It’s time to get my house in order. I had thought spring break – a couple sunny weeks away from the newly victorious Canadians – would do it.
My (Canadian) husband, my (Canadian-and-American) kindergartener and I (the Yank) whisked ourselves away to The Atlantis, the Bahamas’ version of Las Vegas-in-the-Wet, where we relaxed among jubilant schoolchildren and poolside piña coladas. Then in Key West, we rode the festive Conch Train and watched grown (and presumably drunken) men hold an impromptu wheelbarrow race across the main Duval Street drag. Even in more northerly Denver, our former hometown, sunshine warmed our shoulders (before an all-too-typical spring blizzard), while renewed friendships kindled our souls.
Our cheeks were rosy. Life was, too, as we traipsed through the islands and the US of A – except for the cold front that had swept into our divided household.
I blame it on the Vancouver Olympics. The Games’ boost to Canadian evangelism is proving far more durable than I’d ever expected. And it’s infecting my baby.
It started at the top. The day before the Opening Ceremonies, Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, addressed the legislature in British Colombia. “Patriotism, as Canadians, should not make us feel the least bit shy or embarrassed,” he said.
Imagine Barack uttering those words to his fellow citizens.
“We will ask the world,” Harper continued, “to forgive us this uncharacteristic outburst of patriotism, of our pride, to be part of a country that is strong, confident, and tall among the nations.”
Among Americans just south of the border, being strong and confident and tall in the world is a birthright. It’s as central to our educational values as learning the alphabet. As unconscious in our lives as blinking.
I’ve already blogged about the kinder and gentler disposition of the Over-the-48th Latituders. In most circumstances, Canadians are the first to say they’re sorry. They’re the first – okay, maybe the second nation after the Brits and their chronic Wimbledon fiascos – to hail the ninth runner-up as a national hero.
But the Vancouver Olympics changed Canadians’ attitudes about themselves, as this blog and oodles of column inches have detailed. “Go, Canada, Go!” became five-year-old Laurelle’s catch phrase at the Games, a peal she called out at top treble volume whenever Canadian athletes occupied an arena.
My little one showed flickers of American glory. If no Canadians competed in a particular heat, she’d root for the Stars and Stripes, quickly explaining to any and all spectators who could hear her that she, in fact, had two countries. But she’d drop the Yanks as soon as a Canadian reemerged.
Pierre, my fully fledged Canadian husband, egged her on.
Laurelle’s true red-and-white (and not blue) colours solidified in the ultimate, gut-busting Olympic event – men’s gold-medal hockey. Canada versus the USA. With Pierre away, Laurelle watched the puck fly with my mother and me. My daughter was the sole (half-)Canadian in front of the tube that night, surrounded by two Americans – both of whom recognized their endangered species status in the Great White North. Laurelle may be a hybrid, but you know who she rooted for – and hotly.
True, the Olympics was a star-studded, sequin-festooned extravaganza, a moment when Canada sparkled at the centre of the universe. A five-year old can change her stripes as soon as the fun fades. And she may still do so. But even now, after 12 days in the sun and the passage of the major rah-rah’ing, it seems that Laurelle really, truly, way down to her furry little mukluks, wants to be a Canuck.
Either way I’ve learned something. Never before had I truly internalized that my cherub-cheeked five-year old would grow into something other than Mini-Me. Sure, I’ve recognized that she prefers dancing to playing the piano. She’s the first to finish her school projects, not the slow, precise student I was. Her olive skin barely burns in the sun while I blister. But somehow, still, Laurelle would be Me, the Next Generation.
This series of outbursts – deliberate attempts to change her tribe, as goaded on by her father – was my daughter’s big departure. It has taken something as simple and unassuming as nationality for me to tweak that my rose-scented treasure will carve a route different from mine.
Canadian. American. I hear you ask: So what’s the big deal?
Not much, globally speaking. My newly discovered sensitivity makes me cry out to the Bangladeshi parents who raise first-generation children in the Americas, or the British missionaries whose children roam Nairobi’s chattering markets.
But when my one-and-only offspring whispers into my ear with kindergartener regularity that she needs to go to the washroom, I cannot forget the difference.
Washroom. It’s one Canadianism that really bugs me. Who actually washes in the washroom? Probably the same folks who bathe in an American bathroom. But the word washroom is such an ugly tongue-twister. It’s as bad as the Brits’ oral massacre of schedule. “Shed-djual”, they say. Ugh. Which is why I’ve adopted their word for washroom and call it simply, almost lyrically, the loo.
