I spent the summer of 2017 in Winnipeg training for a job with the railroad. 8 weeks at a state-of-the-art facility doing both classwork and practical work to ensure that I was good and ready to not lose a limb or cut myself in half by the time I returned home to eastern Canada.

My then-girlfriend (currently my wife) was pregnant with our first child, and we were living in a small apartment in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Before the announcement of the pregnancy, the apartment seemed like a little slice of heaven. Something of our own. A little hint of freedom. But when I came home from work one afternoon to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, gripping the duvet and nervously telling me that she was pregnant, the apartment instantly revealed itself to be what it truly was. A dump. A small decrepit building with lead-footed upstairs neighbours, and needle-using neighbours to the left with toothless smiles and irritated blotched skin.

At that time I’d just graduated from university and was working in a lumber yard while writing music and chasing dreams of becoming an acoustic singer-songwriter. I’d played a few gigs at bars and cafes around the city, and professionally recorded a few songs at a studio across the bridge by a young man who gave me a good deal because he’d just found out that his wife had another family in Europe, and just didn’t give a shit about his rates. I wasn’t climbing the charts or making any money, but I was young and filled with a self-confidence that boarded on narcissism, that seemed to be serving me well.

So when the announcement that I was going to be a father echoed in my ears, I felt my shoulders slump and I took a walk downtown past old gothic churches with sinister steeples that seemed to be mocking me in judgement. I’m no religious man but the symbols were strong and eerie, and all these years later, I can still picture them, images from the changing of the guard. When the skin was shedded, the old self was gone, and the rebirth of someone new. Someone not self-centered, someone who would provide and stuff away silly dreams of being a new Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, or whoever the hell I thought I was going to be.

That evening I sat in a coffee shop on Queen Street, near the back by the discount rack of books that smelled like stale cigarettes, and years of neglect. The chair was old and sunken deep, and beside me was a painting of a boat navigating an angry storm, dark, and malicious. I sipped on my coffee and thought about decisions, because anyone who’s a parent knows that those months fly by and the longer you put off some form of a structured plan, the bigger your chances are of holding a newborn, looking in their soft innocent eyes, and saying, “Sorry. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Then I travelled back in time to my teenage years in Campbellton. We lived in a house with stained white siding and a steel roof at the bottom of a hill in a working-class suburb. Whether this was a dream, reality, or a nostalgic cocktail of the two, I’m not entirely sure, but this is the way that I remember it. I’d lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as it slanted downward at a 45-degree angle, I’d hear my father and mother downstairs, talking. He was getting ready for work. I’d hear three soft kisses in succession and then the closing of our front door with a loud thud. I’d run to the window and peek through the blinds like I was Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window and stare at my father as he walked up the hill into a thick malevolent fog that transported him into the world of men. A world of danger, where the God was steel, and steel was an unforgiving and vengeful God. An Old Testament God. And my hands would shake as his body moved towards it. Stained overalls, a Teamster hat, a metal lunch bucket, a coffee thermos, and steel-toed boots tied with long laces wrapped around the top of the boot, one, maybe two times, and he was gone. That world frightened me as a kid, and I thought I’d outrun it forever.

But as I finished my coffee that evening, I realized that I was a man. Not much younger than my father was then, and it was time to embrace my bloodline and head back home, to the God of steel.

“What do you think about me asking my dad about seeing if he can get me on at the railroad?” I asked Morgan.

“There’s no railroad here.” She answered.

“No. There isn’t. We’d have to move. But it pays well, and we could have a house by the time the baby is born.”

“What about our friends? What about your brother?” She asked.

“We’d still see them. Just not as much.”

And she cried. But not tears of regret or longing, but rather tears of acceptance, and understanding that it was a good plan, or at least, the best plan in our limited options. So, I called my father, and the process began. A series of interviews, aptitude tests, and physicals got me to my training dates. The summer of 2017, when my son was due.

Then more tears followed as we realized that I’d likely be at the other end of the country when our son was born, and that Morgan’s parents would have to move her to a post-industrial town in the northern part of the province, where she didn’t know a soul, and she’d have to stay there, alone, pregnant, and hot as she waited for me to return so that we could start our new life.

