Guest Blogger:Theresa of A Mountain Momma"Come from away Momma..."

Today I am pleased to present guest blogger Theresa of A Mountain Momma. She's a fellow Canadian eh? We even kind of share a mountain.

Theresa is the mother of two little girls and currently a stay at home mom. She has one month before she will leave the nest to start graduate school. Theresa began her blog to discuss issues pertaining to motherhood and writing, and to explore her own experiences as a parent. She also uses her blog to explore and expand her writing skills.

"I am a writer and I try to live it everyday."

She describes herself as a huge sap, which makes for some interesting posts. You can learn more about Theresa at her blog: This Mountain Momma

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Let's get to know Theresa better:

Hi, my name is Theresa and I live somewhere in the vast expanse that is Canada (hint...BC...). This is my first guest post and I am so pleased that it is here with Sue at Cookie's Chronicles!

Cookie has questions. I have answers:

Favourite word:

What kind of question is that? Outrageous!

Favourite time of day:

Witching hour, provided the kids are asleep. I love the quiet and try to write as much as possible when I can at this hour.

Favourite emotion:

This may sound strange, but I feel so much from sadness. I don't want to be sad, but it awakens something in me. Perhaps its an appreciation for the happier times or a fresh outlook on the world and my place in it.

Favourite book:

My favourite book is Swan Song, by Robert McCammon. I have read it at least 6 times since I was a teenager.

Favourite comfort food:

Mashed potatoes. I am from Prince Edward Island, so I think its the law that I crave them at all hours.

Favourite of my posts:

Double Rainbow Momma http://www.amountainmomma.com/2011/07/20/double-rainbow-momma/

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Come from away Momma

by Theresa of A Mountain Momma

This year marks a milestone for me. 

A halfway point, perhaps one where I stop belonging nowhere.

Where I find a home that is mine, where I live, where I belong, where I will stay.

I grew up on Prince Edward Island.

I am spending a month here with my children for summer vacation.

It is a picturesque place coated in rusty red fields and singing almond beaches that line its sparkling shore. A giant small town that churns out potatoes, lobster, and Anne of Green Gables aplenty. And otherness.

It’s not your usual brand of otherness related to colour, language, or culture. It is an otherness born out of absence. To be born somewhere else is to Come From Away.

My mother is from P.E.I., but met my father while working at Lake Louise in Alberta. They married and had my sister and I, before moving back to here. Once they returned to the Island they had my brother and settled permanently. 

They were back-to-the-landers. We didn’t farm on a large scale, but we grew our own vegetables, raised chickens, and lived the rural life. 

I had a wonderful childhood. Running wild through the woods, cooking up schemes in the tree house, crashing the waves all summer, and getting bug bites so bad they would make me cry.

But, there was always a little something in back of my mind. A sense of belonging that was missing. I didn’t realize till I was a bit older and my brother remarked, “Me and mum are the only real Islanders! You and Serra were born away!”

I had always felt some mystery surrounding the place of my birth. A mythical place called, “Calgary” that was emblazed on my birth certificate and baptism candle box.  A land where my father picked dinosaurs from the land and people spoke with great seriousness about The Depression. A place I had never seen.

Not many would remark on my status, but it was evident in the comments people made about those that Came From Away that I did not belong. No matter how long you live here, if you are not born here, you are not an Islander.

When I was 19, I left. I packed my bags, pointed my nose West and didn’t look for back for 5 years. I moved to Vancouver Island on the West Coast with my mother, brother, and sister. 

After living in Victoria for several years I travelled to China, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Australia. By the time I came back to PEI I had learned new languages, tried new foods, and set foot in buildings older than Canada could ever hope to be.

Coming back to the Island did not feel like coming home. 

Aside from a few close family and friends, most did not care much that I had returned and did not want to hear stories of the far away places I had been or sights I had seen. I felt a strange kind of disdain and disapproval that made me feel like a traitor, even though I had never been one of them in the first place. 

People would remark that I must think them small and their ways stupid now that I had seen the world.  Their statements said more about them than they did me. 

I still come back every other summer. I bring my children to see the beaches of my youth, to run through the green wheat, feet brick red on the bottoms.

This year I turn 38 years old. I was 19 when I left. 

I have reached a point in my life where I have been gone as long as I had been here. 

I used to say I was from PEI, but am I? I was never really from here in the first place, my bones salted and grown in a far off land of dust and badlands. 

When I think of home now I think of mountains and glaciers and trees tall enough to touch the sky.

The only thing that seems out of place is the dirt. The dirt of the West and most places, is gray, dull, and lifeless. 

If only the mountains struck themselves from the red clay. Then I would truly feel at home.