Tom Ryan - When You Get the Chance

I love flying.

Its glamorous, almost make-believe, even. You take a seat and then float through the clouds, arriving in a few short hours at a destination that would take days to travel by car, weeks by bike, months or even years by foot.

Look, I say, leaning past my sister Paige to point out the window. Theres Toronto.

Halifax is already a distant memory, although weve only been in the air for a couple of hours. Im not sure when I started to get annoyed at how small Halifax is, but my feelings were confirmed when we took off this morning, the entire peninsula visible through the window before we were even at half altitude. I dont care if it is the biggest city on the East Coast. If you can walk around the entire thing in an afternoon, that counts as tiny by my standards.

Toronto, on the other hand

See, I say, moving my finger from landmark to landmark, thats the CN Tower, where Drake is sitting on the cover of that album. The building next to it that looks like a giant boob is Rogers Centre, where Beyonc plays when she comes to town. I say all this as if theyre places I visit on a regular basis, when the truth is I havent been to Toronto since I was ten.

Its big, she says.

No kidding. Its easily Canadas biggest city. Over two and a half million people. Everything is bigger in Toronto. Every kind of restaurant you can imagine, unbelievable shopping, the biggest film festival in North America.

You should write for the city tourism board, she says.

Maybe I will, I say. Im totally moving here after high school. Itll be epic. In the meantime, Ill settle for being in town for Pride. Its the

Let me guess, she says. Its the biggest Pride festival in Canada.

Youre pretty sarcastic for a ten-year-old, I say.

I cant help the way I am, she says. So youre going to try to make it to Pride? Have you run this past Mom yet?

We both glance briefly at our mother, who is sitting in the aisle seat. Her earbuds are in, and shes engrossed in some boring dramatic movie about serious people during some serious war. On the tiny screen, Kate Winslet, in the frumpiest overcoat ever, is running alongside a train in a snowy landscape, tears streaming down her face. Save your breath, I think, theres bound to be another one in a few hours.

I havent mentioned it yet, I say, but she has no problem with me going to Pride in Halifax, so why should she have a problem with me going here? Especially since were lucky enough to be on this trip in the first place.

Lucky? asks Paige. Do you even remember why were here?

Of course I do, I say, although I can feel myself blushing. Obviously, thats not what I mean by lucky. Dont get me wrong, its super sad, its just that until last week we didnt know we were going to be in Toronto, and now here we are. Funeral is priority number one, obvs, but after that were sticking around, so I dont see why we shouldnt take advantage of it.

A couple of days ago, we got a call from a neighbor of our grandparents, informing us that our grandfatherMoms fatherhad died. This was a shock because Grandpa was in great health. When he and Grandma visited us at Christmas, he was as fun and energetic as he was when I was a little kid. Grandma, on the other hand, was in really rough shape physically, and she found the traveling difficult. After they left, Mom and Dad had a lot of serious conversations about Grandma and what was going to happen next. Nobody expected that something would happen to Grandpa first.

Anyway, its very sad, and Moms been a bit of a mess. Plans came together quickly, though: a flight to Toronto for Grandpas funeral, and then we are going to spend a couple of weeks with my grandmother at the condo.

Even though Dad couldnt get the time off work, Mom has been passing it off as a family vacation by necessitymaking the best out of a sad situation. Shes been saying for years that we should come up and spend some time with my grandparents before one of them is gone. Too late, I guess, and although she has been trying to act positive about the trip, I know she feels kind of guilty.

Whats their house like, anyway? Paige asks.

They dont live in a house, I tell her. They moved to a condo a few years ago. I was in their old house a couple of times, the one Mom grew up in, but I dont really remember it. We were usually at the cottage when we came to Ontario.

Are we going there? she asks. To the cottage?

No, I tell her. Theres too much going on in the city. Mom is going to be helping Grandma with paperwork and stuff like that. Well do lots of cool stuff in the city, youll see. The cottage is kind of boring anyway. Youre too young to remember.

I dont know what made me say that. I dont remember it that way at all, to be honest. We travelled to the cottage in Muskoka for two weeks every summer from the time I was a baby until I was ten, and none of those memories are boring.

Im not sure why we stopped going to the cottage. I started playing soccer seriously, which meant summers got really busy and scheduled. Mom started her own practice, and Dad began working at home to help take care of us. I guess I never really thought about it. One summer came and went without the annual trip to Ontario, and then that was just the way things were.

I remember Grandpa taking us out in the canoe to the far corners of the lake, where we might glide silently past herons or a family of deer. Once we saw a bear and its cubs eating berries from a bush. If I took a ride like that today, my phone would be in constant action, shot after shot, Instagram lighting up with new hearts faster than I could post photos. Back then, though, it was good enough to just look at the animals, and I find that Im able to conjure the images up in my mind as clearly as if it were last summer.

Of course, I was really sad to hear that Grandpa had died, but now, thinking about how much he used to love spending time with us at the lake, I get a hard lump in my throat.

Forget I said that, I tell Paige, a sudden burst of regret that Ive mischaracterized the cottage. It wasnt boring. It was great. We spent a lot of time in the water, and at night we would have campfires and make smores. Sometimes Talia and I would walk along the dirt road to the canteen to get ice cream.