We’re back!

IMG_2878, originally uploaded by AnnaPasq.

Or, “Far more about the immigration process than anyone probably ever wanted to know.”

As in for once I didn’t have to fly back from Canada by myself! As in I didn’t die during the immigration interview! As in Dan is now a permanent resident! (Commence extreme happy dance)

How did it go, you ask?

Weirdly. I mean, well, because obviously we all got what we wanted, but the whole experience was about as comfortable as sharing a sleeping bag with a python. We had a lawyer, so we didn’t go in totally blind, but during the prep meetings we’d usually go over innocuous things like what forms to bring or what kind of outfit to wear or how long we should expect things to take.

We didn’t, however, discuss important details like the fact that your body will switch over to total survivor, being-chased-by-a-tiger mode the second you reach the city in which you will interview. I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep for more than a half an hour at a time during the whole Montreal trip. I broke out so badly I suspected a second onset of puberty. I was either not hungry for excessive periods of time or in the middle of such a blood sugar crash that I wanted to eat all pieces of candy within a three block radius. If I had known this was coming, I would have carb-loaded ahead of time. Or at least worn better shoes (at one point while we were waiting for our turn to interview, there was a security drill, which shut down the elevators and forced us to exit the building via 19 floors’-worth of stairs. I don’t care how pricey they are, no high heels were designed for that level of athletic activity). Even now, days later, my body (and my feet!) still haven’t fully recovered. Panic really doesn’t begin to cover it.

And the whole, “Expect your interview appointment to take all day” bit? Accurate, sure, but we failed to chat about what that day would entail. Maybe that’s just because every consulate that people interview for this sort of thing is different, and maybe all the other offices work like well-oiled-immigrant-legitimizing machines. But at this one, the appointment taking all day translated into an hour of standing in line (they let in about 100 people a day, and we all have “appointments” for eight a.m., so ultimately it’s first come first serve) followed by five hours of sitting in a waiting room with stiff-backed chairs and one vending machine as the only sustenance for said hundred people while the same generic live action version of Peter Pan played over and over on the single available television screen. By the time it was finally our turn to interview I was so tweaked out on Coca Cola and Tinker Bell that it was a wonder I could still form complete sentences.

The interview itself only added to the disorientation. Our interviewers were very nice. They joked around with us, asked totally normal questions (where we’d met, what we did for a living) rather than the full grueling interrogation we’d gone in expecting. The two two-inch binders of marriage evidence we’d put together? Good for our two year re-eval, but not needed now. The fact that Dan had gotten stuck in Canada for a year? Not a big deal. Five minutes later, our visa had been approved. An hour later, it had been pasted into Dan’s passport, and he was legit to travel.

I’ve yet to become a parent, but I kind of wonder if us crossing into “the US” at the Montreal airport was all that different from what I’d imagine leaving the hospital with a new baby would be like: You’re ecstatic but exhausted, and slightly amazed that the experts are just letting you walk out of their place with this new, precious thing, no further instructions or monitoring necessary. Even after we’d made it through customs without so much as a hiccup, I still didn’t really relax until we were at baggage claim at LAX. Some stupid, worrisome part of my brain was still convinced a Homeland Security officer would track us down at some point and inform us that, just kidding, we were actually in for 14 MORE months of waiting.

If one was supposed to, he never caught up with us. We’re home, suitcases piled in our cozy studio apartment, Dan snoozing in bed while I gear up for tomorrow’s night shift…and already the year and change we spent apart is starting to fade in my head. It’s almost instantly become something we did, which is both crazy and excellent because it means we’ve already started moving on to the next thing…just getting back into our everyday lives. Minus the paperwork. And the sleepless nights. And the crazy number of plane rides. And excessive Skyping. And several thousand miles’ separation. Basically, this boils down to us focusing on being boring for the next little bit. Bring it on, I say. It’s about time.

Advertisement

~ by annachronism on October 1, 2011.