Heading north

We want to hire you.

I stared at those words. My jaw dropped. The email was regarding a graphic design job that I had applied for at a publishing company in the Yukon.

We want to hire you.

It didn’t seem real. If this was a Hollywood movie I would have given myself an exaggerated pinch to make sure it wasn’t a dream. As it was I just stared at those five words on the screen, eyes narrowed, unable to completely quash the suspicion that they were about disappear at any moment. They remained.

This was going to change my life.

Gradually I became aware that my computer was ringing. It was my mother on Skype. Shortly afterwards my future employer called. From there, plans began to take their shape. The idea of those five words quickly exploded into reality and fragmented into hundreds of details.

The last week has been a flurry of preparations; car shopping, apartment shopping, plane ticket purchases, daycare arrangements, road trip preparation and packing. My mother will fly out and join Oscar and I for the four-day journey on remote, snow-covered roads and Richard will drive up after his teaching practise. The more details that get ironed out, the more real it feels.

When I think back to the odd series of events that brought us to the Yukon almost a year ago I feel like fate showed us the place we belong. 

We’re going home.

Tears in my Hot Chocolate

So, as you may know, yesterday was the big day. I was going to hear if I got the job at Air North.

All day, I alternated between checking my phone and checking my email. I got lots of work done, keeping myself busy. The minutes ticked by, the hours were punctuated by texts from Richard asking if I'd heard anything yet. When he came home at 4pm I was trying to stay positive while I cooked a cheese cauliflower casserole. I tried not to look at the clock but when I saw 4:51 on the microwave I was really struggling to be positive. Five o'clock came around, then six, still nothing. Facebook comments and messages starting changing from "you'll get it" to "there are other jobs out there."

I was told that if they hire you, they phone you and if you don't get the job, they send you a letter. A letter! That's days.

This morning I checked YUWIN, the Yukon job web site. Funnily enough, between 10pm last night and 7am this morning, absolutely no jobs had been posted. When you check the postings every five minutes, nothing much changes at all. Between then and now there's been three jobs, two requiring a degree I don't have, and one for which I do not have the required experience but it wouldn't pay for the childcare and car expenses anyway.

Rich and I discussed our prospects this morning. He's spoken to a teacher yesterday who had waited 2 years for a position in Whitehorse, even though she was certified and experienced. The subjects of Alberta and England were brought up. After being here and loving it like we do, it would be even more heartbreaking to have to leave. Better to have loved and lost, I suppose.

Yes, it was getting pretty melodramatic.

Then I checked my phone. A message! 

It was one of the council members about the meeting Wednesday. I tried to stay cheerful as we discussed agendas and correspondence logs.

I put some water to boil so Ozzie and I could drown our sorrows in hot chocolate with marshmallows. Oscar thought it was far to early for whiskey. We huddled in front of the wood stove trying to keep out the chill of the -35C weather, ignoring the ice on the windows. We started watching a depressing episode of Call the Midwife on Netflix where a poor women is howling the workhouse howl, and the nuns explain to the midwife how it's like a howl of agony but there's no fight in it. The Yukon was feeling cold and forlorn.

That's right, more melodrama. I'm an emotional person, okay?

Then the phone rang! A Yukon number. "Hello?" I said, trying to prepare myself equally for good or bad news. 

It was Krista from Air North.

"I have some good news for you," she said. "We'd like to offer you the position."

The rest of the conversation involved a lot of "Thank you so much," from me, while trying not to shout for joy and also trying to take down the instructions for when to pick up my package and details about training.

I hope our landlord was not home today because there was quite a lot of whooping and hollering, plus some running around as Oscar and I celebrated. 

"I got the job!" I shouted.

"You got the job!" Oscar shouted.

The world is brighter. It's really not that cold, all you have to do is run around the house a few times and you warm up nicely. And the ice on the windows is so quaint, like a Dickens novel. I don't know how the nuns are going to help the workhouse lady, but I'm sure it will work out.

Anyone out there who is feeling down, I just want to tell you, don't give up. Good things do happen.