NESTING

Hello. Goodbye.

These words have as much meaning in my relationship with Evan as “I love you.” 

Being a long-distance relationship, our time together always has a beginning and end date. It can feel unsettling. A perpetual sense of “just visiting.” To be sure, there is a positive side to that. It’s like being Fun Dad who has only weekend custody after a divorce. His time with the kids means pizza for dinner, extra time playing videogames and no early bedtimes on account of it being a school night.

 

My stints with Evan are chock full of good times. When he arrived Thursday night, we talked of bike rides, looking into a harbour cruise and maybe catching a view of the city from the tower downtown. Lots of Whee! Time in We Time. 

 

Yes, we went for the bike rides. How could we not with rare April sunshine in Vancouver and so many springtime plants in bloom? But the cruises don’t begin until May and the tower idea fizzled out. Someday. 

 

It would have been easy to pack the extended weekend with other inherently fun things. This was especially possible since, due to a break in our relationship, Evan hadn’t visited me at my place since January 2024. Since COVID lockdown back in 2020, I’ve become an expert in touristy and “secret” things to do in Vancouver. I pack in a lot of Whee! Time even when it’s just Me Time.

 

But our visit took on a different tone. I’m highly challenged in terms of doing handyman tasks. Whether it’s lack of confidence, lack of knack or perpetual procrastination, everyday fix-its don’t happen. Due to a VERY LARGE blind spot, I don’t see what needs to be done. 

 

This photo overwhelms me.

As an architect and interior designer, Evan is highly visual. He sees everything. We’ve spent much of our visit doing typical weekend tasks. We bought a new wall sconce to replace a hideous one that’s been in my stairway for the entire two and a half years I’ve lived in my loft, partly due to my indecision regarding which one to buy and partly because I knew I’d never be able to install it myself. (Fear of electrocution.) We bought a new mirror to make my place look more open. We got a bike rack for my car so both our bikes can join us on adventure weekends. We spruced up my balcony with new plants and removed some of the clutter that finds its way to such a space. I bought a funky painting for the freshly lit stairwell. 

 

We drove my car to more places in three days than I typically drive it in three months. (I tend to walk and bike everywhere.) 

 

“I like this,” Evan said midway through Saturday afternoon. “We’re nesting.” 

 

How timely. In the tree across the street, two crows spent their weekend coming and going from a nook in the branches as they built their own nest and sounded ominous caws to utter threats to pedestrians passing underneath. That nook, that tree and everything below it was, in their minds, theirs. (Just wait till the babies hatch!)

 

Our weekend of errands was highly constructive and well-coordinated. Everything clicked as we worked together when needed and alongside one another when tasks could be split up.    

As Evan transplanted clematis on the balcony I sliced and diced for our taco bowls that we took to the beach for a picnic where he sketched and I wrote. (Yes, a bit more inherently fun time.) While he fiddled with the wiring for the sconce, I scrubbed smudge marks from the wall where the previous sconce had been. 

 

We crossed off a lot of things, many of which I didn’t even realize were on my To Do list. The time felt intimate; the nest looks more inviting, more functional. 

 

Alas, Evan flies back to Denver later today. We’ll spend two and a half weeks apart once again before meeting up in New York City where he has a conference. No nesting opportunities there. It will truly be more like a Fun Dad weekend. Broadway! The High Line! Shopping!

 

In the meantime, I know our daily FaceTime calls will include me flipping the phone cam so he can see how the clematis is doing, so he can peek at my new painting, so he can remain connected to, not just me, but our Canadian home. 

 

I’ll have to tend to the nest on my own but, as much as it can be possible, I’ll feel his presence in the space as well. Let his return to the roost come much sooner.

 

EASTER WITHOUT

They say it’s the period leading up to Easter, Lent, when you’re supposed to do without. You give up something. Drinking or butterscotch ripple ice cream or Ryan Murphy productions. 

Okay none of those is a sacrifice to me. No suffering involved. Do they even still make butterscotch ripple? I was always a bad parishioner. 

