Pass the Port

Yes, I'm back in the U.S. of A.,
You don't know how lucky you are, boy ...

Lucky that my roommate realized that she had my passport in her car the day before I left and, despite the fact that she'd already left town for Easter, was able to mail it back to me in time.

Lucky that I happened to notice, as we were leaving Ottawa the week before for Vermont, one of the passengers clutching her passport tightly. O yea. Turn around.

I'm now trying to decode this irrational behaviour. When I first went to Hawaii I was fairly paranoid about border hassles; images of Syrian prisons and U.S. detention centres looming as I filled out forms and answered questions.

The fact that my friend Maher Arar is not allowed here is quite inconceivable to me now. Americans seem like friends--I am, after all, in a long-distance and serious relationship with one of these 'cousins to the south.' (That doesn't make it incest, though, right??)

The thing is, the more you pass through that checkpoint along the 49th parallel the less it feels like another country, which makes me wonder what purpose it's serving anyway.

I'll think about that on the Amtrak Monday...Easter weekend (they don't get Monday off) brings with it some domestic duties, and I hear the washing of dishes and the sanding of new doors...