Or Laurelle will say she needs to bring a Looney to school. Only in Canada would you realize she’s not talking about a neighbour or distant relation.
I’m sorry. These are small things, eh? There are Canadian words, and then there’s real, Canadian gusto. Laurelle’s new ardour burst center stage in – of all places – Denver, the city of her birth.
Here, amid sweet reunions with long-time friends and happy pilgrimages to favourite hangouts like Build-A-Bear and Einstein’s Bagels, my daughter showed her Red-and-White. As we rested at our hotel, she launched into an exuberant rendition of a familiar tune. It was hardly a kid’s ditty.
“What’s that tune?” I asked my little one.
“O Canada,” she said. The Canadian national anthem. “Duh,” she said, her voice undulating as she demonstrated the proficient use of her new, most irritating term.
Just to drive her point home, Laurelle continued – this time with words.
It was hardly the first revolution. A good week earlier in Toronto, she’d popped me a quiz question.
“Mommy, do you know when Canada’s birthday is?”
Well, yes, I’d said. It’s on Canada Day. July 1st. So I quizzed her back. “Do you know when the United States’ birthday is?”
Guess who had to answer her own question. And we all know which day is more famous, globally speaking.
So in our Denver hotel room, I replied to Laurelle’s boisterous “O Canada” with a solid “Ohhh say, can you see!” My flesh and blood didn’t recognise the song.
Our former Denver neighbour, who we lunched with during our visit, found the situation horrific. A keen follower of anything political, and initiator of sticky civic movements of her own, Diane was alarmed at Laurelle’s oblivion to all things American. My daughter would never know – she’d never fully grasp – the strength of the United States’ democratic tradition, our erudite neighbour said. My very offspring would grow up under a constitutional monarchy managed through a British-style parliamentary democracy. Put in simple terms, she’d be tipping a corner of her hat to the Queen rather than looking on her and all her regalia as something of a tourist attraction.
Mind you, my daughter is only five, but the future trajectory is worth some thought.
Compared to most first-generation parents in Canada, and even other American ones, I know I have it easy. Canada is a member of the Commonwealth, so a fair few British phrases populate its dialect – the lovely loo excluded. Having spent the majority of my adulthood over in old Blighty, its phraseology is often my own.
Karen, an American friend in Canada, pointed out the verbal details that taunt her. Also married to a Canadian, she has three dual-citizen daughters growing up on Canadian soil. One daughter always says she’s in Grade 3.
Karen feigns exasperation – or does she? – as we chat online. “Third grade, I tell her, not Grade 3!” My American friend warms to her subject. “For me, it is ‘z’ not zed,” she types. “Zed is a word, not a letter. Smart people go to university not college.”
Ah. I thank my lucky British stars that I’d not noticed.
But these observations, minor as they seem, remind me how I felt when Laurelle learned to count on her fingers last year in a French maternelle pre-school. The French start with their thumbs. It looks weird.
Or putting another spin on the dual nature of any child, other Denver friends registered their two young daughters with combination, hers-and-his surnames: Dupree-Henry. Once of age, the girls can choose to keep their double-barrel – or to hack half of it off. Talk about high stakes!
At age five, Laurelle is a work in progress. She recently described Canada’s most recognized national symbol as the Maple Syrup Flag. I was privately delighted.
Meanwhile I’m concerned about the real Thanksgiving. My daughter might think we should eat turkey in October. Or that an acceptable side is poutine (a Canadian delicacy of greasy fries with fresh cheese curd and gravy). Delish. She might think Pilgrims are a new line of Disney dolls. That the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria are take-out combinations from Pizza Pizza.
On the last day of March break, our family headed back to Canada. As our ears popped in descent, we looked at the ground below, snowless but hardly green. Highways came into view, as did rows of rooftops and little plots of land.
Laurelle lobbed her usual non sequitur. “Know which hockey player was my favourite during the Canada versus USA game?”
Exactly how skates and pucks popped into her thought process, I feared to ask. Worse, I feared I knew the answer to both questions.
The hockey player was Sidney Crosby, the Canadian chap who thrashed the golden goal into the Yanks’ net. Worse, Laurelle thought of this charming, Canadian hero at that precise moment because finally – after a hard-fought week-and-a-half on Bahamian and American soil, where she ate ice cream and scored gifts from doting friends – my little Canuck was back in Canada. Her chosen homeland.
And then she told me she had to go to the washroom.
