Mitigoog Call Me Home

This essay was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize; news articles about the piece can be found here and here.

–

My white grandma has a photo of me at four years old. Blue butterfly on my t-shirt, feet planted on a branch. One hand steadying myself against mitig’s trunk, the other on my hip. I have the kind of wide-toothed smile only an abinoonjiinh can have, the kind that makes it clear the world has not gotten to me yet. 

–

I am six when we move to the old house. We are renting, nimomma and I, from my white grandparents. They bought this house as a rental property; it was built in the 1970s, and thirty years later, it retains the same russet cupboards and peeling yellow linoleum. 

I did not could not understand why we were moving four hours away from dad to live here. There were kids to play with and elderly neighbours serving me warm chocolate chip cookies on my old street. Here, the houses do not touch and the neighbour kids do not play with me. 

Nimomma says this is home now. I affix princess stickers to my bedroom wall and make friends with the mitigoog in my backyard.

–

I feel the eyes of my new classmates on me before I speak to them. I do not have to say anything to know that I am different. I am mixed-race, and do not have the kind of house or family that everyone else in my class seems to. 

At Christmastime, I ask my teacher if I can make separate gifts, one for my dad and one for nimomma. They live in different houses, I explain, and I do not know when dad will visit ours next. 

The boy next to me asks, “So is your dad dead, or did your parents get a divorce?”. He flashes me a cheshire cat smile as he emphasises his first syllable. Dee-vorce. 

“Neither,” I tell him, “my dad never married my mom.”

“Then he must not be your real dad,” he replies. When I ask nimomma where my real dad is, she scowls.

–

My classmates and their nuclear families have backyards enclosed by white picket fences. My house is enclosed by two rows of azaadiwag and oziisigobiminzhiig.

I may not have a nice house, but I can have a nice treehouse, I think. Determined, I find the two sturdiest mitigoog in my yard and decide that these will form its foundation. I forage for wood scraps, forming a pile at the trees’ base so I remember which ones I have chosen. This will make it easier for dad to build, I think to myself.

My father never builds the treehouse.  

–

Nimomma assures me that my father loves me, the mitigoog just aren’t sturdy enough for him to build a treehouse with. I’ve climbed them before, and I know they can hold me. She kisses my forehead for foraging the wood scraps, tells me she will use them as kindling for this summer’s ishkode.

At my white family reunions, relatives spend an afternoon peacocking their children’s accomplishments while playing organized games. When my Anishinaabe family gets together, we spend weeks laughing, crying and telling stories around ishkode while NCI ‘friends on Friday’ plays in the background. 

Each year, a new cousin is assigned to babysit me. I know this is not really for my benefit: nimomma is reprieving her siblings of putting food on the table for a few weeks, and paying my cousins an allowance to support their families. When my aunties and uncles visit, we squeeze everyone wherever they can fit: mattresses in the basement, tents in the backyard, cots in the garage. 

Summers are a source of tension between my parents.

“Can’t I get some damn peace and quiet?”, yells my father.

“They’re my family,” replies nimomma, “I won’t say no to my family”.

–

In September, our new teacher asks what we did during the summer. Most kids in my class have gone on vacation or to sleepover summer camp. I envy the summer camp kids, but I remind myself that I already live amidst mitigoog and tell stories by ishkode.

That year, I have a grand idea: I am going to start a soccer league with all my classmates, so they can fall in love with mitigoog too. 

At show and tell, I share my plan. We will play on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and my dad, who can do anything, will coach us. I don’t have a net, not yet, but the mitigoog are spaced out perfectly in my backyard for us to practice with. I know, because I have been practicing.

I do not remember anyone signing up. I do remember my father’s outburst at me for proposing the idea. 

“Are you insane?” he asks. “I thought you just wanted to have some friends over for an afternoon. I can’t drive three and a half hours to be there twice a week.”

But you could be here, I think but do not say.

–

I am fifteen when we move to the new house, the one my parents own. This one is lined with mashkiigwaatigoog and gaawaandagoog, and there is ceramic tile in our kitchen instead of linoleum. 

My parents get engaged as the leaves turn colour. I ask nimomma how she could marry my father when he has spent so much time leaving us.

“You will understand when you fall in love,” she tells me. “When you love someone, you never stop loving them, no matter the time and space between you”.

