The other night, I found myself thinking about home—that slippery concept. I was sitting at my desk, staring out my rain-soaked window, and suddenly I was back at my childhood home on 7th and Cypress.
A place where time paused for breath, where my knees were perpetually scraped, and the sun set behind the same walnut trees day after day. It was a street of familiar routines, the backdrop of childhood beliefs that everything—absolutely everything—would turn out alright.
Our home on 7th and Cypress was a beautiful Victorian, painted white with an immaculate garden and a pergola of grape vines. The ornate front door had a large oval window etched with delicate rose patterns, giving the house a sense of elegance. The house is still standing, no longer white, and the garden is simplified, although the grape vines remain.
It was the centre of my universe.
Home was where my parents lived, where laughter was a constant, and every corner had its own echo of love. It was where my father, Nicolas, in all his sternness, tried to teach me lessons I only half listened to, and where my mother, Evangelia, coaxed out softness from the harder parts of life.
I remember the mischief that home saw—the small rebellions that made it more than just a place. I never learned to ride a bike, which felt like a small crime at the time, a rite of passage skipped. But there were other rites: sneaking out with my dad’s green Pontiac Parisienne, an impulsive act of independence that almost shattered beneath the thrill of freedom.
Or the time I shaved off my widow’s peak, trying so hard to look like the Canadian classmates I desperately wanted to blend in with. Home held those transformations, those ridiculous, tender attempts to belong.
And then there were the small failures.
I remember taking a handful of coins from my mother’s purse to buy candy from the corner store, only to be caught because I didn’t realize how money worked. One morning, my mother was waiting for me at the corner store as I made my way to buy candy before the first bell rang. This was in elementary school.
That corner store, with its sticky, sugar-covered candy, was just a half-block up the street from St. Augustine’s—another place that taught me about identity, about growing up in fits and starts. Home was always there, solid and steady, watching over me as I fell, stumbled, and rose again.
Teenage years changed the scenery but not the story. I can still feel the hours spent on the phone with girlfriends, dissecting every possible meaning behind a two-second glance from a boy.
The house was my refuge during those years of tangled emotions, when love first broke my heart and I howled at the walls of my bedroom. I remember the terrible arguments with my father too—the shouting, the banging of doors—both of us convinced we were right, the house barely containing our stubbornness.
And then, life circled back.
Home became something else, the place I returned to when my father grew ill. Stage four cancer and the walls that once witnessed my growing pains now held me as I tried to be brave for him, as I nursed him through that final, devastating journey.
There, I cried for my father, Nicolas, until the tears turned my rivers of pain into rivers of forgiveness.
In some ways, I think we all end up coming back to those early places—even if just in our minds. The physical house on 7th and Cypress still stands, an amazing feat considering how much the neighbourhood has changed.
It’s no longer mine, of course. But it lives on in my memory as something more.
It’s an idea, a place where I belonged without question, a feeling of being held, even in moments when I was coming undone.
Now, as I sit here writing, my definition of home has evolved. It’s less tied to a location and more about the people, the memories, the collection of moments I hold close. Home is in the stories I tell my daughter—my way of bringing those 7th Avenue days into the present, hoping that she finds the same kind of comfort in my stories as I do in sharing them online. It’s in my writing, in the way I put words together to reach across time and touch something that matters.
From an Orthodox Christian perspective, home is the Church.
Church, with its incense and candlelight, was my refuge when the world felt too heavy. In the prayers and the supplications, in the quiet moments of veneration, I found another kind of belonging.
It was where I felt the warmth of community, a sense of being part of something larger than myself. The church held me in its ancient embrace, a reminder that home is not always made of bricks and beams—it can be built on faith, on shared beliefs, on the silent understanding that we are all seeking something beyond the tangible.
Now that I’m older, home is where I can examine my mistakes and forgive them. It’s where I remember my father’s lessons, my mother’s softness.
Where I recall the awkwardness of not quite fitting in and finally smile at it. It’s not a physical space anymore—not exactly. It’s a state of being, a layer beneath the everyday, the quiet understanding that wherever I go, I carry these pieces with me.
Home is also the final resting place, the eternal embrace that awaits us all. It’s the place we return to after this life, a destination that offers peace and reunion.
Home is never perfect. It’s full of scraped knees, stolen coins, shattered hearts, and things left unsaid.
And yet, in all its flawed glory, it’s where I find myself.
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