Challenges

This isn't easy to do, you know.  It's a huge undertaking, to move your entire life to a new country and settle somewhere completely different from what you've known all your life until then.  However, it's obvious from looking at human history that immigration is do-able, and not only have people endured it for millennia, they have thrived on it, too.

I still find time for the immigration forum.  At first I was sure that once arrived in Canada I would have no time for it, but the truth is that the subject interests me, quite apart from my own personal experience.  I follow it avidly in the news: whatever changes Canada makes to its immigration regulations may impact us one way or another, or someone I know.  I want to stay informed, and I want to pass on to others what I know so they can navigate these waters too.

What I see sometimes on the forum from others who have completed their processing is that their period of adjustment is harder than they expected, and the couples must work really hard to overcome the challenges arising from being together all the time.  Some of these couples never spent any appreciable time living together in Jamaica, and others have.  Some have even lived together in Canada before.  Still, there is a period of adjustment after the immigration process is complete that calls on them to remember their commitment to each other and why they made this choice in the first place.

Our challenge comes in the form of G's health.  He is used to navigating the Canadian health system, I am not.  It is routine to him to endure monthly, weekly or random treatments as necessary for his health condition.  He knows the nurses, the doctors, the hospitals.  I do not.  So, of course, I have to ask him questions that might seem redundant or perhaps ridiculous, and I have to observe closely everything that happens to him to understand what is going on.

Given that he hates the treatments, although he has endured them for the better part of a decade now, and given that he will need them for the rest of his natural life unless some miracle cure is found for his body's persistent rejection of the iron necessary to form his lifeblood, I expected he would be more resigned, so to speak to his treatments.  Instead, he resents each one as if it is the first, as if the "weakness" that results is a fresh, unforeseen betrayal of what he expects from himself and he does not understand why things are the way they are.

Perhaps it is the Jamaican in me that fatalistically expects struggle and believes one should simply forge ahead once hard times are encountered , grim-faced and with gritted teeth perhaps, but always accepting that things are as they are quickly and moving to with dealing with them.  Or perhaps it is some other part of my heritage manifesting itself.  Whatever it is, something in me becomes exasperated at his railing at his body and his illness, and simply wants to press on and deal with it as best as possible.  

Then I think to myself about how I felt about my asthma when it was worse, and I rein in my feelings and try to walk more in his shoes.  I hated the occasional betrayal of my body that was every attack, no matter how mild.  Yet I had lived with asthma since I was nine years old, surely I should have been used to it!  I acknowledge then that I need to empathise more, to see more of his reactions in myself, and it makes me ashamed of my impatience with his reactions and I allow that he has full as much reason as I ever did, and quite likely more, to feel as he does.

It is this empathy that I will need to cultivate and draw on more if we are to deal successfully with all the challenges that will come in this settling in period.  I may be the one who did the moving, but we are both adjusting and sometimes I have to consciously remind myself of this and use it to examine his actions and my reactions and vice versa.

Challenges are a part of any marriage.  No matter how well-suited and how compatible they might be, every couple is two very different halves working to be one whole, happy unit.  Add the stresses of life and the choices we make such as immigration, and the mettle of any relationship can be tested and pushed beyond anything the couple themselves might have expected.  With this in mind, I remind myself, daily if need be, that when all is said and done, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but by his side, so I will always work at gaining all the skills and qualities I need to meet him in his own efforts to secure the strength and happiness of our union.

Loss, and my first Canada Day

When you live in or are from a small town, you get used to no-one except the people living there or from there having much to say about the place.  Your focus narrows to the daily doings of your small town, and you expect that the world at large will mostly ignore you and these daily doings, as they are neither earth-shaking nor very important, to the way of most people's thinking.

I was born in a small town, for even though it is the parish capital of Westmoreland and a town of venerable age (established by the Spaniards prior to the English conquest in 1655, hence the name of the town, which means "grassland by the sea"), and in spite of its recent building boom in the last decade or so, Savanna-la-Mar remains very much a small town.  I received all my primary and secondary education in this small town, so I am very much a small town girl.  In spite of almost six and a half years in Kingston, I still identify with small town people, small town ways and small town thinking.

As a consequence of my upbringing, or perhaps as an advantage of it, I am very much at home in E.L.  I don't mind that there's only one mall, that selections and options are limited so far as restaurants, activities or entertainment, I grew up with that.  I am very good at amusing myself, as a consequence, and have a high tolerance for what most people would describe as boredom.  More to the point, all the "necessary" modern conveniences are here, especially the internet, so I feel like I lack nothing.

What I have not built up a tolerance for, is loss.  And loss came to E.L. with a vengeance 8 days ago, and took with it some of the security, and a great deal of the anonymity, that is treasured in small towns.  You don't wake up and expect that by the end of the day your small city, barely a dot on the map to most, will be all over the national news because a building fell apart and took with it some of your fellow townspeople.  Yet, that is exactly what happened on Saturday, June 22nd, to E.L.

Now, just over a week later, there are families grieving their loved ones, as two lives were lost, and the mall itself is now lost to the community, taking with it the employment of almost three hundred people.  For awhile, as the questions linger, our anonymity is lost, as news crews try to get opinions, as government officials search for answers, and both publish these to the wider community.  

As a consequence of the mall tragedy, there is a pall over my first Canada Day.  Or perhaps, not so much a pall, as a solemnity is cast over the day that is not associated with such celebrations of nationhood.  The sense of patriotism and national pride usually felt on these days is dampened by the knowledge that there are families among us mourning, feeling the loss of loved ones not present to share in yet another memorable day.  Events in town have been cancelled, rightly so to my mind, and persons are left to their own devices insofar as how they will mark the occasion.

In time, the questions will be answered, and E.L. will go back to being a small city, and of not much notice to anyone who doesn't live here or isn't from the town so as to be familiar with its ways and doings.  Until then, a sad something lingers in the air, and a day of national joy comes with tears.