meeting the scariest of ghosts

you can't go home again but you can be chased by your memories of it

I lived in Halifax, the first time, from 2013-2015, ages 21-23. During this period, I went to library school to get my master’s.

Now, I’m back. Not exactly in the place I left it, both in time and space. I’m older now, I live several blocks from where I used to, and I work at a different institution than where I went to school. My wanderings are slightly different - but close enough that I keep finding whispers of a younger version of myself. I’m haunting me right now, a younger version flitting across my vision and disappearing when I look harder for her. Where did she go? And more importantly, who is she?

Today, she was everywhere. I met up with a colleague and friend for a walk in the mild sunshine this morning - this friend was a supervisor and mentor when I was a library school student and intern at her library. We’ve remained in touch, worked together, and even planned a whole conference together. And naturally, we talked about then and now, and what’s changed and what hasn’t. We talked about her dissertation and my new job, and evidence synthesis and sunshine.

I was so in awe of her when I was a student, since she was a handful of years out and had the jobs and the experience I wanted.

I also cut across the campus where the health sciences library I interned at is today, and while there have been many changes inside, the outside of the campus is the same. As I approached the corner, my younger self came flooding back. This is the spot where I was racing back up to class from a reference shift, and the reporter stopped me outside of the dentistry building to ask for a comment on the dentistry school scandal at the time (I did not have one, I didn’t want to be late for class).

There’s the window where the library staff room was, and where we all crowded one morning to spy on a crowd in the quad. The library has been significantly renovated then and no longer has that floor. It’s where my intern supervisor announced we needed to start trawling Kijiji for a new couch. It’s where I spent many hours with my fellow intern, becoming friends.

As I looked up at that window, she texted me.

There are the doors I struggled to open when it was windy, there’s the nursing building where I had several bizarre meetings as part of a project for a class, there’s the crumbly concrete where I ran to meet my cousins to go on vacation one week during my intern summer. I see myself waiting in line at the cafe through the glass - blink, and she’s gone again, plus it’s a Starbucks now, not a Tims.

The most significant ghost I’m tailing - or perhaps she’s tailing me, it’s hard to tell - is the one hovering over the reason I cut across campus. I was heading to a cafe on Spring Garden Road to meet with a library school student I’m mentoring this semester. I sent in a declaration back in the fall that I’d be happy to mentor as part of this program, and while I’ve changed jobs and it took a bit to get to me, we were paired together. My mentee is an intern at the library I interned at. And I’m working at the same library my mentor was at.

I participated in the same mentorship program as a student, ten years ago. The mentor I was paired with was the university librarian at my now-library. I used to trek over to the place I work now to meet her, and I took my mentee, the first time I met her, to the same cafe my mentor took me to the first time I met her (oddly enough, it is also now a Starbucks).

I am surrounded by the past. A normal thing to feel in Halifax, such an old city by North American standards, but one that has spooled out in an odd way for me.

You can’t go home again, but you can find the echoes of it in everything you do. I know where things are at the grocery store because we used to live behind it. I have a dormant loyalty account at the bookstore. I never changed my cell phone number. I keep spotting my 22 year old self in memory, and my 32 year old self shakes her head, sighs, and smiles. Good things happened here, and they will again.