Back to the (Is)Land

My best friend lived just down the street, and we’d often go to the creek below my house and catch water skeeters with a net and bucket. There was a thicket there that we would crawl into and stand up inside of, like it was a cave. To say I couldn’t complain about my childhood would be an understatement. But as I grew older, complain I did.

I started at the on-island middle school in Grade 7. Other kids had started commuting to the mainland, and I felt like I was missing out on being in a big school and having off-island friends. Instead, we had school camping trips, a minute of silent meditation every morning, and a class on practical reasoning taught by the principal and school founder. Hindsight 20/20, I know. At the time, I resented it.

When I started commuting to school in Grade 10, the things I wanted started falling into place. I met off-islanders. I went to parties in “town.” I fell in with the weird kids. It started to be that most of my friends were in town, and my attitude about small town living went full teenager.

I seethed with frustration at waking up at 6:00 am for the school bus, crossing a body of water, catching another school bus, and still arriving late most days, preceded by the announcement that “the island kids will be arriving late.” I didn’t want to be an island kid. I was done with it.

The summer after graduation, I probably spent more nights in town than on island. Then I moved for university. I studied, worked, travelled, found and lost friends and girlfriends, had a mental health crisis. The usual. Even when I came home, I would spend most of my time in Vancouver, with the notable exception of the parties I would throw at my parent’s house when they were away. And whenever someone would ask if I’d ever move home, I’d say no. “I wouldn’t want to do that to my kids,” I would say. “I’d want them to have a normal childhood.”

I was 26 when I met my wife. I’d been single for years and was ready to settle down. Even then, I still felt that living on that island, even just a 20-minute ferry ride away from civilization, was not for me.

It wasn’t what I wanted for my future. 

Partnership shrinks your world. Kendall became my family. We adopted a dog, and the no-dog-in-the-bed rule was immediately broken. I was going to sleep every night with everyone I cared about most. My life became wonderfully contained. 

And in that smaller world, I found the feeling that I think brought my parents to the island when I was eight months old: the security and utter calm that comes with finding your family and feeling safe enough to step back from the conveniences and structures that you’re used to.

We got married at the house I grew up in and a couple of years later moved to our new home on the island. A friend I grew up with, who I didn’t see or talk to for almost 15 years, lives just up the street. My best friend from childhood still lives down the street from my parents. Like lots of families over the pandemic, we spent more time together at home than either of us ever expected. It brought us closer. And we grew bigger.

Our daughter was born in 2022, along with three other babies on our very small dead-end street. We’re surrounded by nature and community. It turns out that there is one real parenting hack—be near other parents, including your own. We see my parents often, and when I drive up their driveway, I always look to my right, to the pond we said our vows beside, where the driftwood altar still stands

Maybe our daughter will hate it here too, when she’s older. That’s okay. She’ll come around. And we’ll let her throw parties at our house in the meantime.