What Home Means To Me

Sometimes home will change. Sometimes home will change twice. Or thrice. Maybe more. I still remember December 20th, 2023. The day I left my home and my friends. 4,000 kilometers north of Jamaica, after 4 hours, the Air Canada 787-8 landed in Toronto. I wasn’t going to live there, but my mother and I were required to stop there, then take an Air Canada Airbus A320 to Fredericton. When I saw my mother walking to the Immigration section, I got scared. I didn’t want to stay in Canada. What about my family? What about my cousins? What about Naomi, Kyrie, Taison, and everyone else? I didn’t want to leave them. Not forever. But I couldn’t be sad forever. I had to see what this country had to offer. I had spent 2.5 months in Fredericton and made one casual friend when my mother began to pack. My father had lived in Fredericton since April of 2024, but he had found a construction job in Moncton. So that’s where we went next. I hadn’t made any real friends, so I wasn’t devastated. But Moncton was a different story. Nine days after I arrived, I went to Northrop Fyre Elementary School. I found a real friend. David. He didn’t go behind my or ignore me or have too many friends for me. I could be myself. After summer break, I arrived at Maplehurst Middle School. I found Arizona. He was a real friend too. My life is fairly well and I hope my Jamaican friends are okay. But I wouldn’t have a nice life if I had held on to the past. The point of this story can be put into 2 words: Look ahead.