How to Find Home

A little magic in the hurly-burly of the season

A brief interlude in your day. A coffee break together. For a moment. xoxox

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The last decade has filled so many of us with a growing sense of unreality. We seem trapped in a constant change without ever getting the chance to integrate it.

—Katherine May

It was love that made me leave home. When I was twenty-four, I sat aboard a plane travelling over The Atlantic. It was October and from the window I saw green Northern lights dancing in the sky, glorious, wonderful. When I landed in Saskatoon, it was dark, and Y stood waiting for me. My heart rose and sank—rose because I was seeing him, this man who’d tipped me head-over-heels into a new self, sank because I intuited I might never go home again.

Y. gathered me in his arms, we kissed awkwardly. He smelled of musky aftershave and his sweater was cold to the touch. Outside, we walked to the car we now co-owned, drove to a small house that he’d rented for us, and began our complicated, beautiful, messy life together. I left behind many things: my country, my younger self, my family, my traditions. Often, I’m miss that other self, that other life, but far more challenging is when I’m homesick for my country and my family. It’s a physical yank, a pull around my stomach, a burning in my chest. Maybe some of you recognize that feeling: a keening for a place that I no longer call home

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When I’m homesick, great lines from books, or a gorgeous sunrise, or a little magic in the hurly burly all really help. Over the last month or so, I’ve been finding a sense of wonder all over again with

Katherine May

’s rich and wonderful book, Enchantment. In it, she makes a beautiful argument for finding wonder in our anxious age. She shares that finding the sublime requires practice and patience, something I rarely feel time for in the rush of getting kids to school and activities, working, working more, buying gifts, wrapping them, trying to find parking, oh, and not to mention the last-minute deadlines of work—trying to get everything done before school wraps up.

But driving home from school drop off the other day, I listened to Katherine May interview Kaitlin Curtice. (It’s a terrific and stimulating interview—I highly recommend it!)

Anyway! As a framing device for the podcast, Katherine invites listeners into her home and chats a little. As I was pulling the car into our driveway—this house that I’ve lived in now for ten years—Katherine mentioned she was making mincemeat. This is a mixture of chopped fruit, raisins, currents, suet, brandy, and spices that feels quintessentially English to me. When you cook this dish on the stovetop, it releases a smell that fills the house and adds a little magic into the hurly burly of this season—and you may have tried it in a mince pie at some point. (If you’re from the UK, you’ve eaten countless mince pies, I bet!)

Mincemeat reminds me of the country I left behind twenty years ago: suddenly I wanted to sit with my family in the UK, eating a mince pie, the smell of rich spices and fruits in my mouth. As the sun rose in a pink tinged sky (see the photo where I’ve put the quotation from Katherine May), I longed for home. Hard.

With a rush, listening, I had a yen to make mincemeat. Searching for a recipe, I found plenty, so I picked one, but realised I was being daft.

I didn’t have time for this.

I needed to get to a board meeting, and write up coaching reports and prep a class. Turn to edits for my next novel. Pick up four kids from three different schools.

But, two days later, there I was in the grocery store eyeing the currants. I stood for long minutes I didn’t think I had searching for All Spice. A neighbour came around the corner with her little boy and we chatted while she helped me look.

At home, I searched in a cupboard and found a half-drunk bottle of brandy. I gathered my teenager from the pit of his bedroom. “Come and help me,” I pleaded, although it was his company I wanted. He laid his phone down and reviewed the recipe, remarking that there should be meat in mincemeat.

The recipe originated in medieval England after knights from the crusades came back with various spices. Traditionally, the meat in the Tudor version of mincemeat was beef or venison. A writer shared with me that in her family, they make it with meat still—rump steak—the meat dissolves into the fruit and spirits, so you can barely taste it. As my son and I opened up bags of raisins, I told him a little of this, but he was more interested in learning what we’d replace suet with. We opted for vegan butter and tipped various fruits, some chopped almonds, some orange juice, a cup of brandy and sugar into a pot.

The whole process was remarkably quick. The smell was glorious, making the air fragrant with memories from the UK, five-year-old me with crumbs on my lips from a mince pie, fifteen-year-old me, sulky yet lured from my room by a mince pie offering.

As my son and I stirred the brown and golden fruit, the sauce thickened. I tried several spoonfuls, the brandy not quite cooked-off, but still delicious, then I video-called my mum to show her. She shared that I could put jars into the oven to sanitize them, a step I hadn’t thought through.

When I look at the lines I’ve shared with you from Katherine May, “We seem trapped in a constant change without ever getting the chance to integrate it,” I feel my twenty-four-year-old self leaving England, entering a life on the prairies. I understand that she’s writing about the relentless and constant change of a far bigger world: the pandemic, rising violence and horrifying wars, climate disasters, like the smoky skies we lived with in Canada for much of the summer. She tells us as much: The last decade has filled so many of us with a growing sense of unreality.

But, as with all great writing, while her words resonate with me on that level, they also pluck at something deeper and internal: my son growing older, my home country far away, yet suddenly closer, my mother telling me how to store the mincemeat I’d made.

We seem trapped in a constant change without ever getting the chance to integrate it. 

In making mincemeat, moments with my son, connecting to my mum, I was integrating a small change. In one small moment on the Canadian prairies, her words brought me wonder.

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Read more: Find Katherine May on Substack and read Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age. I’d also recommend Wintering, her earlier book which is a warm blanket by a cozy fire for this time of year.

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If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked. Join me for coffee breaks to look at lines from great writers twice a month. Xoxo