The Passport Anniversary

If one year is the paper anniversary, one month, at least for me, is the passport anniversary. How did I spend the day? Looking for apartments and telling landlords I'd like a six-month lease, because until the Department of Homeland Security clears my wife for entry, she'll remain out of the country, a suspected terrorist or welfare charge, a beautiful, lovely woman some seven thousand miles away from me. "She really should be involved in the decision," I say, to another person who agrees this is so, before telling me they really can't clean an apartment and paint the walls every six months. "We really can't do anything less than a year," they say, and so I look again.

It's strange: you get married, go on a honeymoon, and then say goodbye to the person you love, the woman you've chosen to join your life to. Married people don't usually do this, leave and not know when they'll next see each other. They can always say, "See you in two weeks," "See you in August," or "I'll be counting the days till Thanksgiving." But for us, who knows? After submitting our paperwork in Moscow, to a woman whose name I didn't get -- stupid stupid stupid -- we were essentially told, "Don't call us, we'll call you." So after almost four weeks, did they lose our paperwork? Did they find an error and place it at the bottom of the pile? Or did the man processing our case get transferred to Turkmenistan? Maybe they'll call or email next week, or in two months. Who can say?

Until then, I have to put my life on hold in a manner that's just very strange. I live the life of a bachelor, eating and rising when I like, but I wear a wedding band on my left hand and have pictures of a beautiful bride on my computer. It's almost like I've dreamt up a really good fiction, one so real I can see it and hear it and believe it -- but one that is all too elusive, there and then gone, disappearing around the corner right when I think I've caught up to it.