Moose Jaw, late for a funeral. Grandma, she died, finally, earlier in the year, and so a family reunion of sorts, too late for the funeral but in time for those who haven't yet caught a plane and left.
My children, boy and girl, it's the first time they've been...fist time I've been in about 25 years, and I'm curious to see how it's changed.
With the exception of my old high school, torn down, an ugly new one, and my great grandparents old house, torn down as well, it hasn't changed. Every house I lived in still there, the old schools, familiar landmarks, walking through Crescent Park, the old hotels, River Street, they're all there, the same, only smaller than I remembered them...
A curious glitch in my memory, I'd always remembered the town hall being on the east side of the street, walking down main I find it on the west, I check with my father, they haven't moved it, it's always been there, I'm curious as to when this revision to my memory took place...
The children, they feign interest, there's not so much to see, a long weekend, mostly everything is closed, museums, galleries...
It's hauntingly familiar, another lifetime, two, three even, ago, and amazing to see whole neighborhoods exactly as I'd remembered them, amazing because in Calgary you can't drive around the block without seeing a new development, infill, landmarks are perpetually erased and rebuilt, but here, time has stood still.
I recognize, realize, how much of this landscape fills my dreams, consciously I've never thought of it, unconsciously the city has built itself again, with slight revisions, somewhere deep in my mind, and on restless nights my mind paces the empty streets...
After a day's visit we leave, this time through Gravelbourg, Eastend, new roads for me, a thousand places to get out and explore, prospect, but the boy has other obligations, and so we drive straight through, a brief stop in Eastend to see the dinosaur museum, quaint town, more Montana than Saskatchewan, then in Cypress Hills where we stop at the daughters insistence, then back to the number one, drive, storm, home...