Separation and the Need for Geographical Attunement

For as long as I can remember, I felt a desire to live “somewhere else.” I grew up in Smalltown, southwestern Ontario, Canada, then lived for 25 years in Toronto while the restless urge to pack up and leave smoldered inside me. Rather than act on this urge, I followed a traditional path of marriage, childbirth, and divorce, and made several attempts at settling on a career path before committing to psychology as I entered mid-life. During those years I traveled, taking short vacations which did nothing to mitigate my desire for relocation. On the contrary, these brief adventures fanned the flames, deepening my internal schism.

It would be easy to make omniscient comments, in hindsight, about the nature of my longing. I could say that I sensed a personal mission waiting to be accomplished or that my thirst for adventure needed slaking. The urge to pull up stakes and head into unfamiliar territory had all the earmarks of the theoretically prescribed need for separation and individuation, and flew in the face of my skepticism about the theory. What I had observed was people struggling not to individuate but to find ways to embrace both a sense of individuality and an ever-deepening connection with loved ones. None the less, there I was, feeling a need to leave my supportive web of friends and family. In spite of my observations, I seemed compelled to live out traditional theory in a very physical way.

When I finished graduate school I acted on this long-held desire and initiated a move to Vancouver, British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada. Although my appetite for adventure craved a more exotic destination, the prospect of living in Vancouver was attractive because work would be relatively easy to find, it was in many ways different from Toronto, and it was near the Pacific Ocean. (Like so many people, I am drawn to big, rushing water.) Still, I had a premonition that the relocation might not be lasting. As the aircraft circled the city for landing on a scouting weekend, I suddenly noticed, with a start, how small the city appeared. How long, I wondered, could Vancouver hold me?

I negotiated the move with relative ease, found work and a house to rent, hired a moving company, and secured tenants for my house in Toronto. My 21-year-old son was also in the mood for adventure and moved with me, creating the best of all possible worlds for me. We said “au revoir” to friends and family, and off we went to begin our new lives.

Vancouver real estate is valued by the view that can be seen from it. With beginner’s luck I found an affordable house perched on the side of a steep hill with a spectacular, unobstructed view of mountains, water, and cityscape. Only later would I become cynical about the disproportionate value placed on “view” compared to interior spaces. Initially, I was smitten by the grandeur that surrounded me. Shifting clouds mingling with mountain tops, ocean vessels loading cargo across the inlet, crimson and orange sunsets on clear eve-

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nings, all exhilarated me. Occasionally I traveled the six-hour trip to a stunning, miles-long strip of beach on the west coast of Vancouver Island to explore tide pools replete with sea anemones and starfish, where the ocean spewed yards of kelp tubes and bulbs for me to stomp and pop with great relish, an activity I named “kelp therapy.” To complete the seduction, work was better than expected and I was meeting people who became and remain good friends.

I am not sure when the mountains began to trigger claustrophobia or when I began to feel trapped between them, the continually hovering clouds, and the lineups at the United States border. A new friend felt embraced by the mountains, a sentiment I could not share. Perhaps it was significant that she had been born in British Columbia, unlike most of the people I met there. Vancouver is a city of immigrants, many from other parts of Canada. I had landed in a city of wanderers and began to suspect we all had journeyed there to work something out or to escape. The longer I stayed the more I appreciated the low, rolling hills of my home province, where I could roam and stretch without bumping into walls.

Although at first I was so taken with being in a new place that I was able to rationalize any inconvenience, the climate became a serious problem. Vancouver was not nicknamed “Rain City” on a whim. In southern Ontario I had acquired a fondness for refreshing spring rains and summer thunderstorms but in Vancouver I began to feel the need for gills and a permanently installed umbrella. Something wet was always falling on me, intensifying the sensation of having no room to breathe. The constant dampness encouraged the mold which grew on stuccoed walls and — I suspect — inside my lungs, setting off a perpetual cough. In the long winter months from October to June, the sky so rarely entertained the sun that when the strange, luminous ball did appear I would rush outdoors sans sunglasses to soak up every bit of UV I could sponge from the heavens. On too many occasions I watched from my downtown office building, as the streetlights flickered in confusion at the noontime dusk. The respite from rain which occurred during late July, sometimes for as long as six weeks and into September, was welcome, but failed to warm me. In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined missing the mugginess of a July night in Ontario, or the brilliant, ice-cold days of January, but I did. I craved the intensity of Toronto’s climate and sensed an invisible filter at work in Vancouver, muting my relation to the weather. The seamless gray meant there was only one season, for all practical purposes.

Not long into my five years in Vancouver I found ways to escape, spending long weekends in Ontario, making day trips to Washington State, vacationing in Central America or Europe. At conferences in Santa Fe or San Diego, Dallas or Los Angeles, I would tell people I was from Toronto but lived in Vancouver. On one memorable trip to Spain I noticed that Vancouver entered my mind only when I realized I would have to return there. When I thought of home it was Toronto — the City. The draw towards “home” had little to do with friends and family. In fact, I had more one-to-one contact with some family members in Vancouver than before or since.

The draw towards home was much more a physical thing. Separated from it, I came to realize the depth of my attunement with Toronto’s streets, trees, buildings, cultural mix, ravines, bicycle trails, shopping areas, transit system, and climate. The seasonal changes and their colors and smells, mechanics of the city, interactions between people, and ways of speaking were part of me that I could not — and then, did not want to — shed. They were made of the same material as me.

From the other side of the Coastal and Rocky Mountain ranges, I could see that I had been the blind man who touched parts of the elephant and came to erroneous conclusions on the basis of fragments of information. Stepping over the mountains I was able to grasp the whole. With my back to the edge of the country, looking east I could see that in my restlessness I had not acknowledged a need to ground myself in a home that works well with my body and spirit, a place in which to refuel my soul. My desire to live elsewhere had blinded me to my need for geographical attunement.

It has been almost three years since I left my cough behind, in the foothills near the British Columbia-Alberta border. For the first time I have a sense of permanence which, to my continuing amazement, is exciting. Paradoxically, home and adventure now coexist rather than conflict. My need was to heal the extant split within myself, to embrace the duality of permanency and freedom, both of which I need in order to be content. Moving away from my geographical center exaggerated the split which had plagued me all my adult life. Moving back with understanding was the healing balm which has freed me to make choices about

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what to do next with my life.

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