Post #13: Four Weeks
Last Thursday we got the email we’d been waiting three weeks for.
In the time since my last post, I had spent twenty hours on trains travelling to and from London, as well as the better part of £800, in order to be x-rayed, inspected, inoculated, poked, prodded and rigorously questioned to ensure that I meet the minimum health requirements to obtain a United States spousal visa. A mere formality in most instances, but in my experience, it was substantially more complex, tenuous and stressful than I had imagined. I spent the first two nights following the medical examination in Knightsbridge wide awake in bed, prevented from sleep by the notion that the phone would ring, and I would answer to be given devastating news of some unknown, previously undiagnosed disease that would prevent me from leaving the country, or worse, claim my life. Thankfully, the phone stayed silent, confirming me as the neurotic I hoped I was. I recalled the words of the icy receptionist at the doctor’s offices just off Oxford Street; “no news is good news”.
The relief eventually and inevitably gave way to frustration within a few days. It had been two weeks or so since our case was completed by the National Visa Center in New Hampshire, and we still had not received an interview date. The feeling of knowing that you have almost reached the end of a year-long process but still are unable to answer the fairly simple question “…when are you leaving?” pushed my patience to its absolute boundary. Then Thursday rolled around. Another purposeless day in the Welsh countryside drifted by arduously slow, giving way to night, which here feels unfathomably protracted and dark. It was about ten o'clock or so when I got it. It told me that my interview is set for the 11th of May, at 9:30am, at the Embassy of the United States in Grosvenor Square, London.
Then it became real. In four weeks time I would be sitting next to my wife on Texan soil again - a lawful permanent resident of the United States, possibly in gainful employment again, shopping for an automobile and a family home for the two of us. I was elated to think this; but it was tinged with an odd sadness. It had become real - I was finally leaving for good, leaving behind my family, the country I’ve called home for twenty-eight years. I suddenly and rather inexplicably began to long to see the places I grew up, all the people I had known. The closest I could compare the feeling to is as if I had just woken from a dream that felt familiar, insulated and comfortable into a life that felt both terrifying and full of rich possibility all at once; that I had been jolted awake suddenly, into affirmative action.
In the meantime - I still can’t answer the question; following the interview, if successful, there is a short period that could take as long as two weeks in which my passport with the attached visa will be returned in. But I have a window, at least. There’s plenty that needs to be done before then. I spent yesterday afternoon sitting on an overpacked, decrepit, bargain suitcase purchased from eBay in a vain attempt to pull the zips together. I have accounts to close, accounts to open, letters to send, people to see, drinks to be drunk, and most importantly, twenty-one days or so left in the company of my wonderful mother, which I intend to relish as fully as possible.
And after all of that is done, knowing my beautiful wife is waiting at the end of it all suddenly makes that tough, long, year feel like it was a distant, ugly memory.