Unexpected love

Over the course of four years of blogging, I have regaled you all many times with my love of all things British — the history, architecture, gardens, literature, chocolate, and of course my second husband.  I’ll even admit to often sometimes craving British cuisine.  Standing rib roast and Yorkshire pudding?  I’ll take two helpings, please.  Shepherd’s pie? Cottage pie? Yes, yes!

[BTW, do you know the difference between shepherd's pie and cottage pie?]

Oddly enough, I have only just recently realized that there’s another love in my life.  One that is far more subtle and took me a long time to recognize, just as it took Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet far too long to recognize their mutual love and adoration.

Yes, Canada, I’m talking about you.

Loving Canada starts off innocently enough.  First, one meets Canadian bloggers online.  Then they email and become Facebook friends.  Then someone super nice sends a Christmas box to my family and it includes, among other things, Kinder Eggs, which means that my children already love the blogger in question long before they ever meet her.

Then, Canada love progresses when your family travels to, say, Toronto and meets real actual Canadians.  People, you would not believe how nice Canadians are.  If we so much as stopped for a half second on a street in Toronto, some nice person who says “eh” a lot would stop and ask if we were lost and/or needed help.  Honestly, I think I could have said that we were in need of food, lodging, and transportation and some sweet Canuck would have offered us the keys to his car and house and his credit card for meals.  If he was feeling really nice, he’d probably also share his frequent coffee buyer card for Timmy’s.

[Look at me including a Canadian cultural reference.  To my Canadian friends, I have been paying attention, eh.]

But, no matter how much you realize that you like Canada as friends, the love is still subtle and you don’t yet understand the depth of it.  Even after you spend a long weekend in Quebec City, you might not have the self-awareness to realize that your love has blossomed and matured.  You’ll watch the 2010 Olympics and feel a great swelling of national pride, even though you yourself do not understand the rules of hockey, which is so intrinsically part of the Canadian psyche as to be embedded into all Canadians’ DNA.

[It is a proven fact that Canadians are born knowing how to ice skate and block hockey pucks with L-shaped sticks.]

Your love of Canada continues when you realize that not only have you long been a fan of the comedic genius of Dan Akroyd, Will Arnett, Tommy Chong, and Phil Hartman (Canadians all), but that Keanu Reeves suddenly seems like a better actor simply because he lived in Toronto when he was in high school.

So, before you know it, you’re eating poutine, craving ketchup chips, and dropping “eh” into your own conversation — first ironically, because your Canadian friends think it’s a little funny when said with your Southern accent, but then it becomes a somewhat permanent fixture, even though it sounds a bit odd when you say something like, “Hey y’all, how ’bout those Leafs, eh?”

[To my Canadian friends, I just pulled that team name of the air.  I swear it's the only one that I could think of when writing the paragraph above, so there's no need to crucify me if you are a fan of (insert name of hockey team) or (insert name of hockey team).]

[See?  At this moment, when it would be vitally helpful, I simply cannot think of any hockey teams.  I really am that ignorant.]

The next thing you know, you’re on Etsy looking at maple leaf pillows and thinking how marvelous one would look on Your Precious with the Union Jack pillow you’ve been salivating over for months.  And then you find yourself asking the cheese department at Whole Foods just how much it would cost to get your hands on some fresh cheese curds just so that you can make up some poutine — and you don’t even care how much the cheese curds cost.

The final step in Canada love — the moment when you realize that you’re hooked for life — is when a dear friend sends your family these:

Mittens, y’all.  And they’re lined in fleece, so they’re super warm.  For those brisk Canadian winters, eh.

And then, two days later, another dear friend sent us a package, which contained the perfect matching accessory:

I’m covering my face to spare you all from my make-up free visage...

So I’m feeling rather tricked-out, to say the least.  Now if I could just find a source of fresh cheese curds.

See?  This love of Canada is insidious.  It gets into you and takes root and then there’s no shaking it.  It’s so embedded in your spirit that you wonder what you would do if you were given a travel opportunity and told to choose between England and Canada.  It’s a Sophie’s Choice that would probably reduce you to tears.

This love of Canada is admittedly somewhat untested.  For, while you have experienced the weather phenomenon known as British Weather (all rain, all the time), you have not experienced that which is known as Canadian Weather (snow in the seasons known down here as Fall, Winter, Spring, and sometimes even Summer).  As with all new loves, you find yourself foolishly thinking that snow on the ground 48 weeks of the year really wouldn’t be all that bad.  After all, it makes July seem all that much more special.  And, hey, didn’t you get through the Winter of 2010 with your sanity intact and with a new appreciation of Yak Trax?  Really, how bad could it get up there in Canadaland in the winter?

With the folly of new love clouding your judgment, you start fantasizing about spending Christmas in Quebec City.  After all, it’s a fun city, so why not experience it in its icy, snowy glory?

So now it appears that I am a bigamist — I love England, with all its pomp and circumstance and Ye Olde Historie, and I also love Canada, with its more casual, laid-back vibe.  I’m not sure how my two loves are going to peacefully co-exist, but so far, things seem to be working out.

Have you entered my blogoversary giveaway yet?