We arrived in Montreal last night, just after crossing Portland's latitude. It gave me that sense of satisfaction I always feel (don't you?) when completing the letter "U." Canada is so accommodating of its in-migrants that they were willing to issue me a temporary work permit at 8:30 pm at the I-89 border-crossing.
Becky and John greeted us at the door to the townhouse we are to live in together, and we celebrated with hot cider and tea and cookies. And Annika was still up! having gotten special dispensation from her parents to stay up late to see her cousins. The three kids were still bouncing off the ceiling when we put them to bed.
It's cold here. When we arrived it was 5 degrees. For those of you who live in the double- and triple-digit habitats, that's very cold (you can count it on one hand). I have been staring around me in wonder all day at the beings that pass me on the street, striding confidently along in their down jackets and acting as if their very lives did not hang on the integrity of paper-thin layers of polyester stuffed with teensy baby bird feathers. That's courage.
We took a walk to open a bank account and to buy warm socks for the kids and me. Kai, bundled in his fleece and down sweater and snowsuit and hat and hood and mittens and snowboots, sat down on the floor when we arrived at the bank and and fell asleep leaning against Eric's calf. We carried his boneless body to the sock store and laid him down in the display window next to the slide and the Leggo's. He woke up thinking he'd gone to heaven.
We walked home together in the twilight, four socks richer, with a soft snow falling from the streetlights. The alley beside the house is a sheet of ice, so before we went inside we slid up and down it for a while holding hands for safety, until Kai had fallen on his head, and I had fallen on my back and then on my hand, and then on his leg, and Liam on his stomach, and then they fell over a few more times as practice and for good measure.
No photos, as it took so long to dress the kids and myself in our own survival gear that finding a snowsuit for the camera was beyond me.
-Juliet
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