On Starting Fresh

My house is an inappropriate blue colour in the kitchen and dining area, I've decided. Actually the colour extends into the hallway and perhaps even into the rooms upstairs, but I can't remember and I don't feel like going up to check. The living room is white -- actual white, not eggshell or ivory or whatever -- from the days when people actually used proper white on the walls of their houses. But other than that it's a very likeable and charming place. I just moved in today and I think I am completely and solidly alone for the first time since I left Ottawa only three weeks ago. It seems like a lot longer.

On Sunday we all went to dinner at various places -- Dave, Tyler and I to the house of a good Katimavik friend in Sheshatshiu and Mike to a friend's place in Northwest. Going to Sunday dinner at Helen and Dave's was like something out of a Christmas movie -- she grew up in Sheshatshiu and him in Newfoundland and they have six grown children with husbands and wives and kids, all there almost every Sunday for a big dinner. When we got there we were treated not like guests but like we belonged. We barely even got greeted when we came in -- the women were cooking big pots of veggies and three kinds of meat on the stove, and there seemed to be random relatives popping out of the woodwork every few minutes. Most of them didn't introduce themselves to us but were very welcoming and friendly in their way -- I was glad I'd had some exposure to and understanding of Native culture or I might have interpreted the opposite. I'm pretty sure they were making fun of us in Innu from time to time; we tried to keep up and not to be overwhelmed, or to appear overwhelmed anyway. Of the six grown children, five are coupled up with white people, and so there was a good mix around the table. While we were eating it was like musical chairs around us. You'd turn one way to talk to someone at the long table (there had to be at least 12 or 15 seats) and then you'd turn back the other way to see three new people sitting down, then you'd turn back and the person you were talking to was now replaced by someone else. It was too hard to keep track of all the couples and cousins and sons and daughters-in-law and sisters and so on. There was lots of banter and noise and kids running around, and there were a million stories to be told. There are a million stories just in photos on the walls of that house.

Afterwards we went down to help with the renovations of one of the sons' houses and the guys were put to work right away while Helen and I went back to the house and got to know each other.

"When I was a kid I lived in the country," she said, meaning in the traditional way, on the land. She lived in Labrador tents until her parents moved to Sheshatshiu when she was young, and even then they would go back to the "country" for the fall. Of her six kids, three are adopted -- adopting kids from other family members or from friends' families seems to be a pretty common practice here when children are born to very young parents or to parents with drug/alcohol problems, or when the kids are orphaned. She told me sad stories of the backgrounds of the kids she took in and raised. She made tea but didn't offer me any. Eventually Dave, her husband, came back and shuffled around the house getting water, and while he was there there was a knock at the door. Helen answered the door and I heard the voices of two little girls speaking to Helen in Innu -- she got them glasses of apple juice and I watched them drink it by the door under the low ceiling. It made me think of being small and of winter, and suddenly I felt like I was back in time. Dave gave them $10 before they left and said, "That one's my granddaughter."

That night we all slept in the Northwest River Katimavik house (which as a reminder is about a 5-minute walk from my place) instead of going back the 40-min drive to Goose Bay. When I was falling asleep I remember thinking that in all my wandering around I might not have ever slept anywhere so quiet -- sheltered from natural noises that you hear when you sleep outdoors, and missing the general constant racket of the city. It was so quiet. There wasn't even a strong background electrical hum, or the creaks and whistles that an older house like mine makes. It's very still here.

Then Kelsey, the Rigolet project leader, left yesterday with his group. Mike left today and finally it was time to move into our own houses -- Dave and I picked up groceries in Happy Valley and headed out to unpack into the places we're going to live for the next 10 months. This day seemed harder than the numerous other days I've moved in and moved out, in so many different places around the country and world. Maybe because the winters are long and cold here? Maybe because we're so far away? Maybe because I'm anxious about the job, or because I really did like living with the guys in the furniture-less Goose Bay house, doing domestic stuff together and working on our laptops while sitting on the bare living room floor. It actually kinda did feel like it was our place, as ridiculous as that sounds after one week.

I unpacked my food and made lunch. On the box of Red Rose tea I bought it says "best before February 2009." The grocery stores here are unreliable like that, I suppose. I couldn't bring myself yet to start organizing all my belongings again for the third time in as many weeks, so I went around trying out light switches to see which one controlled what (a lot of the bulbs are bare and some have pull-strings) and then went outside to check out the yard. There's this weird thing that looks like kind of like where you hang people, without the actual gallows, and there's a mini picnic table in the backyard, and a broken down clothesline that I might try to fix. I've been told that people have seen faces looking out the windows and I kept catching myself looking up for them while I was in the yard. It wouldn't be that surprising really. It's also a windy and creaky kind of place, and I found myself thinking about the creepy basement while I walked over the hole in the floor that lets you down there. Right now I can hear the storm door at the front swinging back and forth.

"Did you notice the weird smell in that place?" Helen asked me on Sunday. I said no. She said Val (last year's Sheshatshiu project leader) used to come over smelling like that place all the time. When I came in today I definitely noticed it -- and I opened the windows until the 10-degree temperature outside made it too cold. Yesterday we went for a little hike and it was cold enough to get your nose running just a little bit, although not cold enough for tuques and mittens. Pretty soon though...