169 Days

It’s been one hundred and sixty nine days since I posted about my inner dialogue and the vacation it took without me. Since then a lot has happened.

In brief: Jose Miguel and I separated. Mi familia y yo had an amazing/awkward/perfect/painful last week as a family in Perú. Two-thirds of mi familia flew back to Canada. One-third of mi familia screamed for over an hour on a flight from Winnipeg to Regina. A gorilla, a robot, some long-lost members of Jem and the Holograms and my Dad met us at the airport. Saskatchewan, as always, proved cold and somehow comforting. I made some bad choices, obsessed a little and lost twenty-five pounds from the stress of it all. I’ve never looked better. I started Spanish 101 and found myself in a level of hell only verb conjugation can create. I started reading and writing en español at a level I never thought I’d reach. I felt proud of myself. Jose Miguel was approved as a Permanent Resident of Canada after well over a year of waiting. We were told our paperwork was some of the quickest of anyone in our situation. I still want to burn Immigration Canada to the ground. Jose Miguel moved to Canada. Turns out the full three-thirds of mi familia in one house is amazing. We vaguely looked into filing for divorce but then something came up. Gaia learned to walk after an intense session with her personal Phys Ed teacher while Canada was winning an insane amount of gold medals in the Olympics. I finally went to Salsa night. I didn’t dance. I bought a car. I actually won’t own it for four years. Semantics. I tried snowboarding for the first time and I was amazing, even if I couldn’t move for almost a week after. I applied for a job, got offered a job and turned a job down. I’m glad I changed my mind. I love my job. Jose Miguel stayed home with Gaia full-time for almost a month. He’s an amazing father and still the most handsome man I’ve seen up close. The fact that we’re horrible at being married remains. I started running every morning at 6:00am. It made me feel strong and powerful and brave. We celebrated Gaia’s first birthday with a big party and a cake only my Dad could create. Jose Miguel took one last contract on ships. He left. Gaia got a spot at a home daycare. Gaia got kicked out of a home daycare. Gaia got a spot at an amazing, reputable, government subsidised daycare. I was reminded that everything happens for a reason. Gaia and I went to Vancouver for a visit. She made a lifelong friend in a big black dog, had her first experience with finger paint and was the star at her second first birthday party. She did this while wearing an excessively large tutu. I got to catch up, tell my story and celebrate the thirtieth birthday of one of the most amazing people I know. I felt like I could breathe again. We went home. I started a passionate love affair with coffee. Gaia started a passionate love affair with making friends. We are all very happy. I bought an iPhone. I took a week off Facebook. My Dad started cooking family dinner on Sunday nights. I got to dress like a grownup every day. It’s been said, by my boss, that I could take over the world all while wearing six-inch heels. She’s a smart lady. Gaia was exposed to every germ in existence. One day I caught her licking the floor at daycare. She was sick a lot. She stopped sleeping through the night. I talked to Jose Miguel on the phone almost every day. Who would have thought? I got my hopes up for spring and then it started snowing again. I questioned my decision to live in Regina. I started dating, realised I was bad at it and quit. I cut over ten inches of hair off my head. I was relatively unmoved but I’m pretty sure my stylist cried after I left. I had a picnic with my Mom. Gaia enjoyed her first ice cream cone... and her second... and her third. The sun came out and we got a big plastic pool shaped like a shark. Again, I got my hopes up. It was grey and rainy for a month. I cleaned my bathroom. Gaia proved she is a budding genius through a series of events I relayed to anyone who would listen. She started running everywhere. I finally sorted through all my old boxes, found I’d saved every piece of paper from university and threw it out. Now I have a whole extra room in my house. I’m planning on setting up a studio space for me and my girl. Gaia still doesn’t speak save for “Mama”, “Dad-Dad” (what she calls her Grandad) and “Uh-Oh” but she is the best non-verbal communicator I’ve ever met. She now knows the signs for “please”, “more” and “all done” thanks to the wonderful women at daycare. She has a genuine best friend who makes her laugh like no one else. They have perfected the best friend high-five. She climbs up the stairs, up the couch and up the walls. I’ve taken to telling strangers she is NUTBALLS when they look at her picture in my iPhone. She is. I drank many glasses of red wine and got drunk for the first time in a long time. I went to a lot of BBQs, playdates, dinners and a gala. I had my picture taken by Regina paparazzi one night with my boss. Apparently I’m Regina famous (or rather, employed by someone who is). A good friend came to town. We ate the best burger I’ve ever tasted, hosted a BBQ, drank a lot of Big Rock Lime Beer and bought fifteen dollars worth of jellybeans. I redesigned the blog one night while I watched Whip It. Jose Miguel and I made some decisions. We're still not divorced. This weekend the sun started shining. I got a tan while logging working hours and danced on the grass with Gaia when I was finished. Last night I took her to the park. She slid down the slide on her own for the first time. She perfected the art with at least eighty more solo slides before I could get her back home. As a result I think I developed an arm muscle I didn't know existed. This morning I felt like writing.

