A missing question

If I were warned about it, maybe I could have prepared for an answer prodigiously. But in the labyrinthine-like process of clearing out my life to immigrate to another country, failure in the most unexpected sense hardly ever figured out. 

None of it sneaked in while digging up details such as places lived since birth, for one, which proved quite easy having had only two. Education and job history, for another, even led me backtracking steps for a nostalgic whiff of familiar corridors at the University of Santo Tomas and the now defunct National Media Production Center.

Most of all, nary a hint of failure, nay, a dogged will fired me to combat daily stresses driven by fear of mysterious heretofore undiscovered losses or mistakes in documents like birth, death, and marriage certificates—proofs of relationships, which subjected one to cobra line-ups especially at the National Census and Statistics Office.

Rumors about getting denied coiled around me but I bombarded the heavens with hourly prayers; with an immigration consultant, I felt certain not to fail, with guided answers for the application form, as if one had no understanding of English; no room for pride here—he simply explained how some questions could be a bit complicated.

Almost10 years later, used to writing Canada as the country I live in, even getting caught in snatches of conversation with only-in-Canada terms like “washroom” for restroom or CR in the Philippines, responding with a short-swift “Ya,”instead of “Yeah,” and though consciously holding it, to say, “eh” after a comment, I realized recently that none of it has seeped past my skin.

Sure, even if some gestures now seem natural for me, like offering tea and serving it on English bone china tea set daintily rimmed with Sweet William blossoms that I acquired (or pretend to have inherited) from an estate sale at a Thrift Store, it turns out, this indoor, mostly female social affair, reflects only a tiny sense of why I am failing as a Canadian.

Blame it on a missing question among the many asked in immigration forms or during interviews about the “cornerstone of Canadian identity,” perhaps? Not only I but also countless more would fail if on the spot, while still steeped in the culture you innately carry, one scours the mind for an answer. For it lies apparently in what accrues from vague hints of living in a new land, some in the guise of simply enjoying the view, taking in first wonders like sinking one’s steps in virgin mountain snow, competing with a heron’s stare on English Bay, or sighing over the beauty of white swans, say, at the Lost Lagoon on Stanley Park.

With a bit of daring, it could also be a climb down Lynn Valley’s canyon bed, hike up Hollyburn Mountain on stiff untrained muscles (I did it hilariously with an umbrella), biking ribbons of trails that circle mountain sides and shores, which Jan, a British friend once enviably detailed in a mail. I have skipped skiing because the mere thought of such melts me in defeat—by the way, I can’t even ride a bike.

And more to dream on: in far north Yukon Territory, hiking past the back of mountains to lie on a clearing and wait for the aurora borealis to drape the sky, a spectacle I had thought existed only books, or in the Great Bear Rainforest, taken in awe by a thousand year-old western red cedar, the 90-meter Sitka Spruce, and the Kermode spirit bear known to exist nowhere else.

What, indeed, in my growing up prepared me for this: “Living in one of the last wild frontiers on earth is a cornerstone of Canadian identity,” according to Jason van Bruggen, writing about his photographs in Mountain Life’s 2013 winter/spring issue. My answer? “None,” is really no surprise.