April was a month of checking the mailbox everyday, waiting for the promised letter from a scholarly agency. They claimed it would be sent in April, and these official-types are usually true to their word. The letter saying I had made it into the final round came via real mail, so I knew this one would too. A job I had applied to in Montreal, along with a colloquium, had also said they would get back to me in April. So every day was full of eager email checking, wondering if the pieces for our big move would start to fall into place.
Nothing.
Some days it was frustrating. Why do people name deadlines and not meet them? I vented repeatedly, if only they hadn't said April, I wouldn't have been expecting anything.
I worked on my patience. Trust. Letting go. Just doing the next thing. Remembering it is not all about me.
May rolled around. I gave the Official Scholarly People a week of grace, knowing that real mail could add an extra week. True enough a week into May, a friend happened to call while I was working in our third floor office. I meandered to the ground floor while on the phone with her. I happened to see our mail woman going down our back lane through the living room windows. I know when she comes, I know her routine. I was standing in the kitchen, still on the phone, and watched her approach my front door with one piece of mail in her hand.
The recognizable brown envelope.
We've been finally gone ahead with booking flights, one-way, on a cheapo airline that makes you pay extra for food, booking seats together, and does not offer personal in-flight screens (all the fun of flying we usually enjoy). But they are the only ones who offer one-way tickets for half the cost of return, and for a family of four (with one baby squeezing in under the 2 year old wire), it makes a difference.
So we'll pack meals and games and books and little presents for the kids and we'll make it through. And we'll start a new life in Canada.
We've got a furnished apartment booked for our first little while in Montreal. I did tons of research on this and the flights, playing out different scenarios. Wondering and second guessing and ... There are still uncertainties and question marks about how the whole packing up our lives here thing will play out, whether we will drive here or there when, who can come to help when. The scholarship I've received won't feed a family of four, but we know it will all come together. We've already experienced so much surprising provision we're looking forward to see what else will happen that we couldn't even have asked or thought.
But even in the midst of not having all our ducks in a row, it feels good to make some decisions. And stick to them. Declutter mental real estate, so to speak. Free up that mental space I'd had full of weighing the options and researching alternatives and move forward in trust.
