homecoming
I got a text yesterday evening from one of my nearest and dearest friends in Toronto:
“Apparently, Canada and the US are preparing to issue a statement in the next 24-48 hours suspending non-essential travel between the two countries so, if you wanna come home, come home now.”
It’s not much different from the text I sent my mom on Saturday as I launched into my campaign to bring her home from Mexico. The parallels do not escape me and it’s a real question I’ve been wrestling with: Do I stay, or do I go?
I’ve had one foot in and one foot out of Los Angeles for the better part of the past decade. I came here for work, planning to stay for a year. Eight years later, I have friends here that I consider family. My tiny, beach community apartment is comfortable and well stocked, with a supportive cadre of neighbors. I recently got a job with health insurance coverage and started 2020 as a US resident.
When I called my mom yesterday, I partly wanted to catch up now that she’s safely back in Canada (and isolating for 14 days), and also to find some clarity on my big question. My friend’s text reinforces a suspicion I’ve had since the government’s call over the weekend for everyone to come home to Canada ASAP: Something is brewing with the border. I needed to establish that mom has everything she needs if I find I’m not able to get back to her anytime soon. Or, I needed to pack up and go. Immediately.
A phone call quickly followed my friend’s text. This friend is a planner. A mom. She’s one of those people who sends out Christmas cards, whips up Michelin Star worthy dinners for a dozen people with whatever’s in the fridge, and somehow remembers everybody’s cousin’s birthday. We’ve been friends since college when I used to borrow her ID to get into bars, and she has been my first call for virtually every tragedy or triumph in my adult life. She taught me how to park a car. She knew my ex-husband when he was still just my boyfriend. I spent my first single Christmas with her family after my divorce (and many since then).
She had a plan. If I returned home, I could self-quarantine at my own condo for two weeks when I arrived — she’d of course stock my fridge before I got there — and then move into her house with her family. I could have the cosy and recently renovated basement. I welled up. Sometimes generosity and love hit you so hard it hurts.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this question of where I should be for… this. Having spoken with my mom and feeling like she’s in a really good place with lots of support locally, I’m now trying to figure out what’s best for me. I feel like Canada’s social structure may be better equipped for this crisis generally, which is another reason that I’m glad mom is there, but I’m not sure my personal setup in Toronto is better. I still own a high rise condo apartment in downtown Toronto, but it’s in a really crowded part of the city — which doesn’t seem ideal during a plague. I also don’t feel very connected to it. I’ve never lived in the apartment full-time, I don’t know my neighbors, I have only a few close friends left in the city, and the last time I was there for more than a month I got lonely. Even though I’m not a permanent resident of the USA and my home country is Canada, I’m at a place where I have more of my life in Los Angeles than I do in Toronto.
So, I made my decision: I’m going to wait this thing out here, and my dear friend and I are instead going to meet once a week on FaceTime for a new tradition we’ve dubbed “Whining Wednesday” to share a glass and our gripes. And if the time comes when I need to go “home” to Canada, I’ll just have to take my chances that I will somehow find a way.
I woke up this morning to news that Canada and the USA are indeed planning to close the border. It hit hard. Sometimes, as they say, you really can’t go home again.
A lot has happened in the past couple of days, which is kind of the new normal. Trump on Sunday made his first appearance as a leader in this crisis, holding a press conference flanked by actual experts armed with real science and urging bona fide action. His tone was uncharacteristically somber and professional — at least until he got defensive and accused the media of failing to acknowledge how great a job he was doing with the crisis. But he mostly gathered it back up and delivered for his nation. This is the latest from a news cycle on overdrive:
- The federal government advises that work and study should take place at home, instead of at offices and schools.
- Gatherings should be limited to 10 or fewer people.
- People need to stop hoarding (“You don’t have to buy so much… Take it easy. Relax.”)
- Testing is available nationwide, including plans for drive-through testing.
- FEMA and Public Health officials are on the case, focusing on getting aid to the highest priority groups: healthcare workers and first responders, and the elderly.
- An enormous federal aid package of $1 trillion dollars, including tax cuts, and bailouts for the airline industry and small business — as well as payouts to households.
Coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx, who is a retired U.S. Army physician, also gave us a sobering reminder that our case numbers are going to go up. Partly because that is the nature of a global pandemic, but also because testing is finally in place and the reporting from that is going to spike our numbers. Today, 115 deaths and 6,509 cases here in the USA — up 45% since Sunday.
But, uh. Don’t panic?
Image borrowed from the Internet. Follow photog @jorgevasconez on Instagram.