Kimberly Guerrero

We're going to see Letitia?

No.

We're going home?

Pride is a good thing to have, you know?

Letitia had a lot of pride, and so did my mother.

I figured that someday I'd have it too.

So, where are we going?

Most of that day, we wandered around the Duty Free store, which wasn't very large.

The manager had a name tag with a tiny American flag on one side and a tiny Canadian flag on the other.

His name was Mel.

Towards evening, he began suggesting that we should be on our way.

I told him we had nowhere to go, that neither the Americans nor the Canadians would let us in.

He laughed at that and told us we should buy something or leave.

The car wasn't very comfortable, but we did have all that food, and it was April, so even if it did snow, as it sometimes does on the prairies, we wouldn't freeze.

The next morning, my mother drove us to the American border.

It was a different guard this time, but the questions were the same.

We didn't spend as much time in the office as we had the day before.

By noon, we were back at the Canadian border.

By two, we were back in the duty-free shop parking lot.

The second night in the car was not as much fun as the first, but my mother seemed in good spirits, and all in all, it was as much an adventure as an inconvenience.