Ray of sunshine

Back in Ontario now, the sky is completely white from horizon to horizon. It’s 59 degrees outside. The trees are splashed with red, and the sumac is on fire. The maples look like gala apple trees. I left in summer and two weeks later came back in fall. But some things don’t change. The border guard at the airport took one look at my landed immigrant document from 1990 and started shaking his head and never stopped, even while he stamped my passport and handed it back, saying disapprovingly, “No one shows those here anymore. I haven’t seen one of these in years.” I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that his buddies at the border crossing actually told me to carry it, because that just made him shake his head even more.

I’m glad that on the trip home (we had an overnight layover in Houston), I got to bask in one final ray of sunshine before heading into the grey skies of Ontario: my sister organized a family get-together in Houston. She and her boyfriend picked us up at the airport with my two nieces, and Philip drove three and half hours down from LeTourneau to meet us, and my nephew brought his wife and her family, and we all met to eat sushi at a restaurant called Kublai Khan. When we were taking pictures, we realized we had American, Canadian, Mexican, Dutch, Zimbabwean, Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese all in the mix. My nephew married a Zimbabwean, and she calls us “Auntie” and “Uncle,” and even though I haven’t spent enough time around her, she knows how to make it feel like family. Thirteen of us gathered around the table eating orange dragon and crazy dragon and volcano roll and superman roll, and my nephew was teaching us how to hold chopsticks, and Philip was explaining how he is a security guard at LeTourneau and quite happy giving tickets to faculty, and Angie was telling me about selling houses, and Selina, a stewardess, was planning a layover in Toronto to visit us. After all the picture-taking and all the hugs good-bye (I told the Zimbabweans about the Mexican saying, “El que mucho se despide, pocas ganas tiene…”), they agreed that it was hard to say good-bye. We prayed together. My nephew’s wife’s sister (still family) has cancer, and we agreed on some things--like how we trust God, but it’s still hard to wake up in the dark and remember what’s coming and what’s at stake.

I love how marriage pulls two families together that have nothing in common (so it appears) but the love two people have for one another, and suddenly, you’re related by their love. At Ivy and Andon’s wedding, her Zimbabwean family dressed to the hilt. The colors were like fall. One aunt wore a gold turban that rose a foot over her face, and we couldn’t help but watch in wonder as she walked elegantly past us like a crowned queen. Another aunt, the matriarch, told us in her African way, “You all are marrying one of my wives.” When my father, who married them, said the words, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” the left side of the church erupted in ululation, and my mother, seated in the front row with all that whooping behind her, almost fainted in shock, not remembering what rejoicing Africans do. It was wonderful. There was a lot of food and a lot of dancing, and a lot of black and white and brown laughing together and getting to know one another, working out on the ground the reality made in heaven that day that we were family. I love how God gives us things sealed in heaven to make real here on earth—like those startling, new, beautiful relationships that come through birth and baptism and adoption and a Canadian/American/Dutch/Mexican/Zimbabwean wedding.  Ray of sunshine to see everyone again. Thank you, Angie.