Remembering Kitchener

“You don’t have to come all the way to my office,” I compromise with one of my manager located two towers down from where my office is. “I’ll just meet you half way in the lobby area, okay?”

“Oh I see what you’re trying to do,” I can visualize his grin over the telephone.

“What?” I honestly didn’t know what he was thinking.

“You just want an excuse to go visit with what’s-her-name from front desk.”

“First of all, no I don’t. Secondly, that chapter is closed. We’ve moved on.”

“But do you ever think about her?”

His grin is still present on his face as he hands me the new agreements for an employee, trying to get a rise out of me. But is it that hard to believe? Two individuals who once shared strong feelings for each other moving on with their lives?

I glance at the agreement as my manager’s voice trails off into the distance and a word catches my eye. Kitchener. The employee’s address before moving to Edmonton was Kitchener, Ontario, a place that I have a spot for in my heart; a word that always makes me wonder what if.

A year ago, I was approached by my boss with the opportunity to move to our Kitchener office for a one year term doing the same job I do here. My rent would be covered; my plane ticket home would be expensed for holidays and breaks and it was an opportunity that I felt would change my life.

I was all for it; willing to leave what I had here to see what life had planned for me. For the next few weeks I would day dream about what my apartment would look like and what there would be to do in my new neighborhood. My heart raced with excitement and fear. My band would have to take a one year hiatus; maybe I’d grow a beard and work on my music in the evenings; have some conversation with strangers at the local coffee shop; maybe even get a tattoo out there. But it never happened. Instead they decided to hire a temporary employee to cover the year stretch.

I’m not sitting here in Edmonton saying that I yearn for that event to go a different way because I absolutely love where I’m living now. In fact, it’s because of that event that allowed me to discover and develop many of the things I hold dear to me now.

You can say to many extents that I’m over Kitchener but there’s always going to be a part of me that wonders, once in a blue moon, how my life would have been had things not ended between us. Sometimes the things that never are, are the things that change you the most.

I look at my manger and smile, “Sure I do, once in a blue moon.”