–

At eighteen, I move to Algonquin territory, where the land is full of ziinzibaakwadwaatigoog and aniibiig. Here, I go for runs under canopies of mitigoog near my campus and break away to the mitigwaaki of Outaouais when I can. Here I am the keener in all my university classes, except one.

In statistics sits a boy I often have my eye on but rarely the courage to speak to. In our tutorial together, my heart flutters; I watch him laugh with his friends instead of running the software for our assignments. He is all from that class I remember.

Years later, I work up the courage to ask him to be my senior gala date. Covid cuts our formal plans short, and we promise to keep in touch as we move across the country from each other. Separated by thousands of kilometres, he tells me, “People do a talking with little action, but I felt the need to not be that person and let you know in the least friendship-ruining way possible that I am crushing on you”.

His text makes me melt, but I’m not ready to commit to a long-distance relationship and neither is he. We spend the next year joking about meeting up and making vague international plans for our respective futures. I want to study in Aotearoa. He wants to study in England. “Let’s keep each other posted on our international contenders,” I tell him, “Maybe one day we’ll end up abroad together”.

I call him one night to toy with the idea of seeing each other in person. Mid-conversation, I hang up the phone, book a two week trip, and send him a screenshot of my tickets. “Holy shit”, he texts me. “Holy shit is right”, I reply back, breathless at my own bold move.

People do a talking with little action, I think. I want to be the one who takes action in the most friendship-ruining way possible.

—

We start dating three weeks later. I tell statistics boy that I adore him. He jokingly points out to me that adorer means “to love” in French. I already know I love him, I’m just too nervous to say it.

On our call that night, I open up to him about my biggest fear: losing him when we go away to do our Masters. He tells me he wants to find a way to make us work, even from different continents.

“Hypothetically speaking,” he says, “If I were to say the L word, would you want me to wait? Because I’m ready to take the leap now”.

I know exactly why he is offering me the L-word. It is his assurance that this is going to work. That we are going to be the lucky ones who beat the odds and survive long-distance.

“Say it”, I plead.

“I love you, Taylor”, he says for the first time.

“I love you too”, I say, words melting effortlessly out of my mouth.

In that moment, my beloved and I become an ishkode, adamant to burn bright no matter the time and space between us.

—

We call for hours every night, fly back and forth every month. Every trip spent together is a romance movie I never want to end; he makes me feel as at home among the ziinzibaakwadwaatigoog as I do for him among the χpey̓əɬp. Nimomma is right; at twenty-two, I am in love, and I never want it to stop.

Four months into our relationship, my beloved and I are in Lək̓ʷəŋən territory, lingering in a restaurant doorway as an oziisigobiminzh sways beside us. It is here that I have the conversation I have been dreaming of my entire life.

I tell him I have something important to say. As he hovers above me, the words “You’re the love of my life, and I want to be with you for a very long time, if not forever” tumble recklessly out of my mouth. I speak my words so close together they nearly touch.

With a knowing laugh, he replies with surety. “You’re the love of my life too. I’ll take the leap and say I for sure want to be with you forever.”

He leans in. We kiss, and the entire world stops.

Forever, I think. He is mine forever.

—

I am twenty-four when I read about the wild conifers invading Tāhuna Hill. “These may look like alpine trees fit for skiing,” reads a Department of Conservation sign, “but in reality, they are an introduced species, growing in the wrong place”.

I too am an introduced species in Māori territory. Three months prior, I left my beloved to pursue a coveted Research Assistantship in Aotearoa. The night before being separated by fourteen thousand kilometres, we promise not to let long-distance come between us.

One hundred and three days later, the strain of time and space on our relationship is palpable. I know now that I, like the conifer, have been planted in the wrong place.

–

That August, my beloved breaks my heart against an oziisigobiminzh. The willow tree, a symbol of mourning across cultures.

“A willow would make for a perfect wedding arch,” I think out loud, staring up at its billowy branch curtain. 

“This is not the time,” he replies, releasing his grip on my hand as he ducks underneath it. 

You’re right,” I resign. I just don’t know how to imagine a future that does not have you in it, I think, but do not say. I reach for his hand again, knowing he no longer wants to hold my own.

–

Neither “Giga-waabamin miinawaa” nor “Au revoir” have a direct translation to goodbye, so we agree upon a see you later. Reluctantly separated by time and space, he moves to England and I do not follow him.