I make no promises, but... I'm back. Did you miss me?

Make It Work

So, I know. Every time I commit to hopping aboard the post-a-day train again something happens and I find myself derailed. To be honest I’m just not quite myself lately and I keep waiting to wake up feeling better so I can get back to posts about poop. The culprit? My MP was looking into the immigration situation for Jose since apparently the federal government doesn’t actually believe in communicating with its citizens and showing genuine concern for their unique situations. Anyway, long story short, it would appear it’s going to be a minimum of fourteen months until Jose has even a glimmer of hope for getting into Canada. Yeah, so there’s that.

Now, before I go on here’s the thing you need to know about me (if you don’t already). I’m the most capable person you’ll ever meet. I’m the girl who goes to university full time and works thirty hours a week and volunteers here, there and everywhere and stays up until 4:00am to bake cupcakes and craft whimsical greeting cards because so-and-so’s smile looked a little off over coffee the other day and it is clearly my job to cheer them up. I have itemized, prioritized, painfully organised lists and I generally get more done before breakfast than most people do all day. Like I said, I’m the most capable person you’ll ever meet, until of course suddenly I’m not. For the most part I go through life always able to find a positive spin. Like Tim Gunn I’m always finding a way to “make it work” and “carry on”. The downside to this in that every once in awhile I find myself overwhelmed with everything I’ve tried to be positive about, usually spurred by some epic failure or disappointment and then, predictably, my facade comes crashing down and my world begins to unravel. When your only coping mechanism is to look on the bright side and you suddenly find yourself devoid of positivity, well, you can imagine the results.

When we got the immigration news I tried to take it all in stride. I immediately started a mental list of reasons why the news was good. It went something like:

1) Well at least now we know! Now we have a concrete timeline to work with! This is good news actually! Great news!

2) I might get to live in Peru and that’s cool! I’ll always be able to say “oh yeah, that was the year we lived in Peru”! Plus Gaia will get more time with her other grandparents and uncles and cousins! Yup! This is gonna be great! GREAT!

3) I... um... well...

And that’s about as far as I got before I gave in and every disappointment Jose and I have faced for the past year started pressing against my chest. The pain I’ve been pushing aside in favour of silver linings, yeah, it sucks, especially all at once. Our multiple visitor visa rejections and the fact I went though all but three-weeks of my pregnancy alone. The memories of feeling Gaia move inside of me for the first time and looking around excitedly only to realise I had no one to share it with. The way I was terrified and had no idea if everything was going to be okay and how there was no one there to reassure me. How I used to lay in bed alone and whisper “everything’s going to be okay” and pretend it was Jose just so I could fall asleep. How I gave birth with the support of someone who, while amazing, was not my husband and how all I wanted in the world was to share it with him. How much I hated feeling bitter or anything besides joy on my first night with Gaia because it wasn’t her fault Jose wasn’t there any more than it was his, or mine. How much I regretted those tears when she was only a few hours old. The pure and poisonous envy I feel every time I see families intact and want to pull them aside and shake them and ask them if they really appreciate everything they have and if they know how much harder it would be if they didn’t have the physical presence of each other regardless of how difficult just being together could be sometimes. How I spend hours when I should be falling asleep just wondering how much easier it all would be if there were two of us, especially since that other person would be Jose. Yeah. I could go on for hours about all the bitterness and bile that’s spilled over in the past week but that’s exactly why I haven’t been posting anything in the first place. See I fear and loath pity in equal amounts and try to avoid it whenever possible (an easy feat when one places their whole existence on a positive point-of-view). Still I thought maybe if I just wrote it all down (or at least scratched the surface) I might be able to let it go and get back to those longed after posts where every once in awhile I’ve even been known to make a funny.