She agreed.

On the evening before I was set to fly out, I didn’t sleep. I wrapped my arm around her belly and rubbed it throughout the evening, listening to her softly snore, and the steady rhythmic traffic outside the window. This had been our home, and in the morning it would no longer be home. The notion that the following evening I’d be sleeping in a hotel a thousand miles away had my heart racing and my skin cold. Was I making a mistake? Did I give up on this place too easily?

Too late now.

That evening is still tattooed on my brain. Her belly, my hand rubbing in a clockwise motion, the decisions of being an adult, how in the snap of a finger, it all changes.

The eight weeks spent out west were strange, but not without a ray of hope. I met some great guys. Guys that I’d still consider friends all these years later. Though we weren’t all navigating the same storm, we were all lost at sea, all seeking companionship to ride out the storm and see where we ended up. And in that aspect, we weren’t alone.

The courses weren’t overly difficult, but there was an overlying fear of failure. Guys did fail the course there, and you were sent off with a handshake and the best of luck as you hopped on a plane and flew back home without a job. I’ve since learned to handle my business and work under pressure in the subsequent years, but this was a major challenge for me, with stresses and anxieties that were as foreign as the prairie landscape of Manitoba.

Towards the end of the course, I received a text from Morgan telling me that she was going into labour. I could have flown back but there was an issue with doing that. If I went, then I wouldn’t graduate with my class and I’d have to wait and finish up with another class when they got to where I currently was with their education. Not ideal. There was also the very real, and rational fear that if I were to meet my son, kiss his head, look into his eyes and his mother’s and hold them, and for the first time understand what having a family truly meant, that there was just no way on God’s green earth that I’d hop on a plane and come back. That would restrict me, and all of this would have been for nothing.

So on a Saturday in late July, Morgan went into labour and I watched via FaceTime in my hotel room. I went through the highs and lows, and the unbearable pain of not being there. I watched as Morgan screamed, and I transported myself back to the evening before I left, just me and her round belly, and all the questions of the world that I couldn’t answer. And I asked myself once again, “Was this all a mistake?”

Then after hours, our son was born. But there were complications in the delivery. Shoulder Dystocia is what they call it, and it’s basically when a baby's shoulder gets caught above the pubic bone, when they finally delivered my boy, they rushed him off to the NICU in a panic. Just like that, “Where’s Lukas?” I asked. And Morgan screamed, “Where’s my boy? Where is he? Where is he?” And she cried, and I cried, and I threw my phone across the hotel room looked out at the city skyline, and closed my eyes. Wishing I was back home, like the Wizard of Oz, there’s no place like home.

There were some mild complications, but after a few hours we were able to see my boy in a tube in the NICU and it broke my heart. The doctors said he’d be fine, that they just needed to monitor him and a few days later, he was out.

Then came the day when it was time to go home. We all went to the airport and sat and waited with anticipation. My class all graduated, except for one and we were feeling pretty proud and unbelievably excited to be home. Morgan moved from Fredericton to Bathurst, which was about an hour south of where I grew up. The job required an immense amount of travel, so we rented an old house in a nice neighborhood, and her parents moved her in with the help of my brother, and a couple of my buddies.

As I sat in the airport, I thought about the whirlwind of changes. I’d lived in a University city, living in a small apartment with Morgan, working in a lumber yard, playing guitar. I was returning with a new job, in a new city, in a new house that I’d never seen, and a baby that I’d never met. It was a lot, to say the least.

The flight got delayed a couple of times as tornado warnings were delaying and cancelling flights all over the country. And I felt that urge to cry again. I just wanted to go home, why was it so hard to just get back home? After hours, we hopped on a flight to Montreal, and then I got on a small plane from Montreal to Bathurst.

As the plane approached the tarmac in Bathurst, my new home, I felt an unbelievable zest for life. And as we landed, I could have planted my lips on the asphalt and held them there for the world’s longest kiss. I was home, and that part of my life was finished. A friend of mine named Ryan drove me to my place, and I had no idea where it was. I didn’t know the city that well, and I just gave him the address. Once we reached the house, Morgan waited outside for me, holding my son and I thanked Ryan and his wife for driving me, then I grabbed my suitcase in the trunk and walked down the driveway and held them both, right outside on a warm August afternoon. Tired and depleted, I just held them. I remember Ryan telling me that his wife cried as she watched us, thinking the moment was so beautiful. Once we went inside, I couldn’t stop looking at him.

