Fries With Everything

Two weeks in Vancouver

There are sunglasses everywhere. Interchangeable between our faces, always at least two pairs in one bag - the one we share with beach towels and spare underwear and sun cream and even in the bag that’s just for me there are baby wipes because I am now a person who co-exists with a 6 month old as if it was the most normal thing to do. 

I am becoming au fait with breast feeding and nonverbal communication and going to bed at 9pm and creamy avocados and salad at every meal and never ending smoothies and sour beers and fries with everything. 

We move around each other with the ease of siblings. There are days of walking around the city, pushing the stroller with one hand, coffee in the other; of sitting in the backyard in low-standing deck chairs with a bottle of wine, a packet of salty, crunchy, crinkle-cut crisps, a baby and some show that we’ve rewatched a million times; of eating Caesar salads in breweries and drinking cold Okanagan wine at happy hour. 

One of us loses our phones every time we’re about to leave the house. I find mine under a slide in the front garden. Hers is in the bathroom. We never know where we left our shoes. Kyla’s husband – a patient, logical man – doesn’t understand why we don’t leave our shoes at the door and our phones on the table. He’s not wrong. 

For some reason (I know the reason), the avocados here taste elemental. Smooth, nutty, as if nature is whispering, this is how I made them, this is how they’re supposed to be. Most mornings I’ll wordlessly scoop the flesh into a bowl, gently folding it with a spoon because that’s all it needs. Some salt, pepper, lime juice and olive oil. I’ll make three eggs: two sunny side up and one over easy for Ky who is afraid of the ghostly whites that tremble. The bread – a perfect porridge and honey loaf – is toasted on the hob, heat turned up to 7, no higher as I’ve been warned, then everything comes together with a sprinkling of sprouts and in my case, a hefty spoonful of Lao Gan Ma chilli crisp. Some things never change. 

I make breakfasts and sometimes dinners and lunches for the park and when I wear an oversized blue men’s shirt I feel like Chessie from The Parent Trap. I dice potatoes for hash, crack eggs into the same pan that I have across the ocean, destalk kale, grab sushi to tide us over. I haven’t roasted a chicken yet. 

I spend nap times on the patio of their apartment reading everything I’ve saved that week. I am probably spending too much time on TikTok. I see wonderful old friends and stay the night at familiar places, hike with dogs, ascend the mountain where there is still snow but the forest never changes. We go to wine bars and breweries and restaurants and work out classes and it’s just like home except it’s not, and I always wonder if it could be. 

I’m curiously observing the many bike rack designs here. I’ve picked up this skill from the three people I spend the most time with at home, and now the person I spend the most time with has to stop every time I notice another. Often I’m pushing the stroller, whipping out my phone from below to capture swirls and kinks and folds of metal. I go to a friend’s new house and everything is enveloped in aluminium. I reach out to touch it, reminded of public texture and those three people who taught me about it. 

It feels good to live amongst people, especially her because it’s the most natural thing for us to do. I wake up and walk into the living room and she is there playing with her baby, and we sort of wordlessly pass the baby between each other so she can go to the toilet, make a cup of tea or have a shower. When it’s dark and moody outside, we close the shutters and light candles and listen to the new song we’ve just become obsessed with; or we run a bath and take it in turns, the baby bouncing next to us, us watching a show, her in the tub, me in the floor, we swap, rinse and repeat. 

On weekdays we head down to the beach for a swim but mainly for happy hour: martinis and oysters, glasses of cold wine and fries (she likes fries with everything), margaritas and tater tots or maybe a cold BC beer. We’re running out of weekends and days. 

We plan mornings around grabbing a breakfast burrito from the place that doesn’t open until 10am and then we eat it sloppily sat on the picnic benches outside. I buy two bottles of Caesar dressing from there because North Americans just make it better, and my friends laugh about how excited I get walking into a supermarket here. We consider a trip across the border to go to Trader Joes. I don’t stop thinking about it, but like I said, we’re running out of days. 

I think about home and friends and missing them and being missed and the London heatwave and where I’d like to live some day and the kind of person I’d like to live with and the dogs and my mum’s food. 

I’ve never eaten so many potatoes, usually a food that triggers my disordered eating, but here it’s balanced out by the smoothies packed full of adaptogens and vitamins. We debate the best kind of fries (mine: thin, crispy, salty, pale - like McDonalds but as if they’ve been double fried; hers: skin on, softer, a deeper hue), and we eat some that feel like a hybrid of both, so we’re happy. 

When we’re oversalted and too full, we eat soup that her mother made – a thin, tomatoey broth, slightly spiced, flecked with pearl barley, diced vegetables and yes, potatoes. We eat rice crackers so good that I’ll stow them in my suitcase. We eat together everyday and yes it feels good to live amongst people.