Pop Quiz

It’ll be two weeks tomorrow since Gaia and I have been home from Vancouver. In the last two weeks which of the following things have happened?

a) Gaia moved into her own bedroom marking our first night apart. I left both our doors open and slept with my head at the foot of my bed so I could see into her room lest she panic. She didn’t. In contrast I’m not sure I slept a wink.

b) I took Gaia in to get her four-month immunizations. After seeing how wiggly and active my child is the nurse proclaimed “Well it’s a good thing you’re married because I sure can’t imagine taking care of this little one on my own!” Ahem. Perhaps I should have asked if she’d call the embassy in Lima on my behalf.

c) I checked the Immigration Canada website (as I do every Tuesday) for any updates on our case. Not only were there no updates (nor have there been for three months) but the estimated wait time for Peruvian cases has jumped from five to eight months to nine to fifteen. Whoopie!

d) Gaia went from sleeping a successive nine to twelve hours through the night to waking up every hour, on the hour for ten days straight. She also began a campaign to abolish naps and more than thirty seconds of independent play.

e) One sunny morning in a winding Tim Hortons drive-thru line up I finally learned what a “double-double” is. The teenager in the window looked at me like I was crazy as he explained then (judgementally I feel) asked me where I was from.

f) I started a quest to fold one hundred paper cranes to hang from the ceiling in Gaia’s new room. Over fifty cranes in and it started to seem more than a little foolish. The box of cranes in the corner taunts me and guilts me into making ‘just one more’. I should be done by the end of the week.

g) During a particularly hellish night Gaia peed on my bed while getting her diaper changed at 5:00am. Too tired to change the sheets I simply piled towels on the puddle until the urine stopped soaking through and the two of us slept on said towels for the remainder of the morning. For six successive nights I simply added another towel or blanket to the pile to mask the smell of pee and continued sleeping on the soiled sheets. I am disgusting.

h) I joined a gym which (thankthelord) has a daycare. Friday marked the first time I have ever left Gaia in the care of a stranger. After a quick hour of cardio I went to pick her up and found her smiley and nuzzling up against one of the staff who proclaimed “I just love your baby... she’s so sweet and cuddly!” The shock on my face was hard to deny as I coldly responded “Well... that’s lovely for you.” (PS. Have I mentioned my daughter still won’t cuddle with me?)

i) I officially decided that caring for a four-month old is more difficult than caring for a newborn. The honeymoon is over people.

j) All of the above.

Perhaps it goes without saying that the correct answer is j). On the bright side things are looking up. I had a wonderful day visiting with friends at a beautiful farm where Gaia got to catch up with her BFF and meet chickens and horses and sheep and, oddly enough, a llama. When we got home she was in such a great mood she rewarded my weeks of endless patience with her first real giggle. Until now her laugh consisted of a high pitched, open-mouth scream. Tonight she laughed like a big-girl without pause for almost five minutes straight as I pretended to eat her legs. At least somebody thinks I’m funny.

If They Could Just Spend One Day With Us...

Of everything I’ve done this year there is one thing I am especially proud of. It’s not growing a baby, or successfully helping that baby exit through my body or caring for her on my own once she was out. If I had to narrow it down to my single greatest accomplishment in the last year it would be that somehow, inexplicably, I’ve managed to stay positive through the back and forth of mine and Jose’s struggles with immigration. I hesitate to write about it, fearing it might result a verbal avalanche of self-pity and pure hatred towards the government. Still. With every disappointment we’ve found hope.

