Sunday, November 19, 2017

With Glowing Hearts...

 
Short of always wearing a beaver pelt hat and listening to Gordon Lightfoot 24 hours a day while holding a hockey stick in one hand and a box of Timbits in the other, as a Canadian citizen for the last six years I have been as Canadian as it's possible to be, yet with just one final, definitive piece missing to complete the picture: a Canadian passport.
 
With an irresistible invitation to visit friends in San Rafael, California, for a few days (including New year's Eve), ours having expired long ago both Susan and I had to apply for passports, and they have arrived!  I got mine on November 14th, and I have to say standing there staring at it, reading 'Canadian' under the nationality section on its main page was rather surreal.  But it felt, and feels, good.  However, it is certainly odd to think that when we do eventually return to the UK for a visit, I will do so as a 'foreigner.'  I have no problem with that, nor do I bear any confusion of national identity, but it cannot help but feel strange!
 

Stranger still, perhaps, is that Susan's new passport is her first Canadian one!  Having been born in Lancashire, yet lived in Canada as a Canadian citizen for most of her life, without any particular profound reason for it she has always held a passport of the country of her birth.  This has proven to be a good thing for so many reasons, especially in that when we met and fell in love a UK passport made it SO much easier for us to be together.  While I could not without a great deal of red tape hoop-jumping difficulty move to Canada to be with Susan, she could very easily move to the UK to be with me.

So, we two are now fully-fledged Canadians in every way we can be, and very proud of that fact.  Having gone through everything that has befallen us since we got together, this feels like a greatly significant milestone in our life's journey together.   
   

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