Growing up throughout rural Nova Scotia, often in houses that were an ambiguous cross between abandoned and a construction zone, I became fascinated with the untold stories of small town rural life. My childhood was spent playing with rocks and dirt alongside my brother, to the grungey soundtrack of Alice in Chains. Often on some cracked Nova Scotian highway, moving from house to house, my parents were loners with family values, but without ties to any particular place. I grew up to be the same. Now, when I pass through old rural highways, I view the dilapidated houses that fall at the roadsides and wonder of the stories that accompany them. What happened there?

Among the stories in Patchwork are those of parental sacrifice, particularly regarding traditional gender roles, which are referenced through photographs of birth, marriage, and work duty. My father is shown removing his facial hair in order to properly wear a mask on a flight to his workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as in quarantine after his return, while my mother is shown in past portraits at her wedding and directly after giving birth to me.

Patchwork also shows how the passage of time can reveal dilapidated relationships. From an old album, I picked out a portrait of my brother and I on the lap of my maternal grandfather, next to my uncle and his girlfriend at the time. Compared to the old portrait, the contemporary photograph of his now abandoned house portrays the reality of his relationship to us. Although he is still alive, since my mother's childhood, he was more interested in pursuing other families and lifestyles rather than ours. I was very young, but I still have memories of this day, and the context of the contemporary image reveals the truth of the narrative behind the fake smiles from the past.

Home is the soil where we are planted, its conditions never perfect. Our roots may lead us elsewhere, but who and where we came from is inescapable. Some of us may find it easy to honor this. Some may have to make peace.