The past is a country you can never return to

I'm officially Canadian!! - well, actually, I'm a Permanent Resident, but that's pretty good. It that means within weeks I can drive, receive healthcare, and work in Canada. And in a couple years, I can become a citizen, too. Valentine's Day I got the letter marking the end of an 11-month phase of waiting, dreaming, resting, and establishing myself as a wife, community member, and Torontonian. Now, I'll be able to complete the final chapter of my life here, which is finding a job.  I'm super excited to start making money again, to plan our honeymoon, and do simple stuff like go out to eat more and really experience Toronto, this amazing city.

Perhaps it was the finality of it which brought on my sharp stab of homesickness today. Or perhaps it's that a new year is beginning, and moving into the future requires leaving something else behind. I'd been homesick before, but I wasn't prepared for the loss of a certain kind of closeness that comes when you live in the same towns, frequent the same restaurants and stores, and know the same people as your friends. Being in a person's home and just sipping tea or watching TV is a superb way of getting to know who they are, and what life is like for them. This level of closeness feels lost, particularly with my parents. I can't just pop over anymore. And that's really tough.

There's another level, too - that even if I were to move back home someday, it wouldn't be the same as what I left behind. When you live somewhere continuously, sure, everyone changes, but it's slow and you almost don't notice it. But when you leave and ocme back - as I've already done - the return is never quite what you expected. Businesses have closed, new ones have opened (Kent, I'm talkin' to you), people have moved on or started new phases of their lives, like having kids or going back to school. The "scene" you miss isn't the same scene, and there's no way of catching up, because, well, you weren't there. So there's really no going back, and no place to be except the present.

Also, I've changed. I think about my aunt, who moved to Colorado with her husband, lived there for 15 years, and then moved to Los Angeles. She keeps in touch with the family, but the fact is that her life is kind of a mystery to us. She belongs to another world, and now, so do I.

Sean has always told me that I'm a "country girl" at heart. I chuckle at that, since it's based on his rosy view of Ohio as the "country." But in fact, I'm from Northeast Ohio, which is kind of better: I'm from world-class schools, post-industrial economic rebirth, corn on the cob, and the Burning River. A corner of Ohio that's just as sophisticated as it is relaxing. And I love that. So I don't mind Sean calling me a country girl - he's never forgotten that I came from Ohio, and maybe that will help me remember who I am.

Isn't there some kind of saying - "you can't take the country out of a country girl...?" Yeah... that seems true. When you're getting used to something, it can seem to consume your entire identity, but there comes a point when you remember who you were before. I may be a Toronto girl now - knowing how to find the best food, the best museums, how to ride the subway without losing my balance - but I'll always be a girl who shopped at Beckwiths Orchard and hopped around sandstone cliffs at Kendall Ledges. I'll always know how to shuck corn into a paper bag, how to find a great sweater at the VD, and how to smalltalk with the folks back home. And I can count on them welcoming me back, and doing what they can to make me feel at home. I think I can count on that.

Sometimes when I feel homesick I go to my suitcase and get out the little stash of American money I keep, leftover from the last trip. It's the pennies that get me - we don't have pennies here, so  when I hold a penny, it's like a piece of America in my hand. Of course, holding American money also makes me think about our national debt, our problems with consumerism and all the stuff that makes me ambivalent about being American - but damn, I miss the States. Not because I think it's the greatest country in the world (though it is great, in many ways), but because it's my home. In a way my American money is like the past, as it's really only a symbol for something else. You can't eat money, and you can never return to the past. I can only try to be in the present, and realize that the legs that climbed on redwoods and waded in Blue Hen Falls, are the same legs that can ride the TTC subway without stumbling. I've been shaped and molded by so many places, so many relationships, and yet, I'm still myself.

Being apart from my family is sometimes like having a limb cut off. Sorry to be gross, but they're part of me, because throughout my life, they shaped and molded me like clay. As teenagers, we resent our families for that - but if you wants to get over that, I'd suggest moving away. Move to a place where you can't come home, and then repeat that, until you realize - wow, they're not trying to mold me - it just happens. And it's time that I choose to mold my own life - to choose who I am, what I do, who I hang out  with, and above all, what is home. Being away from them, I realize how lucky I am to have the option to come home - to come home for fresh corn, leaf-raking, coffee on the porch - for what keeps me feeling like me, as I move into this new country, into the present.

Arriving in Canada

It was this beautiful for most of the drive

We crossed the border at Buffalo/Ft Erie at 11:30 p.m. Sunday night. The few hours before arriving, we reviewed what we would say to the immigration officers. Sean was nervous about being "either too up-front or too guarded", and I reassured him that they would ask whatever information we happened to leave out. "How would you explain it to a friend?" I said, because even though the border guard had the power to turn me away from Canada, they were also there to help us.

When we arrived, the officer at the gate asked a few terse questions, barely letting us tell her what we had painstakingly packed in the car. She directed us to park and go into the main building to the "counter on the left". Hearts pounding, we walked in the building and approached a man and a woman talking at the left-hand counter. The woman glanced at us and said, "yes?" I mumbled, "We were sent in here because I'm trying to come in during my PR waiting period?" "Other side," she said, and returned to her conversation.

Good luck charms

We crossed to the other counter where a clean-cut man was typing on a computer, and approached him. Without looking up, he barked, "Don't come to me. Wait in the line." We looked behind us; no one else was in the building. Glancing at each other, we backed away from the counter and stood.

