Metrics.
Due to a series of dangerous thunderstorms traveling through the Chicago area Monday afternoon, my family and I are camped out on a bank of chairs in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, our noon flight having been delayed repeatedly and then canceled outright; the offers of “discounted” hotel rates attached to too many strings to be worth the further financial stress it places on our household budget. It’s been a day of fraying patience and emotional peaks and valleys and I’m thankful that at least the two of them are getting some sleep before we try and get through customs again around 4am in the hopes of catching an earlier flight back home.
It would be easy to describe the comedy of half-communications that occurred in the hours after we deplaned. But despite all of our pains we took a family trip to Toronto, and I’m attempting to hold fast to the positive experiences that came out of it.
I’m remembering the decision to do more than sit in our tiny hotel room in the tiny suburb north of the city itself, and to instead brave the hourlong train ride into the downtown area. I’m remembering how novel it was to observe the hallway-styled structure of the train, and to watch that hallway bend and curve into and out of view like some lost footage from Kubrick’s The Shining.
I’m still reeling over our walk through Kensington Market, in all its glorious weirdness, its patchwork of head-shops and other lava lamp storefronts.
I’m watching my son point out the sharks swimming inches overhead us in the Ripley’s Aquarium, barely able to believe he’s seeing a sand tiger close enough to look into its pale white eye.
I’m in love with the ten minutes at the end of the wedding when Dana, Robin, and I made it out to a corner of the dance floor and let the remixed Indian club music take us on a short trip, Robin executing the floss as fast as he was able.
We tried some poutine. We saw a Tim Horton’s. We observed dozens of people expressing their various fandoms on their way to the expo in town. We heard half of everything in French.
There was only so much time to do things for ourselves in the whirlwind of being here for a family event, but I fly away — eventually, I hope — with a sense that I want to come back and see more of it. The last time I was in Canada at all was a trip to Winnipeg in 2001, for much the same reasons, but I recall feeling similarly at that time, and I hope we get to explore again on our own terms in the much nearer future.
Creative Control 