Leaves

A friend told me yesterday that she might move to British Columbia. 'Oh,' I sighed. I will be sad for her to leave here but I would stop no one from heading to the west coast. Sunsets! Ocean! Mountains. We joked about my going along with her.

Perversely, though, I then heard myself arguing for the benefits of living in Toronto. At this moment, I want to stay here, on my sofa, my dog on my feet, looking out my bedroom window. Lyrics run through my head: it's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free; it's a gift to come down where we ought to be.

It may be that I'm settling in.

Darn it.

If only there could also be the ocean and mountains and sunset...

Coming clean

My cousin, an accomplished psychologist, writer, and blogger (http://goodenoughmothering.com/) asked me recently how I managed to find time for blogging along with all my other activities, which recently have included planning a bar mitzvah as well as moving, working, school volunteering, and permanent residency application along with the daily routines of parenting and householding. It does start to sound like a lot when I list it, especially as my natural tendencies are toward sloth and hedonism, so the question has resonated with me - how do I do it?- and I keep wondering about the answer. Here's my attempt.

Firstly, it's a better question to ask of my sister, who is the ultimate 'I don't know how she does it' woman. I don't accomplish anywhere near what she does in a day or week or month. But I have decided that what I do manage, I probably owe to two factors: 1) having a wonderful, supportive, contributing husband who has a hand in at least half of the household and parenting tasks and (confession time) 2) my being a truly terrible housekeeper. Most women say it, but for me it's the god's own truth. I do very little cleaning and the bare minimum of laundry. For instance I have no idea where our iron is, or if we have an ironing board. (When the kids were little they thought the iron was strictly for the funny plastic mosaic craft called, in England, 'Hama Beads'.) We have a cleaner once or twice a month and pretty good immune systems. I shop, and cook, and usually get food on the table before the kids' bedtimes, and we collectively feed and walk the pets. Our houseplants don't fare well because they are quiet in the face of neglect; kids and animals have the virtue of making a great big noisy fuss when they need nourishment, which goes a long way toward their survival.

But thank you, Elaine, for asking. Let me brag that I have just finished sweeping three flights of stairs, though I will admit it's because I'm procrastinating work on my contribution to a big grant application due this week. I couldn't find the broom or the brush or the mop, so had to improvise with a duster and disinfectant wipes.

Down the rabbit hole without a passport

Trying to stay for any time in a country that is not your own is a pain in the proverbial. Immigration services worldwide seem to pride themselves on being distrustful,suspicious, and convoluted. My own country, judging by what I hear from my foreign friends, is the leader of the pack in pickiness and penalty, but fortunately for me I only deal with them at the actual border. I've had to negotiate with Indonesia and with the UK to be allowed to live, work, and study, and while my memories of encounters there are not fond ones, they are at least well in the past. (Like childbirth, you forget.) In Indonesia once I sat in a waiting room at an immigration centre hoping to renew my visa. Next to me was a man from Zimbabwe, or perhaps it was New Zealand, who hoped to run a shrimp farm on the southern coast of Java. His problem was that the work visa required ten fingerprints, and he was missing one finger, so having been rejected on that score, he was here to argue his case. I never did find out what happened to him. When it was my turn to enter the supervisor's office to be interviewed, the only question he asked me before stamping my documents was 'Are you a virgin?'

They haven't asked me that one in Canada in our quest for permanent residency (PR, as we hopefuls call it). The university provides us with the services of a law firm because the process is so complex, and we know we ought to be grateful for their help. The only trouble is that the appointed law firm seems bent on making things harder for us. The assistant with whom we deal cannot get my name right twice in a row, randomly calling me 'Mrs Husband's-Last-Name', 'Carlin', and 'Dr Leslie'. Very occasionally she calls me either Leslie or Dr Carlin and I do a double-take.

This would be funny in some contexts but not so much in legal or immigration ones. I had to make my way to the lawyer's office recently to sign a notarized affidavit, and found that, after months and months of sending this firm documents, information, and completed forms detailing intimate aspects of our life histories, they had got wrong my title, my address, and my citizenship. With an outward show of good humour I waited while they corrected and reprinted the letter. We proceeded with the signing and stamping, but at the same time I could not help clocking the opulence of the office in a high-rise, high-rent part of town, and thinking about where our tax dollars are going.

Then there was the medical exam we had to undergo (not just our family; all PR applicants). While I cannot say that the doctor, one of a small handful recognized by the province as certified to evaluate our health status, ran anything but the most upright operation, his policy was to accept payment only in cash. The office occupied a basement suite of rooms in a seedy building in the low-rent part of town. We were the only patients in the place; there are five of us, and he had exactly five chairs in the waiting room, so just as well. I had the impression that once we left the premises, the Venetian blinds on the glass door would snap shut, and the office would transform itself into a den of iniquity, for gambling, perhaps, or purveying illicit substances, or jazz. It would have been perfect for any of those, but it was not at all suited to the practice of medicine. As we handed over cash, nearly $200 per person, to the smiling receptionist I asked whether she was checking for unmarked bills. To her credit, she laughed. I don't think she was Canadian. As far as I can tell we passed the medical exam but on what data, I am uncertain.

We had to apply to a total of four countries in which we had lived as adults, requesting police clearance records. Three countries came up trumps (I now know where in our 'hood to go to get my fingerprints taken -- for the FBI, of course). The fourth country is Indonesia, where I lived many moons ago, and whose police will only conduct a record check if the request is accompanied by official government documents-- documents on flimsy tissuey paper that I have long since discarded, or lost. When I phoned the police department in the city where I lived to plead with them to make an exception, the officer listened to me politely, asked where I was calling from, and then, once he understood something of what I wanted, said 'Ibu- Madam- I cannot hear you' and disconnected. This happened three times. Nor could the consulates or private expatriate services assist. Eventually, merciful Ottawa granted me a waiver. It's warranted; I'm fairly sure that the only crimes I committed in Indonesia were sartorial. There was a lot of batik.

I don't believe in borders, by the way. I never have, but I always thought that was my own little peculiarity. Recently, and thanks to Twitter, I learned that I'm in good company, or at least company: http://openborders.info/