On Returning Home

A January in suburban Toronto is very cold. But crossing the sodium-lit tundra of the Georgian Court Arms parking lot at 1:30 am for the first time in three years to see your parents (who you don’t really like) makes it feel colder. The Georgian Court Arms is in no way “Georgian,” nor is there a “court,” nor are there any “arms” (with the obvious exception of the 515 limbs of its 258 residents). It is however, a monument to the many ways concrete could be poured circa 1968; it is also like a 19th-century exhibition of the many ways in which people can fail. This is the home I come back to, though it is not really my home: it is the apartment complex my parents moved into the year after I left. I have walked 44 minutes from the train station. I may die if I remain outside, so I enter the building.

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