I've been meditating on the idea of family and tradition lately. Perhaps this is because I have been awash in familial events and duties over the last few weeks. My brother and sister-in-law have left on an extended excursion into parts south of the 49th parallel, and my sister is moving into the vast other that defines itself as the centre of all that is reasonable and Canadian, Toronto.

No one can hold the threads of your story like a sibling can. My brother and sister share with me many of the most basic elements that have given shape to my experience of the world, specifically parents and geography. They alone share the cornucopia of land and sea that formed our knowledge of the world at a young age, and yet each of us grew into that shifting landscape in different ways, establishing alternative visions of home and later attaching our hearts to divergent patches of land as our lives have taken us away from one another.

Now, at thirty, I am faced with the prospect of having no siblings within the same strip of geography, and the transition weighs heavy on me. The growth is good for all of us, and yet even with the best of choices, there is a loss, a letting go. I find myself longing for some sort of ritual or tradition to mark the release. A hug at the car or airport does not hold the symbolic weight I crave, and yet, perhaps, the simple act of an embrace is ritual enough. I guess it is all in the intentionality.

So Bon Voyage, Via con Dios, and so on. I'll miss you, and I am looking forward to the stories.