a story about furniture
My first week in my apartment, I didn’t have any pillows. Pillowcases, sure; bedding more generally, yes; but my bed, which I bought at a steep discount from a friend’s aunt, did not come with pillows involved.
There’s an IKEA in Dartmouth, though it’s annoying to get to without a car, and there’s a bedding and mattress store a ten-minute walk away from my place. I still spent a full week with no pillows. I told Isaac, a few months after the fact, that I had improvised: I’d found some tote bags that I’d used to organise my belongings in my suitcases, and I filled them with sweaters and dense, soft clothes. Things that squish, you understand. It wasn’t ideal, but it allowed me to sleep, and it didn’t require me to invest in anything new.
After that week, my adoptive Canadian mother bequeathed me two spare pillows from her house. I don’t have a sofa; my bed is the only soft surface in my apartment, which is to say that pillows are a life-changing amenity for me. They make it possible for me to sit up in bed, when it’s getting into the evening and I don’t want to be at my desk anymore. Having lived in a similarly small flat back in England, where my pillows likewise did double duty as makeshift sofa upholstery, I knew this. I could have bought my own. I probably should have bought my own.
Fast forward to October, a solid five months into my time in Canada. Isaac was due to arrive in a week for his second visit to Halifax. I had been getting on fine without a nightstand since my arrival—by ‘getting on fine,’ of course, I mean I had been putting my books on the floor beside my bed, and dedicating half of my mattress to my phone and my laptop every night. But it mattered rather urgently that he should have a place to put his things while sleeping. (He’s invested in navy-blue pillowcases for his own apartment in California, so I don’t have to worry about my hair leaving stains when I sleep. It seems only fair to return the favour.)
That’s really the only reason I made my way out to the fabled Dartmouth IKEA. I bought a couple of things for Isaac: a nightstand, and an extra blanket in case the weather turned. They were for my place, obviously. But I couldn’t justify them until I had Isaac in mind.
There’s a two-year time limit on my stay in Canada. Before I got engaged, the plan was to find a way to stay for longer—to move onto another visa category, if I could. I had a serious plan for how to do this, and one of my first to-do list items on arrival was to find an immigration lawyer who could verify whether it would work. Now, of course, the plan has changed. We’ve consulted an immigration lawyer, but for different purposes—and, crucially, as a we rather than an I.
I have already been through the motions of one international move. They weren’t pretty. I had thought I lived a fairly minimal life back in Oxford, until I suddenly had to get several bulky items of furniture and a full-height shelf of books out of my flat. Not all of it came with me to Canada, thank God; my desk here is attached to the wall, and all of my storage is built in. I donated my old furniture to charity back in England, and I showed up to Canada with two suitcases and (eventually) a cardboard box of books and crochet gear.
It was a process that required a lot of winnowing-down. Which books could I justify bringing? Which clothes would I actually wear? It was necessary, and maybe it was even good for me—I have less, now, and it’s shown me how much less I actually need. But I don’t think I’ve entirely recovered.
Because I’m already thinking ahead to the next big departure. Two years isn’t long; I’m already a quarter of the way through my time, which is terrifying. What am I going to do with my bed when it’s time to pack up and ship to San Francisco? Where will the vaunted nightstand go then? Sure, it’s nice to have a flat surface beside my bed. It’s also going to add one more small misery to the eventual, inevitable ordeal of moving again.
This, for the record, is how you end up in a situation where you’re sleeping on rolled-up sweaters instead of pillows.
Six months in, Canada still feels precarious. Less than it used to; less urgently than it used to; but I still feel like I’m performing a high-wire balancing act.
Part of that is freelancing, which has proven a much bigger adjustment than I’d expected. Part of it is the knowledge that eventually, I will be moving on again. Then there are the myriad small frictions you encounter when you live in a country that isn’t yours. I’m not just talking about the big things, like trying to acquire a credit card (with no credit score) so you can build credit (which you need to acquire a credit card). I’m also talking about how I haven’t seen a single ring-pull can in Canada, and how Isaac and I had to drop an unexpected $30 for a can opener I’d never expected to need when we decided to cook a meal that required a can.
I worry about getting sick enough that I have to go back to England for care. I worry about taxes. I worry about Canada hitting a recession; about my rent increasing; about finding more work when I need it. Anxiety, for me, lives directly inside my skull; it sets my gears spinning fast enough to generate a heat and light that (at its worst) feels palpable. Believe it or not, I even manage to worry that I’m not making the most of this opportunity—that I will look back on this time in a couple of years and regret that I didn’t do more.
But listen: I wrote shortly after my arrival here about the worries I had back then. What if my credit score is terrible forever? It ticked over into the ‘good’ category just last month, actually. What if I signed up for a bank account wrong, so they won’t let me have a credit card? Proven categorically untrue. I was so scared that I would never get a Canadian phone number, only to receive one days after sending out that newsletter. It’s true! I texted my sister from it in September to wish her a happy birthday, and she texted back thanks! Who’s this?
If anything, my worries becoming more existential is a sign of genuine progress. Is it ideal? No. But it does mean that the practicalities are largely in hand.
I’m still trying not to buy unnecessary things. I feel better saving instead of spending, and my place isn’t big enough to accommodate lots of decor anyway. I’d rather use the money to travel, if I have it going spare, so I really can make the most of living here in the time that I have.
But I bought an extra pillow when Isaac came to visit, though we didn’t strictly need it. We already had enough pillows for both of us to sleep. Now, though, we have enough pillows for both of us to sit up in bed and watch TV in the evening. It makes life incrementally better for us both, being able to sit up comfortably when my bed is the only soft place we have.
The other day, I bought some Ziploc containers for leftover food—I’m cooking the kind of food that generates leftovers only intermittently, but I am actually cooking it, now. And it’s nice when food lasts an extra day. It’s like a gift to my future self, in the form of puttanesca sauce.
There are ways to compromise with the future. I like to think I’m finding them, bit by bit.
Some recent things:
I sold an essay about moving to Canada! Why I Gave Up On England is free to read in Catapult. I’m really excited about this, and so lucky to have been able to work on this piece with Tajja Isen—I pitched it to her without knowing she’s a Canadian living in the US, and her perspective was such a gift to the essay and to me.
Isaac’s novella The Two Doctors Górski is out on November 29! It is speculative fiction for literary fiction enthusiasts, about a traumatised postgraduate student who cannot stop reading minds. It’s an academic horror story in which the horror is both ‘academia’ and ‘that one fucking academic, you know the one, him.’ If you’re reading this, I think you’ll probably like it. Preorder here, and then come yell about Ariel with me when you’ve read it.
And!! My dear friend A.M. Tuomala’s third book, The Map and the Territory, is out on December 12. It’s a picaresque fantasy unlike anything you’ve read, following a wizard and a cartographer as they navigate the immediate aftermath of apocalypse. Tuomala’s work is criminally underappreciated—this book in particular is doing something striking and different with the genre. I actually don’t know where you can preorder this one, but you should follow Tuomala on Twitter (while it exists) anyway.