The Narnia Effect

So today I've been back in TO (as in back at work) one week. I've already had the yes-I've-landed-safely-Skype conversations with D & my family, who both asked how it feels to be back.

Unreal, I answered, because just like the first time I arrived in Toronto, I arrived on a Tuesday night and went to work the following morning. Just like when I left, the weather is incredibly warm and clammy, feeling decidedly more tropic than it did back home. The bike, although cobwebbed, was ready to go and the screw that holds the saddle down was just as loose as when I left it (it has, in fact, fallen off competely, giving the springs full liberty to 'vibrate' the saddle whenever I walk the bike... it looks riiiiidiculous). The new roommate who was supposed to move in while I was gone had moved in and suddenly moved out again, so Anna was still the sole tenant of the house, just like when I left. Work, naturally, hadn't progressed a bit while I was away. Toronto, in my eyes, looks and feels exactly the same as when I left. I've heard of this effect from people who leave and return to small towns, but I wasn't expecting the same of a 2.7-million city core.

It feels like in the Narnia books, where Lucy was gone for hours and hours in Narnia but finds, upon returning, that she's only been missing (or missed, rather) for a few minutes.

This is the opposite feeling from what I had on coming to Sweden - I could feel tangibly that I'd missed a huge chunk of summer. I left when the cherry trees were just in bloom, and when I returned the fruits on the trees had already fallen off. The local transport system in my home town had changed ticketing systems. New eateries had opened in my old neighbourhood. D's hair was much longer, and my brother's was shorter. My cousins were taller. My research department at Chalmers had moved to a newly refurbished building. A colleague had gotten married.

So here I am in a much bigger city, but feeling a small-town effect of nothing having changed. Did I even go home?

Fortunately for me, I am not Lucy, so I have evidence of having gone home and come back. A coffee pot from IKEA. A bag of lösgodis (candy bought in bulk, that I gave to Anna) on the kitchen table. A spikmatta (which, bizarrely enough, is all the rage in Sweden... Incidentally, it works! My shoulder ache is gone!). A myriad of photos of me blissfully returning to the sea (I take my aquarian nature rather seriously), spending time on the swedish west coast, and attending my aunt's lovely wedding and the awesome Way Out West festival - with my nearest and dearest.

The most Narnia-esque difference is that some summer clothes are missing from the wardrobe. And some winter ones, anticipating Canada's elongated winter, have appeared.