This goes on and on, the photo album in my mind. But it's more than an album because there are tastes and sounds and feelings.

I lay on the sand yesterday and viewed the world from between the thick blades of seagrass. Well, no, it was not seagrass, but that word flows so nicely from one's lips. Let's restart. I lay on the sand yesterday and viewed the world from between thick blades of sedge. Through my grass picture frame, I watched the dogs wrestle in the sand. The scene absorbed me, and I began to think about the Grandma.

Mindlessly, I curled my toes around and uprooted the thick blades of grass. Uprooted, like us. Far, far from home, but then again, home doesn't really exist for us anymore. Who stayed there, in the homeland, to fight their war? So where is home? Is it still home when you are expatriated? Or should we call the Kootenays our home - where the apples and peaches hang heavy off the trees? Other people have that as their home, though, the Kootenay people.

My last name hides my blood lines. "Well with a first name like that you must be Irish, and that last name is sure as heck British of some sort."

I never talked to Grandma for two reasons. First, she had a hearing aid. Second, I didn't speak the language. And now how I wish I would have asked her to teach it to me. I wish I hadn't rolled my eyes as she cited the same stories over and over. She could have taught me to garden and to make borscht, and I could have taught her about science. I showed her once how far away California was - she was amazed that oranges could grow so close to us. You see, back in her day, she was a miracle in that she passed her grade 3 curriculum being legally deaf.