Fortunately, my father and I found each other soon after, and--I think also for the first time ever--I paid for the parking. We drove from unfamiliar Terminal One, special to Air Canada, missing one turn but recognizing another route home. The air was hot--"Italy hot," I said, meaning Italy in May, not Italy in the jaws of Cerberus. My mother and a tin of my favourite cookies welcomed me in.
I flew Air Canada, not Air Transat, because a travel agent organized all the flights for overseas staff. Months ago I petitioned to be allowed to arrive four days before my colleagues because I suffer from extended jet lag. Past work events have seen me longing for my bed by 9 PM and creeping away unsociably at 10 PM.
My mother always tells me it's worse West to East, but that's not how it is for me. On Friday morning I first awoke at 2 AM, on Saturday at 4, on Sunday at 5, on Monday at 5, and at last this morning (after remaining awake until around 11:30 PM), 6:30. Yesterday I thought I was teetering on the edge of a sleep disorder, but this morning I think I have finally acclimatized to Eastern Daylight Time. I will be able to comport myself at tonight's Gala like the sane woman I know myself to be.
Incredibly, I spent my first afternoon in Toronto correcting the English translation of Polish liner notes for a friend's frantic musician sister. But I also called my best Catholic Toronto friend, and we made a Saturday brunch date. One of my sisters dropped by with her son. We sat on the deck over the garage with coffee and cookies and discussed her Latin American travel plans: Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina. She is now taking a Spanish course in Colombia; the computer test placed her at C1 and C2. I felt torn between pride and envy. In Polish I careen from B1 to A2 to oblivion. In Italian, I'm probably a solid B2. I'll find out for sure next month.
Friday
The following morning, I had a 6:30 AM Italian lesson. My tutor, visiting family in Italy, was having a respite from Cerberus but expected its return later that afternoon. My brain was mush; really, there is nothing so bad for my language skills as actually travelling. (This is, as you can guess, inopportune.) And then I did a full day's work, texting "Could you...?" and "Would you...?" to reporters and publishing their submissions.
Saturday
On Saturday my Best Catholic Toronto friend (MBCT), accompanied by my Canadian goddaughter, bore me away in the family van to Cora's for brunch. MBCT and I agree on practically everything despite living almost complete different ways of life. She married in her mid-twenties, a few months before I met Benedict Ambrose in person, and now has five children. She is almost always with at least one of these children; she remembers our last pre-COVID brunch as a rare outing in which she was entirely "child-free."
"What do you usually get here?" I asked as I turned the heavy colourful pages of the Cora menu.
"I don't," said MBCT in the firm tone of a felon unexpectedly released on parole.
My Canadian goddaughter sat quietly listening to the adult talk and ate her brunch without fuss. This is not something I can imagine my Polish goddaughter doing, but to be fair, the former is almost 6. Neither of them is permitted smartphones, tablets, computers or any other screen except on the rare occasions the Canadian is allowed an (old) Disney film and the Pole a ballet. I know demanding it is for both MBCT and Pretend Polish Daughter-in-Law to have to tend their attention-greedy children almost ALL the time, but it makes such an enormous difference.
Meanwhile, when MBCT got a call that her youngest was inconsolably crying for her, she took me home. When we pulled into the driveway, I felt like bursting into tears myself. Happily, we have tentative plans to meet after my work retreat. In fact, she and the children are likely to drive me back to the airport.
Sunday
On Sunday I went to the Oratory for the 11 AM TLM, finding a Pride flag wound around a flagpole and lying wedged in a corner by the front doors. It made me think of the unamiable habit of Toronto's Orange Order of marching past St. Michael's Cathedral. The laypeople socializing by the religious articles counter were interested but not concerned. Only one lady voiced my private suspicion that it may have been left there for a later protest, and I wondered if she were a regular reader of my news outlet.
The choir and organist, as always, were incredibly good.
Afterwards I met my Chicago-Polish friend (CPF), whom B.A. and I met through Polish Pretend Son, in the narthex. He is also in Toronto on business and, as he is fascinated by everything Polish, showed me phone photos of Toronto's Polish Combatants Association (SPK 20).
We went for brunch, walking along King Street West to the Katyń memorial at the foot of Roncesvalles, where CPF took more photos. We then walked up "Marszałkowska" towards such remnants of the vanishing Polish-Canadian community as St. Casimir's Catholic Church, the statue of St. John Paul II, and "Polonez," where CPF spoke C2 Polish--and I oblivion Polish--to the waitresses. We consumed traditional fruit punch, cold soup, cabbage rolls, pierogi, a pork cutlet, potatoes and several salads, and then we resumed our walk. The Polish-Canadian highlight of this stretch was, of course, Chicago, where I once hid from an irate blog-reader who had verbally attacked me after Mass at nearby St. Vincent de Paul.
The outing was capped off by cappuccino and tea at Coffee & All That Jazz, and then CPF went back down Roncey for eventual Vespers at Holy Family. I loaded money onto my Presto Card and took various trains and a bus home. I was joined soon after by my youngest brother, youngest sister, and oldest nephew, the young man once known to these pages (and, come to think of it, to Seraphic Singles) as Pirate.
We had what seemed to be a normal Sunday dinner. I told them the staggering price CPF pays to rent his Manhattan apartment, and they told me it wasn't staggering at all, as he could expect to pay that in Toronto, too. There followed a conversation about real estate, house prices, house taxes, and the interest rate, pet obsessions of the British middle-classes and very likely that of their Canadian counterparts, too.
Monday
On Monday morning I began work at 7:30AM, annoyed at Elon Musk for taking Archbishop Viganò out of Twitter jail on a Sunday. But we got the news of his release published before 9 AM, so I was happy.
I stopped work just shy of 3:30 PM and walked to the mall to get a mani-pedi at the salon my C1-C2 level sister frequents. Like nail shops all over, this one is run and staffed by Vietnamese-speaking women, and I was pleased when I was approached by "the chatty one." I was less pleased when she put the ultraviolet nail dryer on the edge of the foot basin. I asked her if I would die if it fell in.
"You make fun of me," said the chatty one genially and, as you see, the machine did not fall in. My toes are now a rakish dark blue-red and my fingernails a safe toasty pink because I am British now, ye ken, and even if the Princess of Wales got away with it....
Anyway, I paid up and walked to another part of the mall to meet my Poet Convert Friend (PCF) for a drink. Years before she was baptized, I admired her as the least egotistical career poet I knew. She ran a poetry event for years before I realized it was her show. This was heroically unassuming for the Toronto Poetry Scene, in which--incidentally--the Catholic Church was constantly the butt of jokes and the target of diatribes. However, for some art-loving non-Catholics Catholicism holds still holds some stale Brideshead glamour, so when PCF told me one winter-visit night that she was thinking of converting, I was suspicious.
"Oh," I said. "Is it the art, or is it (ahem, ahem) Jesus?"
"Jesus," said PCF fervently. "I want Jesus."
When I heard why, I gave her the Prayer to St. Michael and sent her to the Oratorians. The rest is salvation history.
Tuesday
I am now going to take myself off and study some Polish. I brought my daily planner and some stickers, which have created the necessary psychological bribes needed to study. Then I will act against all normal routine and iron a load of laundry. I am, after all, in Toronto on business and should turn up uncreased.
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