I ran away from home in January. This isn’t as cowardly as it sounds, although I did ditch my children, husband, alarm clock, math homework, and the cold. There was a reason for it. My mother grew up in Laos and I had the chance to discover her country through her eyes. This allowed me to visit as a tourist, but with a local slant. The flavours and sounds of Laos were woven into our lives early on and much of what I saw and heard on this trip was familiar. While it helped to have someone …
Creating a Tradition
My parents come from humble beginnings. Both children of coal miners on Canada's Atlantic coast, they grew up with very few material possessions and they carried nothing forward into their adult lives from their family's past. There was simply nothing to pass forward, except photos and stories. It certainly hasn't detracted from my life that I don't have a tangible item to connect me to relatives, but I always loved the notion of the girl wearing her mom's wedding dress or a boy proposing with …
