Arrival!

current events, nonfiction, , 20 Comments

“Coming to Canada is like landing on an alien planet,” my friend Svetlana tells me. She arrived a month or so ago, and even with her perfect command of the English language, she struggles to make sense of our way of life. “The bus system, is going to drive me crazy,” she adds.

Svetlana and I became fast friends, as Ric and I volunteered to host her son’s Godmother, Tania and family. We met face-to-face on that first video call, Svetlana acting as interpreter. We would continue to have contact daily preceding her arrival. She was here last weekend, industriously cleaning to prepare the space for her dear ones.

“They are lucky to have you,” she told Ric and I. “You will cushion the blow of that culture shock.”

Tania, Mykola, Sofiia, Yehor, and Kiril are in flight as I type this. It’s been a harrowing journey for them, held up for five months by a spelling mistake and Canadian red tape. After three months in Poland, they had to return to Ukraine for health care issues, and landed right back in the war zone.

“It’s getting harder to get out,” Tania wrote me a few weeks back. “Please let me know when you book tickets and we will find transportation.”

Thanks to the generosity of readers, friends, and family, we raised enough for tickets and two weeks ago booked their passage. Every step of the way, they have encountered obstacles. Trouble with the ArriveCan app, mistakes on boarding passes: it’s been four days of holding our collective breaths.

“They are on the plane!” Svetlana messaged me this morning. “It’s on time!”

Ric is headed to the airport, while I stay back to make soup. Let’s hope all the obstacles are behind them.

(Art mine)

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Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

20 thoughts on “Arrival!”

  9. Thanks for letting us know what a difficult time it has been for the Ukrainian families to arrive here. And thank you for helping/hosting them. You and Ric have stepped up big time!

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  11. Your generous help to Ukraine families is amazing – what a gift, to the families, to those of us applauding in the distance. Thank you for what you’re giving in energy and compassion – the planet needs more like you & Ric!

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