i was having a bad morning. “my shoe broke!” i told stuart, as i started whining about other maladies. he swept me off my bad-mood feet by happily announcing the Best News Ever …. his roommate had texted to say that he’d recieved a letter from the Police.
the police report! the police report! let me show you some simple maths.
timely police report + sent checklist = interview date before september 1
and
pre-sept-1 interview date + good consular mojo = visa in hand by sept 1
and
visa in hand by sept 1 + one month’s notice at work + one-way plane ticket = stuart here by october 1st
so you can imagine our excitement. my broken shoe and other complaints flew out the window, as did his awful morning meeting, at the thought that everything really was going ahead according to our modestly wildest dreams. the magical possibility of being together on october 1st was feeling more and more real.
and then my phone rang at 1:30, when he got home. “it’s not the final report,” his tired, dejected voice said. “it’s just the letter telling us our request has been processed, and we’ll get it by august 12th.”
take all those simple maths. throw them in a blender. jumble them around. result? a possible two or three week delay. no october 1st. no columbus day weekend wedding. even more days apart.
i’d like to say i was brave and good and cheerful, like i am most other days. i wasn’t. i burst directly into tears. and didn’t stop crying for twenty minutes.
it’s not, like my bravely-not-crying stuart pointed out, the end of the world. it’s just a tiny glitch. two, three weeks, at the outside. i know we’re the luckiest bastards alive to even have found each other, much less smoothly navigated the immigration process thus far.
but i broke down because every day, i have to dig my smile out from under the bed, from where it’s sitting and feeling sorry for itself, and paste it on. because as beautiful as my life is, it’s missing something right now. i broke down because for a few beautiful hours, i could see exactly the day we’d hoped this would happen. and now, even though i know the delay might only keep us apart a few more weeks, it feels like certainty just got snatched away again.
so i cried while stuart stoically soothed me and telephonically kissed my tears away. i cried because for once, i didn’t want to prop my chin up and be brave. i just wanted to cry until i felt better.
so i did.