“Do you want to hold him?” Morgan asked. And I’d realized that I’d never held a baby before in my life.

“I do. But I’m nervous.” I answered.

“You don’t have to be nervous.” And she handed him to me. I picked him up and held him in the palms of my hand. I kissed his forehead and told him that that was it. No more long trips away from him, that I was going to be around. I was going to be around. My hands shook nervously, and everything around me was foreign, but at the same time, I smiled. It was all perfect too.

I had a few days to rest, and then it was time to head back home, into the fog.

Then one morning, I woke up and grabbed my work clothes that were piled in front of my closet. Lukas was sleeping in a bassinet next to Morgan and I walked over and kissed him on his forehead. It was dark. Too early, and as I went downstairs to brew some coffee, I realized that the course was just the beginning. This was where the work actually started.

I hopped in my car, turned on the radio, and drank my coffee as I drove an hour north on Highway 11. The summer was slowly turning into the fall, and a fog was rising over the lakes as I drove towards the God of steel.

I was just a kid, I thought. A room filled with posters. A mind with no more depth than basketball and girls, movies, and music. I was just a kid, strumming my guitar, and sitting with my friends along a thin stretch of grass between the asphalt and the fence. We were spinning basketballs on our fingers and imagining a basketball scout taking us away from the smokestacks and the grinding, screeching sounds of steel on steel as the railroaders shunted freight cars in the yard along the riverside. I was just a kid who’d run away from that world. Who went to a liberal world of free love and music, and hope and dreams, and here I was. The fog enveloped me. It was time to see what was on the other side.

I was going home.

My son was two days old. The nurses waved us off as the taxi pulled away from the curb.

It waited as my husband carried the carseat into our home, his other arm around me.

He settled us on the couch, kissed my forehead and ran back to the taxi which would take him to 30th Street Station to catch the train to New York City.

For my father's funeral.

A busload of people from my dad's job arrived at the church for his "homecoming" service, too. He was that loved.

Meanwhile, I sat on the couch a hundred miles away, holding this beautiful new life in my arms, feeling my heart squeezing from joy - my baby!, fear - ohmygod, he's so small!, anxiety - what if...?, grief and sadness - my daddy! My daddy...my daddy.

Living in Iowa does have its perks, but it will never be home. It was years ago, my first trip back home after moving from Northwest Florida. Our car was packed with all the essentials including our two daughters and our oldest son. We slipped silently out of town with darkness all around and no cars as far as the eye could see.

The drive was long and exhausting. Kids bickering and fighting the whole way. Then I saw the interstate sign saying next right to Brewton Alabama and I knew I was almost home. John Denver's Country Roads was playing on the car radio and tears welled up in my eyes. Yes, I know I should have felt excited and happy, and to a point I did but I also knew this was just a visit and it would end too soon.

We arrived with hugs and kisses from family and my heart was full. My then-husband and I were both raised in this small town and decided to take a drive to see our old haunts. A walk down memory lane. Seeing old friends I hadn't seen in years was heartbreaking and wonderful. Seeing kids playing in the yard of the house I once played in as a child brought a smile and tears.

In those moments, it is never more true that, you can never go back home. So the southern girl who became a Yankee packed her family in the car and headed back north. Iowa has it's perks but it will never be home.

Three months on a jack up barge towed from Singapore in the choppy seas of Bass Strait.

To lay oil pipes to the ends of the earth Tasmania.

In the galley of the barge I worked twelve on twelve off, sleep, work, sleep. At night as the stinger at the stern beat out a metallic rhythm feeding pipe to the sea floor, I walked the yellow line up top as riggers went about their tasks.

Choppered in and choppered out I was a farm boy out on the briny sea.

Finally I was choppered to Essendon Airport to take a tram home after all that time.

Tram, taxi, and by foot I walked up the long driveway to my family triumphant at the job done.

Three months at sea and finally home.