Lessons

 

I knew I had a lesson to learn from my deportation and I knew it must be a big one.

Being evicted from Romania compelled me to spend quality time with my family back in Canada for the first time in 20 years.

Over the coming weeks in Canada, the unlikely, seemingly impossible, family reunion that my mom had dreamt about and related to me via Facebook half a world away materialized. And materialized and materialized. We had a steady stream of visitors. No evening without talk of old times and family bonding for two months.

I fully regained the lost contact with my brother, whom I hadn’t seen at all in 11 years. I met his wife and both of his kids for the first time too. And I got to know my half-brother, whom I hadn’t seen since he was a little kid in the 1980s. I also regained contact with the large Koebel family. It feels odd calling them the “Koebel” family because they feel more like my own family – the Broebels or the Koerowns or something. Our families were extremely close growing up – like brothers, sisters and uncles. I consider them my family. And Ross – daddy Koebel – is now with my widowed mother. You know what I mean by with – they’re an item.

So. Was I being taught to keep closer ties with family? Sure. Lesson learned, in spades. But that wasn’t it either.

It was something lurking in my subconscious. I knew it would suddenly surface at an unexpected moment and it might just scare the bejeezus out of me.

I spent about two hours a day on Skype with Roxana back in Romania. More and more, our chats were consumed by talk of strategies to get me back into Romania. But we were being blocked at every point. Basically, to get back legal status in Romania, I actually had to be in Romania. If I could somehow find a way to walk into the headquarters of immigration services in Bucharest, necessary papers in hand, my residency status would be approved. Of course, the authorities refused to let me through the border. Catch 22.

Meanwhile, my daughter was begging me to come home, my bank account was leaking and my search for new work – as an international homeless person – was turning down dead ends.

Still, I was starting to unwind in Canada for the first time in, oh, 20 years.

“My nicotine cravings were stronger this morning after all the talk of bureaucracy,” I wrote in my journal in late July under the heading of the “July 3” file that had never been closed.

“But it got better when I stepped outside in the sun and silence of mom’s patio. I made myself a pitcher of lemonade – which, on my diet, is just lemon and water and ice. The tinkle of the three ice cubes in my glass started to soothe. Then it started to command my attention. As the ice cubes melt, they take on a different sound, and the lemonade takes on a slightly different taste. The sound of the stirred glass becomes deeper and more hollow as the sharpness of the lemon taste in my mouth weakens. ”

The little things were tightening their grasp on me.

 “I woke up and put on my sneakers but was too groggy to tie up the shoelaces. As I walked through the basement, the plastic cap of the laces hit the floor tiles. It sounded lazy at first, a rasping drag. Even slightly depressing. Then I picked up my step. The shoelaces clicked lighter. I picked up my step more. A jaunty click. I raised my knees higher as I moved quickly up the stairs to make coffee. The sound was positively cheery. The sound came from energy expended but, even so, was boosting my energy and my mood. For a few seconds, I jogged on the spot in a clickety-clickety-click that made me smile.

Then I started to make coffee. I scooped up a cup of coffee beans to put in the grinder. The coffee oil shimmered like a rainbow on the surface of the chocolate-brown beans. I put the beans in my hand and the oil lightly greased my fingers. A shame to waste that oil – an internet search tells me coffee oil is used in perfumes, biotechnology, flavorings. It’s an oil we don’t see when we use coffee powder. I have to explore the tastes, smell and sight of coffee oil.”

Roxana called me as I sipped the coffee, appreciating the oil. She had yet more bad news about any possible return to Romania. I was completely blocked. All options were out.

But I had to see my daughter Amy. She had just had her sixth birthday, without me.

I decided to travel back to Europe. Even if I couldn’t get back into Romania, my chances of seeing my daughter would increase if I was closer. Alinda – my ex-wife and the mother of my daughter – could at least take Amy to see me for a long weekend in London, I thought.

 But Europe was a risk. I would be living in cheap motels, in conditions that would make it hard to work, with no fixed address.

 Still, I bought the plane ticket.

My mom tried to hide her tears as she saw me off. She failed.

(This is Part 5 of a Six-Part Series. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)