 

Too often for me, I give up something for Easter instead. Interaction, say. 

 

Normally, I’m good. I spent this long weekend hunting down cherry blossoms for photos while going on bike rides and a jog. I went to Vancouver’s Van Dusen Gardens to wander amongst early rhododendrons and other flowers. I did short writing sessions in cafés. I even had coffee with a friend I hadn’t seen in almost two years.

 

But it was Easter. BIG expectations. In Canada, it’s a four-day weekend for people who aren’t in the service industry. Good Friday is a holiday. Easter Monday is a holiday. No, there are no egg hunts on Monday and no special meals aside from leftover ham and maybe some colorful eggs reduced to egg salad. Or maybe just a chocolate breakfast, assuming the candy eggs and Costco-sized white chocolate bunny survived Easter Sunday. Really, who just eats an ear and says, “I’m good”? Even if it’s white chocolate, it is chocolate.

Okay, being Easter and all, I feel like I’m in a confessing kind of space. Not only did I NOT give up anything for Lent (other than nonexistent butterscotch ripple), I do NOT partake in tearing apart chocolate Easter bunnies, piece by piece. I do not even eat half the little chocolate eggs before the hunt and sit back to say, “I bought two whole bags. You’re just not looking hard enough.” Mean? Sure. But the neighbour’s kid screams through dinnertime every evening…and neither walls nor doors constitute an effective sound barrier.

 

I do not like chocolate.

 

Yes, go on. Gasp. Call me a freak. That gut reaction just cut you out of being on the re-gifting list for when people give me chocolate.

 

I do admit to one exception. I’ve discovered Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Pretzels and I will NOT be giving them away. It will take me several sittings over a few weeks to get through them because the milk chocolate overwhelms the rest of the flavors. I have confirmed it smothers a teeny tiny pretzel bit but I have yet to taste any trace of peanut butter.

 

At any rate, I won’t be stocking up on my one chocolate exception since I am not making cross-border runs to Trader Joe’s due to Trump’s tariffs and his belittling references to Canada as the 51^st state. (Focus on Puerto Rico, dude.)

 

If Easter weren’t the only four-day weekend in Canada—our Thanksgiving is a three-day fete in October…when there is still a harvest to reap—I could let the occasion pass by without any big holiday expectations. Heck, I don’t eat ham either. Or any kind of meat. No one REALLY wants a vegetarian to crash their Easter dinner. 

 

I’ve had some bad Easters. In 2014, I spent the entire occasion in a psych ward where a patient kept getting put in the lockdown room (within the already locked down ward) since he kept getting into physical fights and threatened to kill “every fuckin’ one” of us. No egg hunt on the ward. The highlight was borscht for lunch one day.

 

Not a good time.

 

In 2019, I spent all of Easter in the eating disorder ward of the same hospital. No death threats, but we had to eat every bit of three meals and three snacks along with copious amounts of water while nurses observed and took notes from a mirrored room with staged seating so they could look down on us. I have never eaten so many apples or drank so much water in my life. May I never experience waterboarding but this felt like another kind of water torture. The highlight was ten minutes of fresh air on Easter Sunday in the rooftop garden which was a sadder space than the ward itself, a smoking pit for other patients where scraggly boxwood grew alongside dandelions and fresh pigeon poop. 

 

I am not spending this Easter in any hospital ward. That alone should feel like a celebration. Yippee! No death threats. No oversized cups of water. No plastic trays with soggy toast (or borscht). 

 

Still, it’s been hard spending Easter alone when I have a partner who happens to live 2,300 kilometres away in Denver. In a country that’s all about God and guns, neither the Friday nor the Monday is a holiday. Airfare was higher throughout the weekend presumably because retired grandparents wanted to fly places to watch one-year-olds cry as all the adults keep telling them to keep looking for foil-wrapped eggs that will become choking hazards if not found (or eaten by Uncle Ted or vomited up by Rex the Chihuahua) by today. 

