Four frantic days wind down from my landing here last Thursday afternoon, and I finally feel like myself after sleeping in today, deciding against seeing any other properties after endless driving around and viewing about ten or so places after vetting and rejecting dozens more. I think I've found our new home, and now just need to get my school to issue a financial aid award letter so that our hopefully-landlady-to-be can see where the rent will be coming from.
I needed today, needed to just move at my own pace after draining nearly a full tank of gas driving around this sprawling metropolis, and a day after my cumulative stress tank overwhelmed my perception apparatus, leading to a long and tough talk with Jen where things that were creating needless static were ironed out and worked through. Only today did I let myself off of the justify-the-expense hook and actually explore the town, start establishing new bearings in what I hope will be our new neighborhood: watched four streetcars rumble down the street in half an hour - on a Sunday, no less - and took my first subway ride (which was somehow free, despite my attempts to pay for it). I was reminded of the subway trains I've ridden in San Francisco, Washington DC, New York, and London, and the civic statement that is made by investing in such valuable public infrastructure.
The entire world is here, and I want to find a way to buy the Rosetta Stone series for French and Spanish and write them off as educational expenses after (a) watching the re-dubbed detox scene in "Trainspotting" at 2:30am on CBC last night and (b) watching a family get on the train at Eglinton West today and sit down next to me where a girl and boy took their frenzied game of patty-cake from the subway platform into the subway car, with the boy trying to get a man my age to play with exhortations of "iRapido! Rapido!"
I can also begin to see what Jen gave up to stay in Minneapolis with me, what it must have been like to leave London and not return, staying with me in a town where the brightest lights just aren't as bright. I'm excited to begin my schooling (the need to pull the financial aid rabbit out of the school's hat notwithstanding) and re-launch myself, but I'm almost more excited for Jen to re-establish herself here, after how limited we've had to be for so long because of our finances, in a city where driving is almost a sport for the foolish, what with the seemingly endless and constant supply of buses, streetcars, two or three interconnected train systems, and a subway tying so many places together. (My own hoped-for subway and bus ride to school would be just over an hour from leaving home to getting to York, with all kinds of reading and reflective time available instead of traffic-dodging.)
After so many months of waiting, there's just a little more waiting to go, and if all goes according to plan, our lives will be transplanted from Minneapolis to Toronto in just under three weeks, with the first nervous dips of the big toe into the water of a new town already in the process of happening. There's so much, and it's just a matter of being patient with it all, seeing the people I can in the Twin Cities before we leave for this new place, full of wonder and opportunity.
It's costing tens of thousands of dollars, but the ticket is punched to a new kind of Ellis Island, and unlike anytime before in my life, I truly believe that anything is possible.
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