Alberta

Chapter Five: Take my hand

They welcome me like it's been a week, a casual and brief absence that nobody need explain. I feel like an imposter, like I shouldn't be there, but it's not because they shun me, because they don't. My brothers pull me into bear hugs and their wives drape themselves around me in their winter dresses. They ask me nothing of my life the last five years but tell me all of their news all at once, birth announcements, siblings on missions far away, family weddings and news from the church.

My mother brings me my favourite mulled drink and thrusts it into my hands with a beaming smile. She pulls me out of the middle of the group and clutches me to her as she inhales me.

"My baby is home" she announces to the room.

A room full of family who are completely aware of this fact, since I've been the centre of their attentions since I walked through the door with Harper on my hip... Harper who has disappeared among a throng of cousins of which there were many, too many. I would have to start remembering names and doing so fast as little hands and faces would pop up and say "hi" when they gained the confidence too. I was a stranger to most of the little ones, my nieces and nephews, who were born after I had left or not long before, a stranger, another knife to the heart, another loss I would have to bear.

My sister was in the kitchen and the only one who had not met me with enthusiasm. Her husband was high up in the church and it had embarrassed her greatly when I left. I don't think Charlotte will ever forgive me.

My father takes me from my mother's arms and embarrassingly flings me around like he always did, in a dance he had named the 'Willa waltz', many, many, years ago. My brothers would taunt me but my father got great joy he had always confessed, to dancing with his daughters. I would happily let Charlotte take the dances, she loved them and melted when my father gave her the attention she so adored. Charlotte had been initially happy to have me as a sister when I was born, but as soon as I was old enough to capture my daddy's heart, as she did, that's where the resentment began. My being gay was the icing on the very unbalanced cake of mine and Charlottes relationship.

"Willa grow up" was the only reaction I would ever get from Charlotte, about just about everything.

The role of baby of the family was not one to be desired in such a large family. It was blamed for just about everything, my being trouble, being gay, being a disappointment, and as Charlotte said, for not growing up. In reality I grew up sooner than I had to, sooner than they ever did. I had to leave the only world I had ever known, my entire family who turned their backs to me, my life, my church, my friends, and Alberta, the love of my little gay heart and my best friend. I had to learn to lose it all, to leave and to leave quietly, one bag, make no noise about it, don't embarrass the good name, and take your lifestyle elsewhere. I was an eighteen year old girl with nothing. Imagine then, your sister saying "grow up Willa" and tell me how you would hold your lip as it quivered and your soul wailed.

As my father released me with a kiss to the forehead I stood and looked around the room, feeling unsteady, lost, and in need of a map to guide my way through the double standards and the confusion of this 'normal' appearing Eve of Christmas Eve. It was almost painful the way my family would kiss and hug on me one moment and the next remind me why it wasn't 'appropriate' for me to stay longer than Christmas.

I was whiplashed with love and loss constantly.

I had been left out of many a family celebration over the five years I've been absent, but now just because they missed me I was summoned like a performing monkey to turn up and fit in for the holidays. I wondered if my family would be so happy if I had brought a date home, a very gay date, perhaps even a girlfriend one day. I wanted to be in the moment and to be happy for what I got, but truth is...I don't much like feeling like a dog begging for scraps.