The weather report on the Calgary newspaper site the other day was predicting “sunny and pleasantly warm” for the weekend here. The meteorologists on the local TV in Iowa don’t use terms like that. They will say “warm” or “mild” or “typical”, but nothing that evokes the images that “pleasantly warm” does. For instance, a glass of wine or two induces a “pleasantly warm” feeling as does slow kissing or the anticipation of it. It is “pleasantly warm” sitting in a sunshine filled room on a chilly winter day. As it turns out, the Calgary paper was correct. The weather here is warm and very pleasant. Different from Iowa due to the distinct lack of moisture in the air, but humidity is not something to be mourned in my opinion though it doesn’t seem to effect the mosquito population in the least. And as a quick aside, the mosquitoes in Alberta are not insignificant in size.

We arrived at the Edmonton Airport and crossed the border with minimum fanfare. Actually, no fanfare at all, it was rather routine. I guess, in the words of those so much wiser than myself at the widda board, I was being a bit of a drama queen about it all. Well, maybe not though given the total autonomy custom officials at the borders appear to wield. The recent TB fiasco certainly has highlighted the problem with granting discretionary powers to some people. A certain amount of one’s ability to make decisions independent of supervision is based upon a basic knowledge of the rules upon which decisions should be made, but a lot more of one’s discretion amounts to little more than common sense, a commodity in short supply regardless of the profession or innate intelligence.

To paraphrase both my daughter, Katy, and Rob’s younger daughter, Jordan, things look the same and different at the same time. The countryside is flat farmland for the most part. The trees are not like Iowa’s though. As Jordan observed, Iowa’s trees are wild and gnarled in shape. There is a uniformity to the wooded areas here, a symmetry to their shape even. Triangular or rounded, depending on the type and very, very green.

The house where we will live is nestled on a quiet street out in the “boonies”. It reminds me a little of Renesselar, Indiana, where my aunt and uncle lived back in the early 70’s. Except there are more houses. Still there is a feeling that nothing needs to be done soon, or even in the near future, that feels good though more than a bit alien to me.

Fort Saskatchewan is the nearest city. The main part has this old fashioned feel to it with older homes in leafy neighborhoods but as you head towards Edmonton it gives way to the typical sprawl of vegetation bare enclaves with clone homes and neighborhoods in progress with monstrous homes in various stages of completion.

The part of Edmonton that we spent time in Saturday is known as Old Strathcona. A city in its own right at one time it merged with the capital over time but still tries to maintain its own identity. We ate lunch at a vegetarian cafe, Cafe Mosaics. Although tiny and warm, but not in a pleasant way, the food was good and the clientele young and reminiscent of my college days. I am always a little surprised to see that very little about being that young seems to change. After lunch we took a walk to the Canadian version of Barnes and Noble to hit the Starbucks. An interesting thing I noted is though I saw a Starbucks nearly everywhere we went and sometimes more than one to a street, I was nothing but delighted. I am a chai addict. But, when I saw my first McDonald’s followed quickly by a Taco Bell, I was as disappointed as an anthropologist discovering that the natives she was studying have cable in their little grass huts. I guess we all have are little bits of corruption that we accept as normal simply because they have corrupted us.

I ran into more Canada speak. Washrooms. You should ask for the washroom if you need to use the restroom or bathroom. Or the W.C. Which lead me to wonder why such terms were chosen in the first place. The primary reasons for needing these facilities is not washing, resting or bathing, and you wouldn’t want to drink the water in there, but as Rob says, piss room or shit room are probably too vulgar to be standard parts of the language.

Even the dark clouds and on/off rain in the late afternoon couldn’t dampen the sunny and pleasantly warm feeling of the day. Maybe it is the newness or maybe just that we are finally here and able to all be together in a place with more permanence, but there is as much a homey feeling to this new life in this “new world” as anywhere I have ever been. Meteorologists in Calgary have a way with words, I think.

I am not afraid of the flying really. I am afraid of airports. They are too busy and too crowded and people are moving at unnaturally high speeds to get ….. essentially nowhere because though the airport itself seems to be in perpetual “hurry-up” mode, the airlines are not caught up in the same mad-dash whirl. Indeed they are on some time table known only to them. It’s like that episode of the original Star Trek where Kirk drinks the bad water and is sped up. He is able to move at such frightening speeds that the Enterprise crew appears to him to be standing still, and they can only hear the buzz as he passes by them. Passengers zip here and there dragging luggage behind them like small dogs, cutting people off as though they were in rush hour traffic on the freeway.

Between the check-in with its weary-eyed and palpably impatient staff and the TSA agents who treat you like special education students, the entire process seems geared to raising a person’s blood pressure as much as it possibly can before parking you at a gate to wait in the most uncomfortable chairs, if you are lucky enough to find one, for however long they please. Nothing at all about the flying experience is designed to put you at ease. The color of the terror threat rainbow is on a continual audible loop as are the reminders to attach your bags to your person to prevent them from sitting still too long and attracting suspicion (though as an aside, I have seen bags sitting unattended for lengthy periods of time every time I have been to an airport in the last three months and no one seemed in the least alarmed – except for the time in Idaho Falls and Rob and I were too busy ….uh…greeting each other to notice that my bag had been off-loaded.  The TSA guy had taken the bag off the carousel already.  “Anyone own this purple bag?”  Personally, I think the TSA guy was just jealous.)

Embarking is a tad stressful but mainly because it brings out the territorial natures in many people as they jockey for storage, leg room and armrests. Even though I know checking luggage is a gamble only slightly more reliable than a power ball ticket, it is worth it to avoid the seething hostility of the business class traveler. If you can’t be a bit more sanguine perhaps you need to look into a career change.

As for the flight itself, take-off is almost physically unpleasant but once up in air and level, it’s not so bad. My daughter has the same tendency to startle that I do, so I am a bit worried she will not take to flying well but she is very excited to see Rob, her big sisters and our new home. Hopefully the excitement will prevail.

I just want to be there and in Rob’s arms. I have mentioned before that as our physical separations get shorter my ability to endure them shortens as well. When you are ready to be with someone for what  “better be a damn long time” as Rob puts it, then you are ready right now.

Jusqu’a ce soir mon amour, jusqu’a ce soir.  Je t’aime.