Finding My Mary #

When I first moved to California I was browsing the dating apps. There weren’t that many, not like the thousands that are available today. I did not meet anyone when I was writing to these ads that I liked so I decided to create my own ad and see what kind of people I could attract. I had about 5 woman contact me and we wrote back and forth for a time. Two of them dropped off pretty quick as they did not say much in their correspondence so it got pretty boring writing to them. I did have a date with one, I remember she had red hair and although I called myself well travelled she had a lot more travel miles behind her than me. It was just this one date, I don’t think we really found a good footing. Another interesting girl lived in Merced. She was from Japan, I think she was going to school there and I think she was hoping to find an American who could sponsor her. That could not be me as my stay was also temporary with my TN permit, it did not provide permanent residency. However, before she came to that realization she travelled by bus and stayed with me for a couple of days. I also think she had a boyfriend that she was upset with at this time in Merced. She was a bit hard to understand as her english was quite broken, and I remember I took her to the movie “The Matrix” and had to explain it to her in simpler terms. She went back to Merced by bus again, a little earlier than originally planned.

In the meantime, there was Mary. She wrote long detailed emails and I responded with even longer detailed emails. We must have written back and forth for about 3 months before we finally met up for our first date at Chilis in Simi Valley. Mary had two children, Bryan (12) and Renee (8) from her previous marriage and I got along with them quite well. Many Saturdays were spent on the water with my officemate Bob from M1 where we would go halves on the rental of a sailboat and sail around in the Santa Monica Bay.

The first time I took Mary back to Canada to meet some of my fiends and my family it was Thanks-giving weekend. There was some snow on the ground and one of the observations that Mary made that I would never have thought of was “At least you don’t have to cut your lawn” as this is one of the disadvantages of living in a place that never sees snow or experiences a real winter we have to trim the grass all year long. It does grow a little slower during the winter months but never the less you have to cut it. On our way back we are going through US Imagration right at the Edmonton International Airport as this is common in most Canadian International Airports going to the USA. In this way, the flight is handled like a US domestic flight as the Customs and Imigration process has already been done. It was there that the officer was trying to make a connection between Mary and I. Basically seeing if we were living together while I had a TN permit which could have been considered as a common law marrage. Mary was thrown by the questions and I stepped in as I knew where they were going with this. “She is my friend, I brought her to meet my family and see where I grew up. She lives in Simi Valley and I live in Venice Beach. Any other quesitons?” It is the Imigration Officer at the border to look for reasons not to allow you back into the country.

After about a year of dating Mary and I got married on a beach in Malibu. Most of my immediate family came out for the wedding. My brother and his entire family, wife Lauretta and their 4 boys Lyndon, Dalton, Tyson, and Colton. My sister Connie and my Mom. My mother was both happy and sad. She was glad that I had finally found someone that I often described as the female version of myself, but sad because she knew that this would be my permanent home. July 15, 2000 we got married, went on a honeymoon at lake coeur d’alene resort and when we got back I moved into the house that Mary purchased after her divorce on Booth Street in Simi Valley.

All this time I was driving my Nissan 300ZX and it still had Alberta plates on it and I knew I would not be able to legally plate this in California as in previous trips to California I ran into other 300ZX owners and they complained about how it was a major hassel to get an oil change, cost them a fortune because of how much of the car they would have to take a part to get the oil out. In the mean time I bought a brand new Maxima, you know the 4 door sports car. After all I had a growing family now, time to put away the sports car and get into a stylish family car, with a sporty feel.

Now that I had my replacement car it was time to get the 300ZX back to Canada so Mary and I drove it back. It was a fun road trip but it was a trip that was not advised to do by my immigration legal team because I was still travelling between borders with my TN permit and being married to an American sort of violates the temporary goal of the permit. On the way we had some interesting experiences that I will tell you about now. The day that we left on this trip I had a day trip with some of my team members on the project we were working on in San Jose, California. Mary picked me up from the airport and we headed towards Las Vegas the first leg of our trip. I was pretty tired and slept and Mary did the driving all the way to Misquite, Nevada. After we left Las Vegas Mary was singing to all these old songs that was being broadcast from the top of the Stratosphere and the air conditioning going full blast. I was freezing, the whole situation was pretty funny. Another time we had just had a quick breakfast and I took my coffee to go. I was driving this leg of the trip and there was no where to set my coffee down. I said to Mary I need some space and the look on Mary’s face I could tell that she misunderstood so I added for my coffee. She was thinking it was maybe two days in the car and I needed space from her. I loved being with her, didn’t need space from her. We got to Butt, Montana and had stopped for some dinner. We were up in the mountains and it was freezing cold. I remember being mad or upset because it was so cold. Anyway after dinner Mary took over the driving and I am soft of napping and then she started complaining about these weird moths. There were so many of them but even though we were hitting them they were not sticking to the windshield. I looked up, “oh Mary, those are not moths, that is snow and you see the path that the previous car has made? You want to stay in the path as veiring off could have slippery consequences. The first time that Mary ever saw falling snow she was 18 in Death Valley during some weird freaky storm. Our last night in the USA during this trip was in Great Falls, Montana. The room that we stayed in, the maid left a welcome card and spelled her name Merry. I laughed and said we should leave a note to Merry as in Christmas from Mary as in the Virgin. Like I said, we had a great time on this trip driving all the way to Canada. After we dropped off the car we flew back but as we went through US immigration we went through different lines and initially sat separately until we were on the US side of the trip. Just precautions we took to not be questioned about marital status.