience in renting their old home to such a scruffy and uncertain young man as myself.
After the last box had been dropped off, Ron left in a rush to return the rental truck. I let out a big sigh and soaked up a few moments of private silent time. I felt a mixture of elation and exhaustion. I had not slept much in the past 24 hours, and although I was physically spent from the move, I was also too wound-up to relax. I locked the front door, stretched out on the Chesterfield in the livingroom and flipped on my headphones. I cranked up my Walkman and blasted my UB40 cassette until I finally lost consciousness. I just had to overload my system a bit more before it let go and released me into sweet oblivion…
Later when I woke up, I took stock of my situation. I was relieved to be in my own place, and I was finally no longer financially reliant on my Dad, which made me feel both pride in my chest and fear in my gut.
My new home base was a two-storey townhouse with the kitchen and livingroom on the ground level, a basement below, and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. All the units in Park Place had a similar layout, and Unit 17 reminded me a little of our old family place in Unit 121, at the other end of the complex. Now, my old friend Doug was my neighbour, with his family’s unit backing onto mine. It was comfortable and familiar, and almost a kind of triumphant return home.
Upstairs, I claimed the first bedroom nearest the stairs, and peeked around in the other bedrooms. They were all unfurnished, but as I looked in each room, I imagined who might have been there before me. After checking out the water flow of the bathroom sink and giving the toilet a flush, I went downstairs to check out the basement.
The whole place felt empty and still smelled like the cooking of its previous occupants. I fought the urge to call myself a trespasser in someone else’s family home, and told myself that I had my own place now. Someone else’s second-hand house would become a fresh, welcome home base for me. I didn’t know how long I’d be there and had no idea where my life was going to go, but was just glad to be somewhere safe. The strangest thing was that when I’d lived alone in the downtown flat while Dad had been in hospital, I’d felt very alone and isolated. It could have been the worry about Dad’s health or missing his presence. But living alone in Unit 17 in Park Place felt comforting, liberating. and reassuring. It was the familiar surroundings and faces that made the difference. I felt confident.
After waiting for months in Burnaby General’s Long Term Care ward, Dad was finally accepted into Carleton Lodge, a private care hospital about five minutes away from BGH, and just a 20 minute bike ride away from my new home. He was close enough for me to visit on my 10-speed every Sunday after dinner. Dad no longer had to support me, and was off the hook for apartment rent, with a large chunk of his monthly pension cheque now going right into his care home. It was a bit of a transition for each of us, but we were now both set with secure places to live.
I was visiting Mum less often as I focused on school and my part-time jobs. I really didn’t know if she felt lonely or abandoned by her family. I did know that I felt a lot of guilt for not being able to visit her more often, but I just had to kind of push all those feelings aside and swallow them down. In truth, I was not convinced that she even knew who I was, but I’d felt as if our visits had helped to grow some kind of connection and familiarity between us. Maybe I worried that losing momentum on the visits would be equivalent to losing her forever.
I got my eyes tested and got eyeglasses for the first time. It was amazing how much sharper everything looked, and also weird to think how I’d been used to living in a blurry life for all those years! I remembered how difficult it had been to see the blackboard in my large high school classrooms. Back then, I’d been stuck in a catch-22 of needing to be close enough to see the board properly, while not wanting to make eye contact with the teacher or get called upon for anything. Both my parents had worn glasses in later adulthood, so I guess specs were inevitable for me.
I accidentally broke the glasses frames by the end of summer and my life went back to being blurry. I think I had sat or stepped on them or dropped them, and part of the metal frame had snapped near the bridge of the nose. After having enjoyed crisp vision for the first time in years, I couldn’t go on without them. (It made me wonder why I’d never had my vision tested as a kid.)
I neglected my vision for a few months (while ironically studying visual art) but finally decided that I had to get my first set of glasses fixed, and I was lucky to find someone who could solder the metal frame back together for me. Determined that I’d never again drop my eyeglasses, I also bought a glasses strap – a thin leather lanyard that went from in front of each ear and around the back of my neck. Glasses were expensive, so I didn’t care if I looked like a librarian.
Maybe the most important thing to learn from all of this was that change usually involved some sort of short-term pain for long-term gain – also, things that get broken can usually get repaired.
