I have recently been busy with some visiting teachers and students from our partner school in Finland. As the local coordinator for the program, I played host somewhat to the teachers, and while I was planning for their visit, I had to pick specific locations to portray, through a filtered lens, what defined our location, and by association, us.
When we travel, we identify as the country or region we are from. We embrace certain stereotypes and eschew others. The same is true when we host other travelers.
Throughout my childhood, and to this day, my parents host Christmas Day festivities. My aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents… all would gather Christmas Eve at my paternal grandparents’ house, and then Christmas Day, donning new outfits, the cousins with the new favourite toy in hand, they would make the drive to my parents’ farm. As soon as the doorbell rang, coats were collected, welcome drinks poured, and the women would congregate in the kitchen, gossiping and offering to help my mother while the men would gather in the living room, chatting about farming and doing their own gossiping.
It was different when my mom’s parents showed up, though. Especially Grandma. She always came early, and as soon as my dad had taken her coat and she had traded in her winter boots for slippers, my siblings and I would be pulling her hands down the stairs (probably not the safe, come to think of it) to our bedrooms and the Christmas tree. We would show off our rooms, cleaned especially for the occasion. We would bring her our new toys, dolls and tractors and games held in outstretched hands, proud of each item.
My sister, eleven years my junior, would repeat this same ritual when I would visit from university. Her room – once mine – was always shown off, special projects and possessions brought to me for inspection.
In essence, I have been doing the exact same thing for these Finnish friends of ours. What makes our home, our home?
What was the “must-see” list? What activities and sights would make them appreciative of what it means to be, not only Canadian, but a member of this particular community in this particular part of this particular province? Each activity was offered with that same tentativeness that seemed to say, “See this? What do you think?”
Why is that?
Why did I want my grandmother’s approval in that way? Why did I show such appreciation to my sister? Why did I do the same with the visitors?
Our homes and our possessions are pieces of us. Not everything, of course, but the way we take them into ourselves makes them become part of ourselves. Things are just things, but things we have created, things we bought because we worked for… those things are representative of some aspects of ourselves. I show off my house because once people see the artwork and the dog hair and the photographs and the colours and the mountains and mountains of books, they get a glimpse of me. When those visiting Finnish teachers saw a hockey game or wandered through the woods or sat around a campfire, they got a glimpse of me too, in the collective sense of, “This is who we are, and this is also who I am. I am a part of this, but this is not all of me.” I chose each activity; it was somehow a part of me. But it was also here and available, so it was also a part of us.
That seemingly convoluted line between being a part of something, and also individual, has always interested me.
For every toy I displayed as a child, for every experience I offered now, am I not also doing the same now, with my writing? Am I not offering these words and one day, my book, out to you or any potential readers out there in, as Belle sings, the “great wide somewhere”?
I am not really that much different now, holding out these words to you, than the little girl I once was, dragging my grandmother through my room, picking up this item or that, holding it out for inspection, tentative and hopeful. Was it then - and is it now - simply just showing off? It doesn't feel like it.
Or is it some plea? Some effort to get my grandmother, the visiting teachers, the potential reader, to know me? Some desire to see my world, or myself, through someone else's eyes? Some filter for the descriptions of myself I can't express?
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