Nantes – Canada, Here I Come (Kind Of)

It’s the calm before the storm.

I’m organizing, booking, calling, scheduling but I’m still in Nantes at my mom’s place, stuck in some kind of somewhat comforting routine with a nagging and now familiar feeling that I’d call “saudade” if I was Brazilian—sorry, I can’t find the right words to describe how much I miss Feng and Mark. Several times a day, at random moments, I turn around and realize once again they aren’t here. It’s a feeling I can manage, we do chat daily on Skype—as a traveller and as an immigrant, I’m used to constantly missing people I love. However, it was pure agony to just not know when, where and how we will be able to be together again.

Well, now I know.   

I’m flying back to Canada—for a few days, just enough time to pick up Mark and bring him to France for the summer. This was plan A. Or B, or C, can’t remember. Bottom line is, Feng is still waiting for his second dose and it’s easier for him to get it in Canada than in France. And I want Mark to have a “normal-ish” French summer, so here I come and off we go.

Frankly, I don’t want to stay longer than necessary in Canada right now. Either I’m here, either I’m there but I can’t be everywhere. Staying for a few weeks would require me to resume my Canadian life and find balance again in a very unbalanced world. “Oh, I see,” Feng said when I explained how I felt. “Yeah, it’s easier to treat Canada as a trip than to commit fully. I get it.”

I mean, it’s hard to resume my Canadian life when life hasn’t resumed quite yet on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

This may be my quickest cross-Atlantic “trip” ever. I feel like one of these socialites who fly London-New York to pick up a handbag—“what did you do this weekend?” “Oh, not much, the usual transatlantic getaway trip…”

Canada finally announced that fully vaccinated Canadians can skip the mandatory hotel-quarantine as of July 5, 11:59 p.m. “I found a cheap one-way ticket,” Feng emailed me as soon as he heard the news we had been waiting for.

No shit. Planes to Canada are empty, borders have been closed since March 2020. And even as a fully vaccinated traveller, there’s fine print, namely a pre-departure PCR test, a quarantine plan and another PCR test upon arrival. Flying with unvaccinated kids—vaccines have yet to be approved for kids under 12—creates additional hassle since kids have to quarantine for 14 days but vaccinated parents don’t.

We teamed up to buy tickets over an awful Skype connexion—my return to Canada and two round trips for Mark and I. Then I bought train tickets because there are no Montreal-Nantes Air Transat flights, we’re flying Paris-Montreal-Paris with Air Canada. Then I booked my PCR test in Nantes and in Montreal.

I haven’t slept much lately. I’m anxious.

Scratch that, I’m terrified.

We’ve all adapted to so many fast-changing situations over the past 16 months that I welcome status quo, no matter how imperfect and weird it is. France was a status quo and I felt relatively safe—safe because I wasn’t alone, safe because I was pretty confident the country would stick to the reopening plan and avoid further drastic measures, safe because vaccination rollout was overall pretty smooth.

And now everything is changing again—for the better this time but I’m anxious nonetheless.

Over the past few months, with the never-ending Ontario lockdown, Feng and Mark were mostly bored. I can’t say I was bored. France feels deliciously exotic because I haven’t lived there in two decades so it kept me entertained. I learned to cook with French ingredients, I tried new ways of doing things, I sort of lived an alternate life, the “adult in France” life I never had since I left the country at 18 only returning for a month or two at the time. Plus, work kept me busy.

I also realized that I like my life in Canada but if I have to be stuck somewhere, Canada ain’t where I want to be and I can’t fully explain why.

Everything feels unreal. It’s finally happening.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to keep on packing and picture myself in Canada a few hours from now.