Belonging

There is a topic that has been an ongoing part of the human conversation since our species stopped being inherently nomadic and we began calling one place or another home. It’s a topic that, as an immigrant, as the child of immigrants, as the grandchild of immigrants, always leaves me torn.

It is the discourse of where we belong.

If I could travel back in time and stop certain inevitable accidents of history and terrible acts of human cruelty, I would never have existed. My families originate across Europe and Asia, brought together—barely—by the need to belong somewhere, to reconnect with their heritage.

And then we go to Canada.

It’s a hard thing to admit, and I won’t make any County friends this way, but I was raised in the Greater Toronto Area. In fact, I have really only spent a couple years in the County. I don’t own land here. I’ve never sprouted roots here. But I have never sprouted roots anywhere, really. I think it’s a quirk of people who have family and recall life in more than one place.

And there’s this constant topic up for discussion. There are so many nuances, but at the root, it’s all about belonging. About where your grandfather’s grandfather grew up. It’s common rhetoric in Israel, where I was born. It’s prevalent in the quest for understanding the rights of Canada’s first nations.

Here in the County, there are the County folk, whose grandparents worked the land. And then there are the ones who come here with no context, no history. We do not belong.

I wonder, when I listen to these conversations— never directed aggressively at me, but affecting me nonetheless—where do I belong?

My grandathers’ grandfathers are from Russia and Afghanistan, two places I’ve never been. I doubt I’d be welcomed with open arms. I don’t have a strong enough connection to my native language or land to return to my birthplace. I certainly don’t belong in Toronto (I don’t think anyone does, really). Someone recently joked that we should all go back to Africa, the origin of our species.

As the Hayloft creeps toward its opening next weekend, that topic comes up in conversation again. The Torontonian couple who bought the old barn I never enjoyed as a teen do not belong, they are not from here. Other new businesses scramble to highlight their County connection: See? We actually are County folk!

Of course, there is a fear of change. There is a fear of the degradation of our heritage and of everything we hold dear. That, too, is human. Some of us are not County folk, but that doesn’t mean we’d allow anything to happen to this, our adopted home, the soil for our cuttings.

Not everyone can belong to a place. So if your grandfather worked the land, be kind to those nomads who have found their way to this little corner of the world. We’re just looking for a place to belong.

mihal@mihalzada.com