After a minute or two, a voice from the third counter called out, "And I'll see if I can help you over here." A chubby man with salt-and-pepper hair facilitated the 6-month Visitor Record. He asked for our marriage license but none of our other paperwork we had carefully assembled. The whole process was handled in a matter-of-fact way, and we were done in 20 minutes. During that time, we observed two other young customs officers throwing balled-up paper at each other and shopping for T-shirts online. It was hard not to smile.

Leaving the building, we were grinning from ear to ear and hugged each other madly for a few minutes before jumping in the car. It slowly sunk in that we'd been lucky. All the stories we'd read on immigration forums suggested that proof of residence, proof of employment, and various other things were required in order to be let into Canada for such a long visit. They asked for none of this; they didn't even care that I brought my espresso maker.

We didn't get home until shortly after 1 a.m., and fell asleep around 2:30. The following day was a pleasant blur; beginning at 10:30 and interrupted by a long, necessary mid-afternoon nap. We managed to accomplish groceries and Thai take-out before falling asleep again at 11:00. We were exhausted from the 4 days of heavy-duty packing and hauling and emotional intensity back in Ohio. Now, Sean's back at work, and I've got the day to myself at home. It's time to get into the new routine, the new life, where intermittent romance is replaced by daily tasks and small pleasures. Little by little, settling in.

The "ins and outs" of Immigration

A lot of people have expressed utter confusion upon learning that Sean and I don’t have the same benefits as any other married couple. After all, we live only 6 hours apart, speak the same language, and have basically the same culture. So, here, I’ll try to explain some of the ins and outs of immigrating to Canada.

When we first started talking about living together, we came across this concept of “permanent residency”. Permanent residency gives a non-citizen the right to work, live, and receive healthcare in Canada. There are basically 3 ways to obtain it: through family (ie marriage, or a parent who has already immigrated), as a student, or through a job. We had heard that getting a workplace to sponsor you was quite difficult, unless you could prove that you had skills that could not be found in a Canadian citizen (a tough task in a thriving city of 4.5 million people). Since I was already interested in going back to school, I then started looking around at music programs in Toronto. However, the reality hit that since I hadn’t paid my existing loans off, it really wasn’t preferential to take out more unless I was going into a highly-paid field. So we decided that wasn’t a great route. Eventually, we realized marriage would be the best way, so that’s what we did.

Once we got married, we did not have a typical honeymoon period. We both had to return to work, since we had taken off so much vacation time in the last year to visit each other. So Sean returned to Toronto to his full-time, 9 to 5 job, and I returned to working 4 days a week as a counselor at a community health agency. We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. Basically, it works like this: the “sponsor” (Sean) is responsible for the financial well-being of the “primary applicant” (me) and I have to do a shit ton of paperwork. So, I found that my days off were quickly filled, not just with filling out the complete history of every visit we’d ever paid to each other, including dates and locations, but also obtaining information like the address of my studio apartment from 2004 and had I ever belonged to a professional or terrorist organization. 3 months, 40 pages, and a trip to a Niagara Falls clinic later, we submitted our application! And now, finally, we can relax and wait.

People ask me, and I often ask myself, why I didn’t move to Canada sooner. The truth is I didn’t know I was allowed. The immigration website makes it sound like you choose one path or the other – “inland” or “outland”. An inland application is one in which you, say, met your husband while studying, and decided to marry him and stay on in Canada. The catch is that you’re not allowed to leave the country until your application is fully processed, which could take up to two years. As an outlander (that’s me), I can travel freely between the U.S. and Canada during the application processing time, which is shorter - between 6 months and a year. That’s it – you can’t have your cake and eat it too. We heard horror stories, too, about married people being turned away from the border because the border guards thought they were using it as an excuse to steal Canadian jobs. You say you’re married, and they think you’re just going to come and live in Canada forever. I could see it happening, so I kind of get that. After a few phone calls, we got reassurance that we could cross the border safely with the appropriate paperwork proving that we were who we said we were.

However, the really good news came from the least likely source – a border guard at Niagara Falls. I was crossing the border to meet Sean for a weekend and to get my medical check done at a local clinic. I noticed the line I’d pulled into was very slow, and almost changed lanes because I was afraid I’d get questioned and possibly not allowed through. Pulling up I saw a short, stout, gray-haired woman with one of those faces that tells you not much would surprise her. “I’m coming to meet my husband in Niagara Falls,” I told her. She glanced at my passport. “Your husband, huh? Why don’t you live together?” she asked. “Well, I’m applying for my permanent residency.” She nodded. “You know, you don’t need your PR to live in Canada.” I was dumbfounded… “oh… really?” “Yeah, you just have to do a visitor record. You can’t work while you’re up here, but you can be with your husband.”  

We did a little more digging, and found that I could live with Sean for up to 6 months provided that I did not work and that I brought certain documents to prove that we were married and had the money to support ourselves. So basically, I would be a housewife until my PR went through. I had mixed feelings about this, since I had long wanted more time for my hobbies and interests, but I also have a great need for social stimulation and a certain amount of challenge. Because of those needs, and for other sentimental reasons, I originally planned to stay in my “Ohio life” until June 1. However, I slowly realized that it was kind of pointless to hang on, since I had married Sean and wanted to start my life with him. My attachments to my career and single life (which was never as profitable as I would have liked) began to loosen up, and I moved my departure date to April 26 - the earliest I could gracefully go.

One thing I will say about this move is that it has shaken up my priorities quite a bit. Ever since I was 18 I have planned to be self-sufficient, and have moved from coast to coast always with ingenuity and money in my back pocket. For the last five years, I have worked ceaselessly to get my career off the ground and build a life for myself. And now, I’m leaving it all behind for a life which, at least for now, will be all about love.