The willow tree, a symbol of rebirth and the endurance of love. I comfort myself with a promise that my beloved and I will return to one another when we are ready. For now, it is time for me to return to the mitigoog that raised me.

–

I am twenty-five and devastated. I move home because I do not know where else to go. I collapse into nimomma’s arms on airport carpet and she folds me into an asemaa-scented embrace.

“My girl,” she coos, the way mothers do. “Remember that you are a strong okitcitakwe. Your father and I will strengthen you until we get you back on your feet.”

I was a teenager when I last lived here. The first step of this healing journey is relearning how to live with my parents as an adult. I practice with my father while he is watching television. 

“You are not allowed to yell anymore,” I state, “At me or at mom. Or else I will leave. Understood?”.

“Understood”, he replies.

He has not yelled at me since. 

–

I relearn how to be my father’s daughter amidst the mashkiigwaatigoog and gaawaandagoog. In the seven years I spent away from home, my father has groomed a trail to walk our animosh, and every evening calls for another lap around the yard. 

Over the autumn months, we overcome our mutual mistrust. One afternoon, he finds me crying in my bedroom. 

“How did you forgive yourself for leaving?” I ask, as the one who has left and been left behind.

“I still wish I had a reset button to take my mistakes away,” he whispers.

My father breaks stoic character, if only for a split second. I do not tell him then, but it is the moment I forgive him.

–

“What are you processing in therapy this week?”, nimomma asks. 

“The last time dad yelled at me,” I tell her. 

Every time my memories threaten to engulf me, my therapist reminds me I have already survived the worst. I will only find freedom if I am brave enough to confront the past, she tells me.  

That night, nimomma writes me an apology I have been waiting years to hear: 

“I am sorry that you didn’t have a dad that was stable in your early life and teenage years. I understand how this led to anxiety for you. Even though I tried to give you safety, it should have been more.”

Her text makes me cry more than therapy does that week. Knowing it is not my fault, was never my fault, sets a small part of me free.

–

As the weeks between my being home and moving away again close in, I decide to tell my father I forgive him. I read somewhere that difficult conversations are made easier when two people are facing the same direction. I broach the subject while we are driving.

“I am sorry for harbouring anger against you all these years,” I say, facing forward. 

“Love you, kiddo,” he says back, also facing forward. “I’m glad you’re home. We should hang out more.” 

It is an imperfect apology between two imperfect people, and it heals us both.

I remind him that we only have two more weeks together to do that. He reminds me that we still have the rest of our lives.

–

Back on my feet, I move out of my parents’ home and into my own in England. Nimomma and I promise to write each other. I do not tell statistics boy. I’m not sure he wants to know.

Nimomma sources her first card from a responsibly managed forest. On it, she writes, “One little interesting tidbit I have learned: Storms make trees grow deeper roots. Trees react to stress by building mass to stand even stronger.”

I stare up at the wiigwaasaatigoog outside my window in their rangy, mottled glory, and know this to be true, about them and about me too. I smile, knowing that no matter where I am in this big, blue world, mitigoog are there, reminding me that I am never far from my roots. 

My beloved and I were separated by time and space before we got the chance to grow deeper roots. But I hope that wherever he is on this big, blue earth, statistics boy is looking out at an oziisigobiminzh, knowing my love is never far from him too.

–

Translations:

Words below are in Anishinaabemowin unless otherwise noted.

Abinoonjiinh - Child.

Mitigoog - Trees (plural).

Mitig - Tree (singular).

Nimomma - My Mother.

Ishkode - Fire.

Azaadiwag - Poplar trees (plural).

Mitigwaaki - Woods/Forest.

Ziinzibaakwadwaatigoog - Maple trees (plural).

Aniibiig - American Elm trees (plural).

χpey̓əɬp - Red Cedar tree (singular). *hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (Musqueam)

Le:y̓əɬp - Douglas Fir tree (singular). *hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (Musqueam)

Oziisigobiminzhiig - Willow trees (plural).

Oziisigobiminzh: Willow tree (singular).

Giga-waabamin miinawaa - Until I see you again.

Au revoir - Until we see each other again. *French

Asemaa - Tobacco.

Okitcitakwe - Warrior woman.

Mashkiigwaatigoog - Tamarack trees (plural).

Gaawaandagoog - White spruce trees (plural).

Animosh - Dog.

Wiigwaasaatigoog - Birch trees (plural).