...first full-dress encounter...

This morning, my entire family sat around the kitchen table, heads crowded around my computer, waiting for my aunt and uncle on the other end to respond to my "ichat" request. Another minute, and their faces came on to the screen. We shouted and chatted, everyone trying to get their words in (the telephone is more civilised, in that respect). The thrilling novelty of speaking to people across the ocean and seeing their faces before you almost made us forget the pain of knowing they had to move back to Iran.

Pain and something else, some universal sense of failure that we all took in and made part of ourselves. Somehow we couldn't find a way to help them stay in this country, 25 years after they started the project. After learning the language, becoming citizens, making their lives here, raising their families here; in the end Canada didn't make it work for them, and they went home.

Home? This is home, isn't it? After a quarter century and two generations of family, this is home. How is this possible? Is it really so tenuous as all that?

If it is, then home is in the connections. Not where we end up but how we reach other. Early-morning crowded encounters and shouted catching-up. Getting through the inconsequential everyday, seven days of things that don't mean as much as they used to, until the next Sunday and seeing you again.