Christmas in Ottawa

We flew home for Christmas. Toronto Pearson to Ottawa, which is one of the shortest flights in Canada (about 55 minutes in the air, longer if you count the time you spend taxiing at Pearson because Pearson is a mess). Or you drive, which is about four and a half hours on the 401 to the 416, through the flattest, most featureless stretch of Ontario highway that exists. We flew.

Ottawa at Christmas is the city at its most itself. The canal is frozen (or close to it, depending on the year), the Parliament buildings are lit up, and the streets are quiet in the way only a government town gets quiet when the government is on break. Half the federal workforce is off for two weeks and the restaurants are either closed or half-empty, which means the restaurants that are open are the ones run by people who love it too much to take the week off.

We stayed with my mom. Her house. The house I grew up in. There's a specific version of comfort that only exists in your mom's house at Christmas. The fridge is overstocked. The heating is set too high. Someone has put a blanket on every surface. She asks if you've eaten approximately eight times per day regardless of whether you have. The couch is the same couch. The TV is on too loud. You are 12 years old again for about 72 hours and it's exactly what you need.

G comes to Ottawa with me for Christmas and she's folded into the family at this point. She helps my mom cook, she wraps presents with a precision that my family finds both impressive and slightly intimidating, and she sits at the table on Christmas Day like she's been doing it for decades instead of a few years.

Christmas dinner was at my mom's. Too much food, her insisting everyone eat more. Turkey, stuffing, the sides that every Canadian family has slight variations on. My mom's version of everything is the correct version. I'm not objective about this and I don't need to be.

I visited my dad separately one afternoon. We went for a drive and ended up at shawarma, because that's what we do. He asked about Miami, about G, about work. My dad talks more in the car than anywhere else. Something about facing the same direction instead of across a table. He ordered the mixed plate, which is the wrong order, but I've stopped correcting him.

We went out a couple of times between Christmas and New Year's. Back to Shawarma Palace on Rideau Street, because no trip to Ottawa is complete without it. G ordered the same thing she ordered the first time I took her (chicken shawarma plate, extra garlic, extra turnips) and said "this is still better than anything in Miami," which is correct. The garlic sauce at Shawarma Palace operates on a level that Miami hasn't figured out yet.

We also did a dinner at Fauna on Bank Street, which is doing creative seasonal Canadian food in a city that doesn't get enough credit for its restaurant scene. The duck confit with root vegetables and a fennel slaw was the standout. The wine list leans natural and Canadian, which is a combination you don't see often and which works better than you'd expect.

Between meals we walked. The Rideau Canal hadn't frozen enough for skating yet (it usually opens in January, depending on the year and how cold December was), but the path along the canal is good for a winter walk. The trees are bare, the water is grey, and the Parliament buildings at the far end look like they were designed for a Christmas card. We walked to Dow's Lake and back one afternoon, about an hour round trip, and stopped for hot chocolate at a café on the way home. G wore my toque because she didn't pack one, which is a mistake you only make once visiting Ottawa in December.

One night we met up with a couple of my friends from high school at a bar in the Glebe. Same guys, same neighborhood, same dynamic we've had since we were 16. G sat there and listened to stories about me that I'd rather she not know and laughed harder than any of them. My friends like her. More importantly, she likes them, which is not guaranteed because G has high standards for people and doesn't pretend otherwise.

New Year's Eve we stayed in. My mom's living room, champagne at midnight, the fireworks on Parliament Hill visible from the front window if you stood at the right angle and squinted. My mom made it to midnight, barely, and raised her glass with the kind of quiet satisfaction that comes from having her kids home. G and I went for a walk at 1 AM through the neighborhood. Fresh snow, streetlights, nobody else outside. The cold was the kind that makes your lungs contract on the first breath and then becomes something you just accept. We walked for about 20 minutes through streets I'd walked a thousand times as a kid and everything looked exactly the same except I was different. Not in a dramatic way. Just older, further from here, living a life that 17-year-old me walking these same streets wouldn't have predicted. G doesn't have this in Miami. She has London for the family part but not the childhood streets part. I think she likes seeing mine.

We flew back to Miami on New Year's Day. Early flight. My mom packed us food for the plane, which she's done every time I've left Ottawa since I was 18. Sandwiches, fruit, a container of cookies wrapped in foil. I'm in my thirties and my mom still packs me snacks for a two-hour flight. I ate every one of them.