Read Part 1 of the story here.

“The taxi driver dropped us in the wrong spot,” Brian said over the phone. I glanced at my watch. They’d already had one Covid test that day but couldn’t get the results in time. The second hospital assured us they’d send results by email, if our boys made the one available appointment. Without a valid Covid test they couldn’t board their flight the next morning. We’d be responsible for the cost of new tickets. Plus, Malachi’s visa had only four days left. 

We knew it would be hard getting them out of the country. Requirements for travel were constantly changing and flights cancelled regularly. All of this was on our radar, but we didn’t foresee the typhoon that would lock them in to Shanghai for two days, or the racing around a new city to get new Covid tests – something Brian desperately wanted to avoid.

Thankfully Brian found a driver. And they made their appointment. While three Covid tests in three hours, two being nasal swabs made for a memorable day, it was not in the way my boys had hoped, especially on their last day in China. But they were one step closer to Canada. 

“The roads are supposed to be packed tomorrow, now that everyone can travel again,” Brian told me. Our boys weren’t the only stranded travellers. 

“But won’t the subway be hard with all your luggage? How many suitcases do you have?”

“Seven,” he said. One person would have more luggage than hands. 

Living in China so long, we’ve watched cities be built up around us and subways below. In one of our homes, our view out the window was a stretching cityscape dotted with cranes and our sidewalk, wheelbarrows and open manholes. In another, a high rise was going up next door. The boys, still young, would sit by the window for hours, the work of construction their television. While riding the subway used to be a fun treat for our kids when we visited Hong Kong, as the cities we’ve lived in modernized, subways came. And just in time. Our family grew too big to fit in a taxi. My boys are now used to riding jam-packed subways but still, I wondered how they would manage.

It took me back to the first time my parents visited us in China, when Zach was a toddler, and Malachi a three year old who loved building train track. Our daughter was yet a hope in my heart. My parents arrived in Hong Kong armed with suitcases full of Canadian treats and upgrades for Thomas’ track. I was their guide in this new land. But I was still learning the ropes. I didn’t think of luggage when I suggested we take the subway to get to the bus that would cross the border and carry us past water buffalo deep in rice paddies, to our new and still strange home. 

Eight months earlier my parents had dropped us off at Toronto Pearson Airport and kissed their only grandchildren good-bye, both boys too young to understand. I know my mom’s tears now. They’ve stained my own cheeks these past weeks.

It was my dad who raised the question of why we were taking the subway. Some of the stations didn’t have escalators and in those days not all of our luggage had wheels, so we lugged 70 pound suitcases up and down stairs and through stations. I remember the frustration, and the few compassionate passengers who paused to help us up a flight of stairs.

I hoped my boys would be as fortunate. 

“Good-night,” said Brian, as the boys closed their hotel room door behind them. After years filled with good-nights and when they were young, bedtime hugs, tonight would be Brian’s last night to say it in person. The following day our two boys would board a flight and fly across the ocean to Canada, without us. But China has been their home these 16 years. 

Through the years, we’ve made many trips to the visa office requesting permission to live in this wondrous country, but this was the first time Malachi, now an adult, had to apply for his own visa. He could no longer be a dependent. “I want to be with my family,” he said, when asked why he wanted to stay. He was given 30 days. 

Saying good-bye tore me apart. And it wasn’t just Malachi. Zach’s always been racing to keep up with his big brother, so the two decided to face the challenge together. Both my boys leaving home. Moving across the world. 

I’d imagined this stage of life for years, and with all my creativity, I could not find an ideal solution. Malachi made it clear Canada was his desired destination, but would we all leave? I saw myself, Brian and our daughter accompanying the two boys to help them set up, and trips back and forth. I knew it would be a strain but I never imagined Covid. I never imagined travel bans. Now, if any of us leave the home we’ve come to love, there’s no way in the foreseeable future for us to return. 

As the day came to a close I was coming to terms with the reality my life was changed forever. If all went according to our new plan, Brian would meet the boys at 6:10 am, then race through five airports, bidding them good-bye at the third. First, they’d all check out of the hotel and board the shuttle for the ten minute ride that made this hotel so appealing. But instead of checking in at Shanghai Pudong Airport, as originally planned, they would pass through to the subway station and take a two hour trip across the city to another airport. 

Though experienced subway riders, nearly two hours into their ride and exhausted from the day before, the boys didn’t notice their approaching stop. Brian called out. He moved toward the exit. Trying to hold open the automatic doors as Malachi and Zach maneuvered their heavy loads, he watched them trip over the feet of passengers with eyes glued to phones. No one seemed to notice the plight of my boys.

