We've now been living in Ottawa for a full year. Annual events that were happening last May when we came to visit before moving have happened again, and ones that happened shortly after we first arrived to live here are happening again, too. Summer flew by somehow; I'm still a bit in denial that it's now August.

One way I've been marking the end of our first year here is with a flurry of paperwork and new admin tasks to take care of. Our year of newcomer promotional offering from the bank we opened accounts with is over, and the credit cards and bank accounts we set up as part of that offer will start charging fees. Time to downgrade to lower fee versions or consolidate accounts to save on those charges. The first year promotional pricing on our cellular and internet plans are expiring, too, so time to shop around for that, too.

Our Canadian cell plans with Bell are pretty expensive, but it was the best I could do to get new numbers, on an esim (our new-ish phones we brought from the US don't have a physical sim slot), with no existing Canadian credit history when we first moved up. I couldn't open the lines at all til we had Canadian credit cards, but even then, the cheaper tier providers I tried to sign up with rejected my lack of history. Now we have Canadian numbers ready to port in to a different carrier, and I can pass a "are you a real person who pays their bills in Canada" automated check.

I've found a cheaper way to keep our US numbers active, too - moving from Google Fi at around $40/month for both numbers to Tello at $10. More filling out online forms, reading FAQs and service overviews, entering card details.

Our year-long lease of the house we've been renting rolled over to month-to-month already, and we've given notice that we're intending to move out this fall. We are buying a house in the same neighborhood and gearing up to move, including all the paperwork and packing and researching that goes along with that.

When people say moving abroad isn't easy, I know now that endless paperwork and research is part of that. It's not the only part, though.

The new broker I'm talking to about home insurance thought our car insurance should be much less than we paid for our first year on our car, based on how long we've been licensed drivers. But we don't have enough proof of that history - the Nebraska DMV won't give you an official report of when you got your very first license, which Canadian insurers expect. The new broker we're talking to suggested maybe trying the insurance agent who insured me when I first started driving; maybe some Canadian insurance company would accept whatever old records that original agent could dig up as sufficient proof of how long I've been driving.

So in the midst of a harder-than-usual week last week, I called up the insurance broker near my Nebraska hometown that my parents have used for decades now. I asked the receptionist for the guy my parents work with, and she transferred me before warning me about possible challenges with the new phone system they're setting up. I got off the phone almost in tears. The receptionist and the insurance agent both answered the phone and talked to me like Nebraskans answer the phone, and like Nebraskans talk business. It was so familiar and yet I haven't had a call like that now in so long.

A few weeks ago we were riding our bikes to have dinner with friends. It was a lovely evening, sunny but not too hot, and we rode our bikes through Mooney's Bay, a big park on the river with a lifeguarded beach, a large and very cool playground, and lots of grassy space for grilling and picnicking. The park was full of people laughing and having fun but not crowded. As my wife and I biked along with our two kids through this idyllic summer scene, I thought to myself, "is this paradise?" And a second later, I saw someone walking who from behind, looked like it might be our friend C from back in Lincoln, and then realized of course it wasn't. And the illusion totally shattered: as nice as this place is, as much as we are happy to live here and enjoying the city, as grateful as we are to have had the opportunity to immigrate here, this is no utopia, because so many of the people we love aren't here, and most of them will never be.

Years and years ago I read a bestseller self-help book that I'm a bit embarrassed to name, but it was my first introduction to anything vaguely resembling Stoic philosophy, and despite the book's many shortcomings, there were a few ideas that have stuck with me. One big idea in the book (cribbed no doubt from the long tradition of Stoicism) is that no matter what, in life, you're going to have problems. One key to happiness is accepting that, and doing your best to make choices that result in the problems you'd prefer to have.

I'd like to think we went into this move with a reasonable level of awareness of the types of problems we were likely to have, due to being here in Canada and to not being back in Nebraska. I knew we would likely have difficulties with the primary care doctor shortage, but that there'd be no big bill if we managed to get one. I knew daycare waitlists were long, and that I was behind the curve by getting the baby I was still gestating on the list when he was only a few months from being born, especially since I'd read the recommendations were for Ottawa parents to get their babies on waitlists as soon as they found out they were pregnant, for enrollment only after 12 to 18 months of parental leave. We knew the job market would likely be challenging here, especially for my partner. We knew that a lot of the social safety net that exists here was put in place a while ago and political power-holders have been steadily working to erode it. We knew racism and white supremacy exists here too, and there are pockets of anti-trans reactionaries hoping to take Canada in the direction we were hoping to leave behind in the US. We cried and cried and agonized over the decision to leave our friends, our family, and our community behind in Lincoln.

We started considering this move in 2023, and we left Nebraska last July. An online friend asked when Joe Biden dropped out of the US presidential race if that would change our plans to move, and I told her we'd been in our new home for a few weeks at that point. Our gamble was that a Democrat in the White House wouldn't be enough to turn back the tide of anti-trans, patriarchal, and gender binary-enforcing political violence that was sweeping the country, Nebraska no exception.

I was really hoping we were being paranoid, or risk averse in a way that maybe in a few years, sheepishly unloading a truck we'd driven back West, we might even laugh about. I don't carry that particular hope any more.

I think we will be here in Canada, and specifically Ottawa, for many years. We love so many things about Ottawa so far. We have made some friends and started building ties to community. For the first time in my adult life, I can picture myself more than a few years into the future. I realized it first when we were talking about which school system our older kid will start in next year, among the four separate public school boards overlapping the city of Ottawa. I could imagine her graduating an Ottawa high school, after completing her entire primary and secondary schooling here, and thinking about what to do next. I can imagine how useful it would be for her to speak French well as an adult in a city where every job posting from cashier on up seems to be "bilingual preferred." As much as I loved Lincoln, it felt more fragile, as we watched so many friends leave town each year, and saw the state government, from the executive branch to the once politically moderate unicameral legislature becoming more and more radical in finding ways to chip away at "the good life".

I wish the options available to us for where to live came with different sets of pros and cons, with different probability ranges for each of those outcomes, too. I miss my Nebraska family, friends, and community so much. My heart aches for my community, and the people who have already faced, and will continue to face, so much cruelty and shameless evil from what my country has done, is doing, will do.

I am so thankful to friends in Lincoln who over the years, have taught me to live in the both-and instead of hard absolutes, especially E, C, and the whole Dandelion Network who helped me deepen my understanding of what it means to be in community and in solidarity with one another. I miss you all so much, and I promise to do my best to keep moving deeper into community as I can find it here, building solidarity with my new neighbors while remaining as much as I can in solidarity with those I am no longer in physical proximity to, and those that struggle for justice around the world.

Having little kids gives you a chance to slow down (sometimes way down...) and really take in what you might have otherwise taken for granted. To experience it all in total wonder and unselfconscious delight. Our three year old was delighted this spring by the explosion of bright yellow dandelions in our yard and the parks all around us. "Mama!" she said. "Can we plant more, for next year?" I told her that we didn't have to plant the seeds ourselves, but the dandelions would come back next year anyways. The insistent bright flowers with their raucous yellows are hard to stop, even if someone is trying pretty hard to stomp them out. They will come again, and they will grow, and spread, and share their joy even in the hard-scrabble ditches and parking lot edges. Like the dandelions we too can stick our roots down hard, and raise our joy up, and spread it around when we get a chance.