In 15 days, Stuart will have his interview at the US Embassy in London. They will be the final step in the process we began 100 days ago – applying for a K-1 fiancee visa for Stuart to move here.
In 16 days, we will (fingers crossed for success) be buying a ticket for Stuart to arrive in early October. This time, it’s an open-ended ticket. There won’t be posts about spending 4, or 5, or 6 days together. This time, it’s for good.
In early October, I will have had the luminous presence of this man in my life for a grand total of 220 days.
Since then, 99% of my days have started with a phone call from him, and his days have ended with a goodnight phone kiss from me. We have chatted, texted, sent letters, written emails, and left voice messages in the intervening hours.
Of the 220 days we’ve known each other, only 20 of those have been spent basking in each other’s company. I sleep at night knowing that in 20 days, we spent 28,800 minutes deliriously happy to be in each other’s company, each other’s arms.
But even the remaining 200 days, that I have spent far away from Stuart, that have been hard and required putting a smile on or remembering a joke or tender moment, or even just calling a friend to complain about how much I miss him … every minute of those 200 days has been worth it, too. Because I’ve been happy, even if I’m crying.
And that’s 288 thousand minutes of happy.
And as far as math goes, that ain’t bad.