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A famous writer once said that endings bring about new beginnings; when one door of happiness closes, another is bound to open up.  Everyone’s journey is full of these comings and goings, and while some view them as failures or tragedies, my personal belief is that everything happens for a reason.  If I had to pick a genre to file my life under, I’d choose ‘fairy tale’ every time.

My own story begins, quite simply, at the end of someone else’s – namely, my grandmother. Ever since I can remember she had been a constant fixture in my life. She’s there in my very first clear memory, a family picnic underneath a lilac bush that was abruptly ended when my brother, Alex, discovered an anthill and unintentionally invited the whole colony to lunch.  When I was a toddler my Granny was more a mother to me than anyone else, as my actual mother was busy completing her PhD in Russian Studies, so until I started school shed lived with us.  By the time my father would arrive home from work and my mother from the school they would find that my grandmother and I had done our best to turn the house into a bakery; our counters were always overflowing with cakes, cookies, and other good things during that time. I guess that’s why I’ve always associated her with the sweet things in my life.  She was there to cheer me on at all of my figure skating competitions, and when I agonized over whether I should give it all up to devote myself to soccer full-time, she was the one that reminded me that soccer was a summer sport, and didn’t always interfere with my summer training in the rink; I could do both, she said.  When I gave up my gold-medal aspirations and allowed skating to become a passion instead of an obsession, I was fifteen.  On my birthday that year she walked in the door carrying a cumbersome black case and a gift certificate for music lessons, and I’ve played the cello ever since.  When I think back on the time I spent with her, there isn’t a chance that I would have become the person I am today without her steady influence.

I can date her decline from my last year of high school.  When her husband – my grandfather – died while my mother was pregnant with Alex and I, he left money in a trust for our education, and so we had always gone to a private school, one of the best in Canada.  They required all students in grade 12 to board at the school to prepare for living away from home during university.  Up until then we had bussed back and forth from the school in Oakville to our house east of Toronto, or had been driven by dad on his way to work if the weather was bad enough for the buses to stop running.  That year, though, we only found time to visit home every second weekend.  Alex had always been the more social twin, and he thrived in the dorms where he was just seconds away from his best friends, of which he had many.  I, on the other hand, am pretty sure I was known mostly as “Alex’s sister”, the shy one who divided her time between the soccer field and the library. My small circle of friends that I met over the years through figure skating, soccer, and school didn’t mind letting me keep to myself while they flirted and double-dated, but they never understood why I was always turning down offers from the guys in our grade.  Truthfully, I’d never learned how to be anything more than a friend with a member of the opposite sex.  As a painfully shy girl with a twin of the opposite gender, my companions in our formative years were mostly Alex’s friends, and I was just his annoying sister who mom forced to tag along. I had grown up with all these gangly, shaggy-haired boys, and suddenly they had started to view me as something more than Alex O’Connor’s sister. But I couldn’t – or didn’t want to - see them as anything other than the little boys I had spent my summers with, so I turned down dates and dance invitations, spending my evenings with my single girlfriends or the few guys who had decided that being friends with me was better than nothing at all.  Every so often my grandmother would come and visit, or I would take Alex with me to her retirement home.  As time passed, we watched her fade from my vibrant, lovely Gran into a shell of herself.  At our graduation ceremony she was in a wheelchair, and that’s when I knew I didn’t have much time left to spend with her.  So I made a big decision: Instead of leaving home to go to university, I lived at home and work for a year.  I had planned to go to the East Coast for school, but I deferred my admission and stayed in Toronto instead.  After all, a little extra spending money never hurt anyone, now did it?

“That was the best decision I ever made,” I thought to myself at her funeral.  We had shared countless laughs and chats over our favourite Earl Gray tea that would never had happened had I spent that year a two-hour plane flight away. 

“I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything in the world.”   Staying at home had also given me time to begin my long goodbye, and I felt at peace with the way she had gone.  Driving home from the cemetery our car was quiet.  We were all thinking of Gran, I’m sure.  When we stopped at a red light my mother turned around from the passenger seat to look at Alex and I in the back.

“Your father and I wanted to wait until after the funeral to tell you both this, but your grandmother left us something quite interesting in her will.” She rolled her eyes, but it was a good-humoured expression, one that I knew meant she was amused, not angry.

“You both know how much she loves – loved - the outdoors,” Mom continued, grimacing slightly at having to speak of her mother in the past tense, “When she was growing up on the East Coast, I guess there was this one particular place that she really loved.  And, well, she knew your father had always dreamed of a Walden-esque retirement…”

“A what retirement?” Alex asked.  He’d never been much of a reader.

A chuckle came from my dad in the driver’s seat.

“Cabin in the woods, Alex.” I could see his eyes crinkle in the rearview mirror.  It was comforting to know that he could still smile.

My mother rolled her eyes for a second time.

“Anyway, your grandmother had quite the sense of humour, because we’re nowhere near retirement, but she’s bought us our cabin. Although it’s not so much what you would call a cabin.  It’s more of a house.  Quite a large house, in fact.  And it’s in Nova Scotia.”

My eyes lit up.  Nova Scotia? It was late May, but I had been putting off any thought of organizing living arrangements for the coming school year until after the funeral.  Alex was headed to Mount A in New Brunswick, and I was going to Dalhousie in Halifax.  I had been dreading leaving for in the past few months, but the thought of an amazing present like that from Gram awaiting me when I arrived was pretty appealing.

“Where in Nova Scotia is this place?” I asked.

“It’s on Schubenacadie Grand Lake.  It’s about a half-hour commute from downtown, depending on traffic,” My mother inhaled like she was nervous for what she had to say next, “I think we can all agree that with Gran gone, there’s not a lot keeping us in this part of the country.  Most of the rest of our family is out East, and you’re both heading out there for school in the fall…” She trailed off, looking to my father to continue.

            “For some time now we’ve both been looking at relocating.  Your mother applied for an opening in the Dalhousie faculty a few months ago, and I’m able to do my work at the bank regardless of where I work from.  So this house was essentially the last piece in the puzzle.  Alanna, you’ll be welcome to live with us, if you’d like.  And Alex, you won’t be too far away, so you can visit whenever you like.  If you get sick of life in the dorms, at least you’ll have a place to stay.”

            “If I get sick of the dorms, you mean,” Alex grinned, “This is awesome!”

            “Right. Alanna, your thoughts?”

            I paused to think for a second.  Leaving our home would mean leaving all of the places that had become so dear to me over my life.  But at the same time, would those places really still hold any magic now that all the people I loved had left them? My friends were all dispersing around the country, as far away as British Columbia and Alberta, but lucky for me a few had decided on east coast schools, and I’d be able to see them regularly.  Gran was the one thing left that had tied us to Toronto, and now she was gone.  It was time to move on.

            A small smile crept up to my lips.

            “I can’t wait.  This is going to be one heck of a summer.”

    I had no idea at the time how true those words would come to be.