Home for the holidays…

Points North

By James Fife

For the philosophical, it's the duality of the dialectic; for the scientific, it's the equal and opposite reaction; for the spiritual, it's the yin and the yang.  Whichever you prefer, the simple reality is that for the pleasure Marilyn and I derive from our new, bi-national lifestyle, there is also a downside to having a home here in Victoria at the same time as one in San Diego. That became clear at this time of year, because there was the Big Decision about where to spend the holidays: in Victoria or in San Diego. 

Now, I know some of you readers are thinking this is a no-brainer.  With the mercury in the one barely registering a positive number and the typical daytime high around 22 in the other, I'm probably getting a lot of head scratching about why there is even a question to answer. 

There's no debate that the weather is one of the biggest, ongoing differences in our two home bases.  But that's just the point.  Mild as Victoria's famous climate is, San Diego is just not at all variable from the year-round norm.  And that explains the attraction of snow.

When the few winter storms hit our mountains in San Diego County, the roads to the backcountry immediately clog with gawkers and family-packed SUVs trying desperately to enjoy a slight tinge of the traditional “back-east” sort of weather we associate with the holidays.  Even though a half-inch of snow is hardly enough to permit downhill sledging without breaking a tailbone or two as you bounce over the lightly-dusted rocks, it's the novelty of it that beckons and draws the crowds.

Here, the snow is not as novel as it is in California, and you don't have to drive hours and wait in a traffic jam to find a parking space to get out and enjoy it.  You just have to risk your life on the toboggan run called the Malahat. But snow is right there, not far away.  And even here, in Victoria, Marilyn and I saw frost patches on the pavement early in the morning that we naive Californians can pretend is actual snow.  Such is the draw that brings us to the point of decision.  Since the very winteriness of even a James Bay frost is emblematic of our new home up north, we want to come experience it. 

As in numerous homes around the world, there is the constant problem of where to spend the holidays: which set of friends and/or relatives is given the special honour this year?  For us, the decision is complicated by the fact that we do not have any familial connections to Victoria, so abandoning loved ones to be on our own in a different place creates additional tensions.  Then there's the physical complication that our James Bay home is undergoing renovations that are only partially complete, causing us to live a life something like semi-squatters.  With no working refrigerator, we have to leave our cold-storage food items in a bag on the balcony.  Now, there's something we couldn't attempt to get away with in San Diego!

Though living the squatter life is a down-side to the decision to spend the holidays in James Bay, it's not as bad as all that.  After all, it bears no comparison to the down-side of being actually homeless during this time of year, in either city.  Even in San Diego, the weather takes enough of a down-turn that you will see the shelterless encamp close to a curb-side utility transformer, trying to absorb some of the meagre heat it prodigally radiates into the winter wind.  But here's a difference I've noted: in Victoria, the sprouting of tent towns in public spaces (Beacon Hill Park and the downtown courthouse) is taken as a spur to find a solution to a problem that now impinges directly on the public consciousness.  In San Diego, they are just moved along by police, unseen and unrecognized, so the problem remains unaddressed.  But that's all part of a general difference between our two homes that is reflected in a number of ways we are slowly coming to learn.

Certainly, one difference we have not seen is in the outward manifestations of the holidays up north and down south.  From what we have seen, there is the same, sudden profusion of sales banners and electric lights.  Some displays are in very traditional red and green, some in more chic and modern blues or crystal-white.  They range from the massive festooning of the Legislative Assembly here, and in San Diego, Sea World's stringing lights up its massive observation tower to create a Christmas tree visible over half the city, to the more modest string of lights along the house eaves or that simple string of blue lights running up the main sheet on a sail boat moored off Fisherman's Wharf. 

We have to admit that Victoria's holiday parade was rather more elaborate than the one in our hometown of La Mesa - we swear that last year some marching groups had doubled back to come up the street a second time, adding an artificial appearance of bulk.  Here, standing for two hours along Government Street in near-zero weather called for more fortitude than Marilyn and I knew we had.  We were sure glad to retreat inside a warm restaurant after St. Nick's sleigh had passed. And it wasn't the make-believe sort of chill that San Diegans conjure up to justify their exaggerated brrr expressions and hand-rubbing.  We definitely earned our hot chocolate in Victoria, fair and square.

So coming north, even for only part of the season, was well worth it.  It's given us one more seasonal association with James Bay that makes us feel we are getting to know all its ways and moods.  The compromise is that we return to San Diego for the second round of the holiday bout.  It's the yin with the yang, again.  In that sense, wherever we spend those days, we can honestly say we were home for the holidays.  So, although we'll be home down south with family and friends known for years during the actual Yuletide, part of us will be longing for the days we spent at home up north, getting to know it better. Maybe next year. . .

Happy Holidays to all our (yet undiscovered) friends in Home North.