My son's father

I took Quinn for a walk yesterday and twice I was identified as Quinn's dad from park connections. The park is a great way to become part of the neighbourhood, which is not an easy thing in Ottawa. It may partly be a city thing, again relating to the repetition theme - without Quinn and the park I would never see these people, at least not often enough for us to speak. It struck me as funny, being a person that grew up in a small town, known as my parents' son or my brother's brother, to now be identified as my son's father. Not that it bothered me - to me it's part of what it means to be family.

These are some of the first new people I've met in 15 years of living here, at least outside of work and expatriate Maritimers. The city and its seemingly endless variety I guess has reduced my repetition rate in going any one place such that I wasn't familiar to anyone. All those years, so much searching, so little finding. All I had to do was give up and stay home to become part of something. One of the many lessons, I suppose, that comes with being Quinn's father.