I felt it when we crossed the border. That sounds ridiculous, but I did feel something when we crossed the Peace Bridge into New York. It may have been the heat or the thrill of being in a strange vehicle on a road trip to a place I did not know, but I remember a sensation of pressure in my head and on my body, like I was changing atmospheres. I know now that this was also a sensation of fear. What would the trip in this van, with at least four people I did not know, involve? Would we be safe in America (a concern that would be a real problem for me in California, as I will explain eventually)? Did they have the food I liked to eat, the TV shows I liked to watch? I only half understood my own feelings at the time.
You notice the usual things on the road when traveling in a new place: the people and their behaviour, the different types of buildings, the amount of space available to those people and their buildings, the type of weather and the temperature, and so on. It was a warm and dry summer. And America seemed to be full of all of the same things I could find in Canada: the space, the housing, and the people. None of this was different from the point of view of a car seat. The package was the same. And a part of me was disappointed that things were not as strange as I had imagined they would be.
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