I think my neighbours may be whispering about me behind my back. It’s a bit scandalous. Last week, a man and his two sons moved into my house….
My own boys are off to their university lives. The younger is safely ensconced in his university dorm, making new friends and grabbing life by the tail, experiencing the joy being on his own for the first time. The older has moved into a new apartment with old friends, probably feeling like he’s back home as he enters his third year of post-secondary education.
So this fall was going to be a quieter time. An all-girl household. Just me, my daughter and the dog. She (my daughter, not the dog!) and I expected that we would rattle around in our big house, while enjoying toilet seats permanently down and all the other little things that come along with a estrogen-only abode. But life had other plans in store for us, and our house is once again a bustling beehive of activity – and filled with boys!
How exactly did that happen?
At the very beginning of this year, I reconnected with an old schoolgirl friend from Istanbul thanks to social media, and then I saw her when my Mum and I were there for a holiday in April. It turns out that she and her husband, wanting to raise their family in a different environment, were looking to the US and to Canada for a new start. In fact, only she was still in Turkey – her “guys” were already in the US, her husband on a student visa. Fast forward to May, when the Canadian system advised them that they were very close to getting their permanent residency – what we might have in earlier years called landed immigrant status. The whole family came up to visit – my friend included – to check out my suburban town as a potential new home. At that point, it was still a rather theoretical discussion, but another friend of mine, a realtor, took on the challenge of helping them start looking at houses and they fell in love with the area.
Fast forward again to the beginning of August when everything came together for them in a whirlwind. Planning kicked into high gear and the goal was to get up here in time for the boys to begin the Canadian school year on time. To do that, you have to live here! So in the spirit of misafirperverliği (Turkish for hospitality), my daughter and I have thrown open our doors.
We have plenty of room with our own boys gone, it only seemed to make sense. We’re just over a week into this grand adventure. The boys are settling into school and their father is full-time house hunting and making his way his way through all of the paperwork and red tape of an international move. We’re working our way through the intricacies of temporarily putting two families together in the same household. It is a bit surreal to have conversations about first days of high school and Captain Underpants around the dinner table again, but there are certainly benefits. My daughter is enjoying extra hands to help with household chores, and selfishly, I’m loving having an extra cook!
We’ll celebrate their move properly when my girlfriend arrives in a few weeks. But until then, I may need to explain things to the neighbours….