And I wasn’t there to help. My role as mom has had many facets over the years, but this was the first time I’d been home, behind the scenes helping my boys travel. After sending Malachi and Zach off, thankful that Brian was taking the first leg of the journey with them, I thought I could rest and contemplate the turn in our road. But on discovering the typhoon, I spent seven hours on the phone trying to get them out of Shanghai. Then, accepting they were stuck I was on the phone again figuring out Covid tests and travel restrictions for their new flight path. All this after weeks of similar calls and appointments, to get their trip started. My job as mom was not over, but it looked different than ever before. 

“I need to vent,” were Brian’s first words when I answered the phone. I switched from my role of ‘Travel Agent Mom’, to listening ear for my husband. As he told me of subway doors crunching on his already injured ankle, I cringed.

The doors released, though not as quickly as Brian wished, and allowed my boys their escape. 

Our call was short and to the point. Approaching the airport there were health codes to scan and boarding passes to print – we hoped. The hospital hadn’t yet sent the results but after a half hour talk with the airline the day before, going over new policies, I believed they could board this flight without them. But not the next.

With so many phone calls and details leading up to their trip, at times I was so busy the purpose behind the work blurred. Now, as I logged into the airline website and watched until it showed flight CA1832 from Shanghai to Beijing was in the air, reality hit. My boys were leaving.

This was their second flight of four. They still had to make it through immigration in Beijing and I would be on call if anything went wrong. With test results now resting in our inbox, I told myself I should rest, too. But my mind leapt forward to the next step of their journey. Three hours should be enough for them to get off the plane, check in and go through immigration. But I couldn’t have known that after a long wait in line they would be denied boarding passes until they printed the results.

“Canadian immigration only requires an electronic copy,” Brian begged. But it made no difference to the person standing between my boys and the door of the plane.

The boys trailed Brian through the airport to a hotel that had a printer. First Brian’s phone wouldn’t scan the health code required to enter. Then his phone couldn’t connect to the printer. Malachi and Zach watched the minutes tick by, but the hands on the clock would not slow. 

Their printouts finally rolled out. Looking at his watch, Brian grieved he had come all this way to have only a rushed parting.

“Can I give you boys a hug?” he said, after they’d retraced their steps. The moment had come. It was time to say good-bye. Nothing could have prepared him – this wasn’t the way we’d planned for it to be, but Brian had been given two extra days with his boys, one final chance to lead them through a challenge. He wrapped his arms around each boy for a brief moment, and then as he watched them disappear into the crowd of travellers, he called me. “How do I get to the next airport?”

“Can’t you stay until the boys get through customs, in case anything goes wrong?” That had been our plan before the typhoon.

But when I checked his schedule and calculated another two hours on another subway to another airport, I agreed. He needed to leave immediately. I pointed him in the right direction and looked at the clock, then did a double take. Was it really only forty minutes ’til take off and the boys were just heading to immigration? How had so much time passed? Could it possibly be enough? I pictured long lines from previous trips, and us in line as a family, together. Would my boys know what to do if anything went wrong?

When talking them through each step of the trip the biggest question was – how would it go at immigration? We tried to prepare them for anything. But we haven’t travelled internationally during Covid.

“They’ve run into a problem,” Brian said. Phoning from yet another jam-packed subway. My body tensed.

“What kind of problem?”

“They didn’t say.” 

Should I call? Probably not. If they were talking to an officer a call could be distracting. I sat. I waited. I prayed. Finally, I made the call, but there was no answer.

Was that a good sign? Did it mean their passport was stamped and they were propelling themselves toward their boarding gate? 

I didn’t know how to feel until a text came from Brian. “They made it through.”

Only ten minutes ’til boarding. In one of the world’s largest airports, did they have enough time to make it to their gate? They’re through the hardest part, I tried to reassure myself, but it wasn’t until Zach returned my missed call that I began to calm. 

“We’re on a bus to the plane. Made it to our gate with one minute to spare.”   

The fatigue I heard in their voices the day before was replaced with excitement. The biggest hurdles had been jumped. Their adventure begun. And their joy took me back so many years, to my first international trip, and the wonder of experiencing a new world. 

I’ve always loved to explore. Giving my kids the gift of living in another culture is something I’m thankful for – it’s given them a different perspective. When they were young, while sitting around the table, eating with chopsticks and practicing Mandarin I’d often ask, “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? I thought their dreams would be like mine and awaited the names of exotic places, but each time they gave the same reply. “Canada!” 

Now, so many years later, the time came for my once small boys, now tall and independent, to step into this dream. Though grief was present so was happiness. 

My sadness eased even more when, settled into their seats on the plane, each of my sons sent a text that said, “I’ll miss you mom.”

Raising three kids overseas was an adventure I’d never trade, but at times it felt like an impossible calling. When they were young, some days I was so tired I couldn’t get out of bed, other days afraid I would do something so wrong they could never recover. When teen years loomed, people warned me of the worst – no one foretold of my kids growing sense of humour, our laughter and connection.

Now, as their plane lifted into the air, both my boys spreading their wings, fear and fatigue faded. All I could think was they filled my life with so much joy.