Full Circle

Ottawa
July 2026

When you live as far from town as we did at the beach you either miss the clamour and hubbub of city streets or revel in the peace, quiet and freedom that comes from not having neighbours yelling that your fence is too close to the property line or the dog is barking at the moon once too often.

I think I am more of the latter, at ease walking down the street of Little Italy in search of cannolis but preferring that just two blocks from my house is a huge farm with a dense stand of trees blocking out the honking and squealing of tires on Fisher Avenue! Even more so these days, as I grow older, I find people generally shallow and annoying. Life gets simpler this way, just sitting in the backyard listening to a cheeky Cardinal or playing ball with Frieda.

In many ways my life has come full circle, from the house at the beach, to Victoria then beyond to Cairo, London, Paris, Boston, San Francisco, New York, now Ottawa. But for every bistro, museum or stadium I have visited there has always been a little voice in my head telling me to “Run Away!” And now I look for any chance to escape the noise and hot July ashphalt smell.

Other things in my life have come full circle since the days at the beach. Friends I grew up with, long in the rearview mirror, have reappeared on social media, like an interrupted paragraph just waiting to finish the story. Sure we are all a lot older, backs are stiffer and a late night is now anything after 10pm, but we are all still the same goofy kids who climbed trees and played Knocky-Knocky-Nine-Doors on old lady Davidson. To me that is kind of cool, and really amazing. Somehow when the red Ford headed down the road in the Summer of ’71 I kind of thought I would quickly slip into the past for folks, like turning the corner of life would erase the memories. But no, after 50 years plus having someone pop up on Facebook with a “Hi! How are you?” makes my day! Or week!

In some ways I half expected my military friends to still be friends, sort of my ‘other family’ with shared memories that ‘civvies’ might never get. And they are, as we swap war stories – green liver in the field, immersion heaters from hell, the night march through a thicket of poison ivy, all those special places we can escape to. And as the circle turns it is great catching up, learning what people have been up to and become in life,some predictable, others going in completely different life directions than I could ever imagine!

Of course there are still many names on my list with question marks afterwards, and there are close names that have departed, but such is life. The Ford may have turned the corner but the memories were packed away with the clean tee shirts and razor blades in the duffel bag of life I have carried all these years.

And the real beauty of the full circle is the smiles it brings imagining a quiet coffee and catchup. With maybe a little bit of senior citizen Knocky-Knocky-Nine-Doors after the sun goes down.

Cheers,
Mark