Twenty-three years of swimming against the apathy of societal norms had pressed me to a precipice. It was another sunny day in California. There was the smell of fresh cut grass and the sound of children laughing as they splashed in the pool. I could feel the heat of the sun on the back of my neck like the excitement that was burning in my soul. I had been married for three months to the girl with the far away eyes: far away from ordinary, far away from tame. Being together made us feel alive. She was pregnant. Although I had a decent job and a new apartment with a swimming pool, it was time to leave. Adventure was irresistibly pulling on our souls, and we dreamt of going north to Canada where I had grown up. Logically, it was ridiculous to think of leaving, Chloe being pregnant and all. But there was this mysterious knowing that goes beyond the vernacular—the same ineffable knowing I had when I first looked into the far away eyes of the woman who became my wife. Her eyes were pools of melancholy green into which I had fallen. We had decided to leave “average.” Little did we know how far out of the ordinary our adventure would take us. In fact, had we known the depths of pain lurking to overtake us, we might never have left. Yet we were young and idealistic. We were sure there were epiphanies of elation waiting for any who dared venture beyond ordinary.
      There was an exhilarating sense of empowerment as we stepped into the unknown. We were ready to carve our own path on earth: two small streams making their way to the ocean…there just had to be an ocean.
      Six years later, we make it as far north as Spokane, Washington. Elijah is a boy with a precocious face not typical of five year olds, and Liam, who is two, has big brown pensive eyes that can look right into your heart with “knowing.” We have a large two level house outside of town surrounded by evergreens, and a dog named Cleo. Unfortunately, the joys of adventure have dissipated into an oppressive black cloud that is inescapable. I am slave to a job where I spend copious amounts of time at a prestigious clothing company. The girl with the far away eyes spends equal amounts of time alone at the house in the mountains. She is deeply depressed and some days doesn’t go out. Now the girl with the far away eyes - just seems far away. We live together, but we live alone in the prison of our own despair. The harder we try the worse things get. I had lost my Canadian immigration status and all four efforts to return home have been rejected. I am a dislocated man. I don’t belong anywhere. We are both exasperated. I no longer desire to live.
      Life had become so meaningless, so vacant, so desolate, so redundant. One morning, having slept only four hours, I got out of bed with no idea of what to do. As I began to go through the motions of another day, it hit me: absolute numbness. I couldn’t care anymore. I wanted to care; I knew I should, but the capacity to do so had escaped me. I lost track of time and one empty day after another bled meaninglessly into the next. I stumbled around in a colourless haze. Music was flat, eating was boring, and I was cold. I can’t recall if it was gray outside as well, but it was grey in my soul. In that cold vacuous void of desire, I looked deep into the girl with the far away eyes and heard it: that ineffable inner knowing that speaks without speaking: “Go home,” it said. “Just go home.”
      I felt peace. Not an apathetic peace, but that peace that makes love to hope. Desire was brought to life again. Yet logic laughed at me; to leave a nice house, a good job, and health insurance, with my wife being pregnant again was at best senseless, some would call it selfishly irresponsible. Furthermore, it was pure insanity to go to a country that had denied me entry four times. But somehow, beyond reason, the mysterious knowing lingered. I knew. The adventure was alive again.
      As we began our exodus north, Despair and Shame sat beside me. The calloused crusted crunching snow seemed resistant underneath us. It was as though the tires were trying to slice a path through the hardened desolation that had become our world that cold February morning. It was still grey, but, we were going home. I was not the same virile idealist that had left sunny California in a whirlwind of naivety. I had been seasoned in the fires of despair. My exuberance had betrayed me, introducing me to my frailty. But, in the stillness of the night, hope had snuck back for my heart like a lover undercover. I was beginning to know what T.S. Elliot had penned in his own mental anguish: “In my end is my beginning.”
      The sun hid its face as we came to the Canadian border. The wind had picked up and was mocking us, and so were the eyes of the agent who glared at me as I told him my story. His eyes darted at the truck load of furniture and then back at me with disgust. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “You have been denied entry four times, don’t you get it?” Finally, he makes a copy of my driver’s license, and threatens that if we do not check back at that very border crossing within three months, he is sending the R.C.M.P to incarcerate us. My wife’s eyes search me for assurance, but I find what she finds: I have none to give. One of the boys is crying. Having nothing to go back to, we enter Canada.
      A week later we arrive at my father’s house in the interior of B.C. I sense that inner knowing nudging me to go to the immigration consulate in Prince George and tell my story. Again logic laughs at me, but I go anyway. Belittled, I leave feeling like a fool who should have listened to logic as the officer laughed me out of his office. Two weeks later, I have the same inner sense to go back and tell my story again. This time logic berates me the whole way to Prince George. I contemplate turning around several times during the one-hundred-mile trip, but the knowing keeps me going.
      With bitter consternation, I find I have been assigned the same officer. It is 11: am. I am his last client before lunch, and I can tell by his obesity that this man really looks forward to lunch. As I try to explain that the immigration laws were changed the year I was out of the country and that I never intended to give up my immigration, he yawns and looks at the watch that is cutting into the fat of his arm. I know he is thinking about Big Mac’s and super sized fries. I know that he is only hearing half of what I am saying, and the half he hears, is meaningless to him. Half the shirt he has on is stuck to his torso as his excess labours with perspiration in an effort to get free, but the whole of the shirt is that familiar hoary grey that first numbed me in Spokane. The crooked badge hanging haplessly from the grey expanse of his chest declares to me with authority that grey is the law that rules my existence. Despair and Shame, my old friends, sit down beside me smiling sardonically. I start to see myself through the contemptuous eyes of the officer. Unexpectedly, another man comes from behind the cubical. “Hello,” he says, “I am the Superintendent of Immigration. I just happened to be here today, and overheard your story. I believe you did not willingly give up your immigration. Be back here in two weeks, and I will have the necessary paperwork for your re-entry.” I was speechless. The barren ice field called my soul began to thaw. That secret lover Hope, who had stealthily stolen into my heart under the cover of darkness, had faithfully given birth to life.
      Two weeks later, I drove back and picked up the documents. “Welcome home,” said the man who believed in me, “You are considered never to have left.” The next day I applied for a job. That night I went to work. Six months later fully covered by B.C. Medicine, our third son was born as the sun came out again on our adventure. We had come far: far from the cosmetic confines of California, far from external dictates and boundaries. Together, forged in the fires of trial, we had learned to ride the wings of our inner most knowing, me and the girl with the far away eyes.

By Francis

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