In October, I received confirmation of Permanent Residence.
My fiance and friends and I had been waiting on that letter for a year
because we've been together long-distance since 2014,
and every time I had to leave, it tore a little more of my heart apart.
That letter was a blessing--permission to call Canada home, to come and go, to always be welcome.
It's the little things that are everything to me:
My fiance and I can sleep in the same bed.
We can dance while we make dinner in our tiny kitchen, even though the oven's kind of old and doesn't work that great.
We can say 'good morning', and 'see you later,' and go out on dates, like other couples do.
We can clean our room, and rearrange the furniture, when all we meant to do was dust the shelves.
We can catch a movie in the same cinema, and sit together on the same bus,
and eat way too much takeout and swear we'll start the diet again tomorrow,
while the same day turns to the same night around us.
He had a key to his apartment cut for me in my favourite colour,
because now it was ours.
You don't see that on that little TV spot they gave us.
At Halloween, the neighbourhood kids trick or treat. It's so cute--wish you could see it.
I'd never handed out candy before, but my fiance buys the big boxes you find at Shoppers.
It's basically his Christmas, and in Ocean Breeze, I can see why.
I come from a town where that kind of thing makes people wary. They don't get it.
My parents' house got vandalised once, so they taught me to turn off the lights and not answer the door.
In Ocean Breeze, trick or treating means a parade of smiling faces; more costumes than we can remember by the end of the night, but that always melt our hearts at the time.
In Ocean Breeze, the kids are lucky: they know they can trust their neighbours.
Even with the threat of Covid, they see not all strangers mean danger.
How many places in the city can you say that stays the same?
It should have been a great thing, to be told I had a home in Canada for as long as I wanted.
That I could live this way, and never have to stop.
That we could finally start our life together, and afford it.
How do you put a price on that, or say what it's all worth?
'No comment.'
No music in the kitchen.
No more trick or treating, no more happy children screaming,
because they're going to be evicted,
somewhere less safe than they lived before.
Oh, well. At least they'll have the memories,
while their playgrounds turn to asphalt.
It'll mean pretty houses that nobody can afford.