Big country, small world

The eldest is back from his first year at university! So happy to have him home. The dinner table feels complete again.

He chose to attend the University of British Columbia, about the furthest away he could be from Toronto and still study in Canada. It's a distance of about 3000 miles, give or take a few hundred kilometers. At least there are direct and frequent (though not cheap) flights between Toronto and Vancouver. Most of his friends stayed local, in Ontario.

After a grueling month of exams, at last he boarded a plane back to us. The whole family drove to the airport to meet him. His flight landed on time but he had a long wait in baggage claim for his bulging suitcase. The rest of us stood impatiently outside the sliding doors. "Authorized personnel only," said the sign. Isn't motherhood authorization enough? I argued, thinking of slipping through. Husband said no, so instead we dialed son's number and kept him vocal company.

Near us, I spied a couple who looked as eager as we did, the man wearing a UBC tee-shirt. Eventually the sliding doors emitted a teen-age girl who hugged the mom and the tee-shirt-wearing dad. On the phone, I mentioned this reunion to prodigal son (still separated from us by our lack of authorization) who asked, "Are there two of them?" Puzzled, I looked again, and sure enough, a duplicate of the first girl popped through. More hugs. "Oh, those are Nicole and Jo," son said. "They're also in engineering. They live outside of Toronto." The family saw me looking at them and I waved, gesturing to the phone, laughing, and, walking nearer, named my son. The girls smiled and said "Oh yes, he's so nice. He's the one to go to if you have a programming question." Suddenly, Vancouver seemed less far away, and the enormous University of British Columbia a cozier institution.

By the time our son and his luggage emerged through the automatic doors to give and receive his own hugs, the twins and their parents had departed. "Come drop by to see us if you're downtown!" I told them. Canada is huge, but it's also a small world. I reflected that, as is probably the case for most immigrant families, it's the kids who make an adopted country feel more like home.

Or perhaps just more Canadians