FROM HALIFAX, IAN, Karen, and I flew back to Vancouver, where I’d spend one night at home before continuing on to my job in Victoria.

After I graduated, I’d always felt a sense of apprehension before I returned home. I no longer related to it as I once did, but I wasn’t sure where to leap before fully letting go. I was never at home long enough to justify getting my own place, and so, in my prolonged state of transition, I simply returned to my parents’ guest room in the basement—“temporary” quarters since high school graduation.

Upstairs, my childhood bedroom remained untouched. My stuffed animals still sat well behaved on the floor in the corner, while old photos, dusty trinkets, and toys lined the bookshelves. It was a time capsule of worn posters, sports trophies, and tacky wallpaper—relics from my youth that I hadn’t been able to throw away for fear of losing part of myself with them. For years it provided something of a foundation, confirmation of who I was. A distant past, which when I returned home didn’t feel so distant.

My mom arrived at the Vancouver airport to pick me up. Ten minutes later she turned to me in the passenger seat. “Now, don’t get mad, Sean, this is what mothers do, but … do you make your bed when you stay at all these people’s houses?”

The next afternoon, Ian and I jumped onto a bus headed to Victoria. At the terminal that night, we were greeted by Kimanda and her dog. Kimanda was the chair of the nonprofit that runs the Boulders Climbing Gym. The gym offered adaptive recreation programs, a youth climbing team, rehab programs for stroke and brain-injury victims, and autism programs.

“Hey, guys, you made it!” said Kimanda. Not wasting any time, she turned to lead the way. “All right, let’s head to the car.”

We followed her to her car. She walked so fast that Ian and I struggled to keep up as we lugged our laptops and luggage.

Ten minutes later we arrived at the underground parking garage where her car and the car that she’d rented for us were parked.

“You guys aren’t insured to drive the rental car yet, so tonight you can just drive my car,” she said, then tossed me the keys.

“Sure, where is it?” I asked.

She pointed to a brand-new Mercedes-Benz hardtop convertible.

“Well then, glad that’s settled,” I said. “I guess we’ll follow you?”

We hopped into our new ride.

It was late evening and the mid-fall temperature had dropped considerably since we’d boarded the bus that afternoon, but we didn’t care—the top had to come down. Ian reached for the bright pink iPod sitting on the dash. “Let’s get some tunes going,” he said, flipping it on. We paused, fixed in anticipation. Suddenly Barry White set the evening breeze alive with “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.” We both laughed, Ian cranked the volume, and we pulled out behind Kimanda’s four-door family-sedan rental car.

On the way back to her house, I caught Kimanda glancing in her rearview mirror to see Ian and me having way too much fun with the top down in the freezing cold, rocking out to Barry White. She smiled and shook her head.

Kimanda helped run the climbing gym, but her day job was being a political lobbyist. A sense of competition and fight was instilled in her early in life. When she was a kid, she remembered, her dad conducted a midnight mission to deface the sign of a rival political party on a neighbor’s lawn (an act she quickly assured me was never repeated). She loved his passion and wanted to get into politics from a young age. Kimanda was driven, enjoyed a heated debate, and was always eager to prove her capability.

I’d never spent so much time in a kitchen as I did at Kimanda’s place. Each night when Ian and I came home from work, we’d drop our bags and set up shop for a few hours in the kitchen, chatting with Kimanda, having some drinks, and dancing around to nineties pop music. It was just that nice of a kitchen—and the floors were heated too.

I stayed in the guest room in the basement. Every morning, the first thing I’d see when I opened my door was an indoor climbing grip hanging from the ceiling. One night during a lengthy kitchen talk, I confessed that I’d tried to complete a couple of pull-ups but hadn’t been too successful.

“Oh yeah? Well, you should hit the gym, big guy,” said Kimanda. “I can do pull-ups using only one finger on each hand.”

“I’d like to see that!” I said, a hint of doubt in my voice.

At the time, Kimanda’s arm was in a sling, as she’d had minor shoulder surgery earlier that day. We continued to chat, dance, and drink in the kitchen. Then, during a lull in the conversation, Kimanda made a dash for the basement door, a determined look on her face. Ian and I quickly followed, warning that it was probably not the best idea. But there was no stopping her. Kimanda took off her sling and lined up in front of the two grips hanging from the ceiling. At first she had difficulty raising her arm, then managed the pull-up anyway, using three fingers instead of one. Given her surgery that day, we let the extra two fingers slide.

Kimanda had an infectious zest for life that I won’t soon forget. Later, back in the kitchen with an ice pack on her shoulder and her unyielding smile on her face, she said, “I’m going to be paying for that tomorrow.”