Early Immigrant Days-6

There was another new-comer to Canada charade...although to be fair it might have been wider spread than that,,,that from
time to time we would find ourselves involved in. The big one for recently married couples...was owning their first house in Canada. Every so often...we'd be called to visit such a lucky couple. These visits were like a kind of surrealist theatre. The
bargain here was that you...having been supplied with a hot Guyana lunch on a Sunday afternoon...[Sundays usually seemed
most suitable with its church-like over-tones]...would be expected to "Ooh and Ahh" around the museumlike premises...that
looked as if no-one could possibly be living there...as not a tea-cup or ash-tray...was out of place. From time to time...as
we engaged in this ritual...some venturesome soul would throw in an "Isn't that ever!"...to show that his or her weeks in Canada had not been in vain...but this phrase somehow didn't seem to go with a strong Guyana accent. This "showing the
house" transaction...unlike the one with driver and passengers...usually didn't work too well other than on the food level. At
least with the "car thing"...you were heading to a neutral destination...you could all enjoy on some level. With the immigrant
"open house"...you would find yourself for never ending minutes that turned into painful hours...at the destination of the day.
You felt you couldn't "eat and run" after the meal and the first whisk around the master bedroom. The reason why I
think this transaction didn't work too well...was the grandiosity level on the one hand...and the envy level on the other...
were too high to achieve any kind of arrangement that was really satisfactory to either party. Also...for people who had not been schooled for generations in smiling when they didn't feel like it or making insincere chit-chat...it was an added burden
walking around someone else's "Taj Mahal"...while you yourself lived in a back room in Scarborough...with a fixed smile on
your face and making saccharine sounds. I hope that...sometimes... the host and the hostess didn't look too closely at the faces of their visitors...or...they may have given up their efforts at validating themselves...by showing off their "mansion"...right there and then..................Quester.