The Kodiaks: Home Ice Advantage

When Alex got home, his parents were awake and sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by moving boxes and eating bowls of cereal. They told him they’d gotten up after they heard him leave the house. He wasn’t as quiet as he thought.

“Weren’t you scared I was going to run away because I don’t want to move?” Alex asked.

“Where would you go?” Dad asked, chuckling.

“I don’t know,” Alex shrugged. “To the trapline?”

“We’ll still go there,” Mom assured him as tears welded up in Alex‘s eyes. Moving was real now. It was getting more real with each passing second. “This place will always be our home.”

“Promise?” Alex asked.

Dad walked over and put his hand on Alex shoulder.

“Promise,” he said. “I know you were off saying goodbye, but you know what? There’s no word for ‘goodbye’ in Cree for a reason. We’ll visit all the time.”

“Do you think one day we can move back?”Alex asked.

“I hope so,” Dad said. “It depends on if the school gets better funding, and if I feel like I can do more good here than at my new job in the city. Either way, I’ve got to give it a shot.”

Alex wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie and nodded. With his tears at bay, he showed his parents the stick George had gifted him. They talked about after that, forgetting, even with boxes all around them, they were moving at all. But soon it was time. They finished breakfast, packed up the rest of the trailer, and hit the road for Winnipeg. Alex looked out the rear window as a community got smaller and smaller, until it disappeared. Then he stopped looking back and started to look forward. It was late and tryouts were only a few weeks away. If his Dad was giving it a shot, he would too.