 

Evan will fly to Vancouver this Thursday instead. He’s worked weekends to earn a little paid time off to create his own long weekend. It’s only a week later than the regular Easter celebrations. I will be thrilled to see him. 

 

If not Easter, then may we always have the weekend thereafter. Stooping and “hiding” eggs behind the sofa legs can’t be good for my back anyway.

 

 

COVID PREPARED US FOR THIS

I blog weekly, typically gay this or gay that. It’s hard to focus on such topics when the president of the United States is intentionally doing things to mess up lives throughout the world…withdrawal of funding to foreign aid programs, blanket tariffs, chaotic messaging. 

 

If I were like his Republican supporters, I would bury my head in the sand. The sky isn’t falling. I would instead write another post about being gay. But I’m not and I can’t. Feeling cause for stress, I’ll continue on the theme of last week’s post, Border Walls, where I mentioned that I, like many Canadians, will be limiting my border crossings to the U.S. 

 

It’s normally an easy trip to make. Most Canadian cities are in the south of the country so the Canada-U.S. border is only a short drive from home. It’s about a forty-minute drive for me and I have a Nexus pass which allows me to skip what can be long lines at times. 

 

I moved back to Canada from Los Angeles thirty years ago and border crossings have been rather regular ever since. It started with me making grocery runs for American products I couldn’t get in Vancouver. I grew to like Fairhaven, a community in Bellingham a short drive across the border. I write in various cafés there, my favorite in Boulevard Park with a view of Bellingham Bay. I ride my bike on Chuckanut Drive, a gorgeous, narrow roadway lined by arbutus trees and evergreens and offering views of the sea. I visit the charming hamlet of Edison. It’s all part of a day trip that invigorates me.

 

Just as often, I keep driving south. I love Seattle. I love Portland. I absolutely adore the Oregon Coast. I’ve driven down the coast to L.A. a number of times. 

 

I won’t be making any of these trips in the near future. I must minimize my time and my spending in the United States as long as tariffs and belittling comments about making Canada the fifty-first state continue.

 

The intention is that, if enough Canadians stay away, the U.S. economy will take a hit and mayors and governors will start speaking out. Senators of border states—even the Republicans—may finally tell the omniscient president to knock of the rhetoric and axe the tariffs. 

 

Wishful thinking? Perhaps. In February alone, however, Canadians made 500,000 less border crossings. As I drove home late Friday afternoon from a B.C. hike, signage for four local border crossings each indicated it was less than a five-minute wait. This is unheard of heading into a weekend when waits typically exceed an hour. If this trend continues, yes, American businesses are going to feel the pinch.

 

What Trump doesn’t understand is how pissed off Canadians are and how his agenda has united us, stoking national pride more than I’ve seen in my lifetime. COVID is still in our rear-view window. We went a couple of years without being able to cross the border. Maybe all that was a rehearsal for this. Limiting trips to the U.S. does not seem like a big sacrifice now.

 

Just like during COVID, I’ve begun making a list of all the places in British Columbia I want to visit or revisit on day trips and for weekend getaways. I’m looking forward to these travels. BC is a beautiful, varied province. I’ve also begun glancing at other places in Canada and abroad that have long been on my bucket list. This feels like the perfect time to explore some of them. I am truly excited. Let me support other people and economies.

 

I do still have to make some trips to the U.S. My family lives in Colorado and Texas. My parents are in their late eighties and travel, especially flying, is harder and less likely. In the past, I have consciously avoided trips to Texas but now it looks like an annual trip will be required. My partner also lives in Colorado. Visits to see him are non-negotiable. He’s my priority and I won’t let politics get in the way of our relationship.

 

Still, my time in the U.S. will be much reduced. I will miss all my usual haunts. I will also miss seeing some friends but, quite frankly, they’re overdue to visit me in Canada. 

 

Come for a visit. Canada is very welcoming. Canada recognizes the independence of sovereign nations. Canada does not start trade wars presumably as a clumsy way to ignore and renegotiate trade agreements. 

 

I am but one Canadian. But I am also one of many.