Room at the top of the world tonight

We took a little trip to Memphis last week, to renew my green card (so Patrick can't threaten to have me deported anymore). We used to make that run all the time, back when I was a brand new immigrant, just another bra-less Canadian hippie chick, coming to take all the good two-dollar-an-hour waitressing jobs from decently underwired Americans.

I'm not the stranger to these-here parts that I was then, but crossing the Mississippi river still feels mythic to me, every time. My passing fling with America has turned out to be the enduring romance of my life.



I had to report to the immigration office bright and early Thursday morning for my biometrics, a word that means fingerprinting and leads me to believe that there are Trekkies working high up within the Department of Homeland Security. What do you think the probability was that the guy in line next to me would be from the same New Brunswick town that I was born in? As it happened, one hundred per cent. If my life were a movie, I swear, no one would buy it. It's just too far-fetched in places.

I walked out 30 minutes later, a shiny new extension sticker on my card, and we headed straight to the zoo. I brought the kids there once, in 2006.



The years are going so fast.



That time, we stayed at a Super 8 motel on the sketchy side of Memphis. This time we stayed at a very chic downtown loft apartment, belonging to one of Patrick's clients. People are incredibly nice to us. If we measured our net worth by dollars alone, it's hardly been a skyrocketing climb over the years. But we've accumulated other kinds of wealth: children, friends, careers, history. I felt very rich that night, watching the boys swim in the rooftop pool, the mighty Mississippi shining beside us in the moonlight.





When I looked down from skygazing, I realized that Patrick had been taking my picture. I pantomimed sucking in my tummy, and smiled at my once-upon-a-time gypsy lover, thinking of the free-wheeling vagabonds we used to be. You'd never know it, to look at us. I'm sure in the eyes of the few twentysomethings who shared the rooftop garden with us, we were profoundly middle aged. A mom with her hair in a bun, sitting on the edge of the pool, watching the children, a dad wearing reading glasses, reclining in a chair, holding up his iPhone.

"Lord of all you survey," I teased.

He smiled back. Sometimes it feels like we are kids in a game of make-believe together, only pretending to be grown ups, the kind of people who are on top of things, whose papers are all in order. But sometimes it feels like the wishing star fairy came down while we were sleeping and made us real.