love-in

Almost a hundred people struggled through roadworks and traffic to come to our 'leaving do' picnic at Stanmer Park, just outside of Brighton. It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon. Grown-ups lolled on the grass, chatting, eating, drinking, and laughing. Children gambolled - no, really, they gambolled-- climbing trees, hiding in the shrubbery, flying kites, playing football (and firing Nerf guns at each other. Well, what can you do). We meandered amongst knots of friends, greeting, hugging, kissing, crying. We knew everyone but not everyone knew everyone else, so we had the cosy sense of being at the centre of a web. It was like our wedding but without the rabbi and the ceremony. As I surveyed the untidy array of blankets and baskets spreading across the lawn, I fell in love: a visible, tangible representation of communities created over the last six years here in Sussex. One friend perspicaciously asked me whether my anxiety about moving stemmed from fear of the new, or sadness about leaving the old, and I realize that it's very much the latter. I am not unduly worried about the nuts and bolts of starting again(I may soon look back and sneer at my foolhardy self), but I wonder what we were thinking when we chose to head for pastures new and cold. If we'd had to fill in a balance sheet, assessing the value of our friends, our community, the network that cossets us here, against the wonders that are said to await us Over There, what would we have chosen to do? Maybe it will be, as I'm told again and again, a mere trifle to make friends and build networks in Toronto. At the moment, I don't care. At the moment, I don't want new friends or new community. I want the ones I've got.