Hope is a beautiful thing but today I felt a little bit of my hope slip away. I feel defeated.

“If they would only spend a day with us they would let him in” I think.
If they could see the way Gaia smiles at him. It’s a smile I see every morning when I get her out of bed. One not seen by the public and too precious to be photographed. A smile that wouldn’t be forgotten anyhow. That smile is the first time my daughter said she loved me. That smile says she loves Jose too. I wonder if she remembers him from the three weeks she spent in Peru in the womb. Does she remember the way he slept with his face right next to hers? The way he called her Gaia and kissed her and told her all of his stories through my bellybutton? I wonder if the way he smells has become a part of me, if he runs through my veins and she thinks of us as a set. Her parents.

How can we be somebody’s parents and still be kept apart by wait times and proof of relationship forms and immigration hotline numbers? Does that seem right to you?

I wonder if she knows why he’s rarely with us and if she cuts the desperation by living off a steady diet of hope. I wonder if maybe that’s just me.

For the last year we’ve always had something to buoy our hope. When he was denied for the first Visitor Visa we got through by perfecting the applications for our second shot. We rescheduled flights and consulted lawyers and crossed our fingers extra tight. The second denial stung the most, it was the rejection killing our hope, until we realised hope was the only thing we could count on and clung tight to the pieces we had left. Quickly decisions were made and I had a trip to Peru and Christmas with my in-laws and a marriage to focus on. Then it was applying for Permanent Residency. Complicated forms and letter upon letter and triple checking everything before our twenty pound package was on its way. Before I knew it there were the last months of my pregnancy. Prenatal yoga and nesting and fights over baby boy names. It was anything to avoid thinking of Jose not being there for the birth. Anything to not want to fly to Mississauga to let Immigration Canada feel the extent of my rage and distract myself from thoughts of burning that mother down. Anything not to think about how a country that preaches equality and fairness in opposition to the red-white-and-blue downstairs could take away that experience from us both like it didn’t even matter. Like we’d ever be able to get it back. When people ask if labour hurt I want to tell them that nothing could hurt as bad as not having the person you love there with you. Nothing could burn like that loneliness. I just say “nope” and smile instead. It’s the hope that covers the bitterness. Then it was the baby who became our hope in human form. It was two hours a day on Skype and stories about our child and learning to be a family when countries separated us. Didn’t I always say that there were all different types of families? Then it was a countdown to a new job for Jose, one that would bring him to us twice a month. It was packing and preparing and excitement. It was three days. Twenty-six hours of being a family. The best twenty-six hours I have ever spent. Every. Single. Second.

Today was our last day. Jose won’t be given anymore Vancouver days off. We have no plan for the future. No idea when we might see each other again. Ship work means two hour conversations are condensed into a ten minute phone call and one email a day. No one at Immigration Canada will talk to us and we know our paperwork sits near the bottom of the pile at the embassy in Lima. We have no end point. No magic date to count down to. We are exhausted from the hope. There’s only so long that you can let hope feed you in place of the dreams you rest it on. I hate myself for complaining. All my life I’ve known that nothing is ever as bad as it seems. That there are millions in far dire circumstances then mine. I try to save a little hope for them too and let the emotion I focus on myself be gratitude. I am grateful. For a husband who loves me and our healthy baby. For the way I know that nothing could make him as happy as watching me and Gaia for hours. For the way she smiles and him and he smiles at me and I smile at her. For the way that we share the smiles that no one else ever gets to see. Now that I’ve exhausted my hope I think I’ll focus on my gratitude. Maybe we’re just too lucky to be together every day. Like meteor shower or Canucks playoff victory maybe we’re lucky enough to have something so beautiful we can’t experience it every day because it’s rare and worth the wait.

That being said, if anyone has some connections with Immigration Canada feel free to pull a few strings for us. If you can get Jose into the country I promise we’ll make an effort to find something to fight about like who has to take out the garbage or why I refuse to change the toilet paper roll (I mean really, it’ll just run out anyway).