Mambo Taxi

This morning was frustrating, for work reasons including a canceled meeting and a long fire-alarm that left me with a headache from the sirens. I was headed for one of those work funks that was going to last all day. So instead of booking the afternoon off, I took part of my lunch hour to work on my Canadian Citizenship Application.

Yes! It's time; I've been a Permanent Resident for long enough that I can apply. I could've applied a month ago, but I wanted to leave lots of leeway because they count all the time I'm out of the country between four years ago and when my application is filed.

By the end of filling out forms, I actually felt better. I got my photos taken (in the adjoining plaza. The guy who works at the photo shop is a character. He doesn't remember me, but he's taken all of my immigration photos, over the last four years and two attempts to become a permanent resident). I paid my application fees online, which was reasonably painless, and I printed forms. They'll go into tomorrow's mail.

Today made a particularly symbolic date to have on the forms.

Tonight is also the tenth anniversary of when melted_snowball and I first decided we were a couple. (Not our first date, a semi-formal where I went home with someone else. That's another story.) Ten years ago was a drive in the country followed by star-gazing in some farmer's field near Ithaca. There was a total lunar eclipse. You can look it up.

Six months or so later, we were living together with two other people; the next year with one other; the following year just the two of us.

Five years ago, plus a month, we moved to Canada. And the first full day we were here, we sat in the HR office where we filed paperwork for the University's health insurance, and the HR person asked what our marital status was. Well, since we were now living in Canada, and we'd been co-habitating for more than one year, we were common-law. She checked the box. She left to copy the forms and we said to each other, hm, that was a bit anticlimactic, wasn't it?

Anniversaries aren't such a big deal in our household. I'm bad with dates, and dan's anti-sentimental. So, marking our twice-five anniversary with bureaucratic forms seems oddly perfectly appropriate.

Forgive me a bit of introspection, but that's life. It's the days that roll by to become years, to become a decade. And I had so little idea ten years ago where I'd be today. But I can't help get a bit emotional about how damn lucky I am. Tomorrow is just as unknowable as ten years from now. We could get hit by a car. The world could end. God willing, there will be a good long series of tomorrows with us together in them.

So, I was thinking about this as I got on my bike to come home, and I glanced down as my bike's odometer rolled over again from 999.9 to 0.

Yes.

This morning in Quaker Meeting, two people spoke about grief and grieving. In the silence, my mind was transported back five or so years, to a particular Meeting for Worship, held by Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Concerns. Someone who was beloved by that community, and who has since died of cancer, sang out of the silence, Morning Has Broken.

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the Word

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where her feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God's recreation of the new day.

One thing led to another and I was just looking for one of my kid-books on amazon.

They have Old MacDonald Had an Apartment Building, which has been reissued. (yay!)

But I realized that the author and illustrator, Judi and Ron Barrett, also did two other books I loved to pieces, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and (probably my favourite), The Giant Jam Sandwich.

Oh, plus Mercer Mayer's Professor Wormbog in Search for the Zipperump-a-Zoo. These were the happy stuff of my childhood. I can remember sounding out letters in these, so that would put them at approximately age 4, or a bit earlier.



If, by some chance, you want to raise a kid with an early and strong appreciation for whimsy, these books won't hurt. (Though if you asked my parents, I'm sure they would say they DID hurt, by the 25,000th repetition.)

Mmm. Happy memories.