How it began

Don and I met in January 1996 through the Internet newsgroup alt.astrology. I posted some questions about the ascendant, computer programs and such on the group and Don replied privately in email. He liked the way I laid out the data and made a quip about the car he had whose rear wheel fell off whilst he was driving it; he never found the wheel again. I liked his humour. I didn't know I'd end up marrying him.

The correspondence continued and, as time passed, we discovered a mutual mindset and many mutual interests. We started off as friends but the potential was there, more so after my first visit in July 1996. When I went there in December 1996, I stayed six weeks instead of three and we had already done a fair amount of research into immigration. By the time I went home at the end of January, I had a ring on my finger and we were getting married.

My family took it quite well. It was very out of the blue for them, and they were worried about the age gap and the distance. I'd also been very recently divorced and of course at the back of their minds they were thinking, "Rebound?" I was very sure that it wasn't, however, and they accepted my decision. It did, I suppose, help that nearly 40 years earlier they'd done almost exactly the same thing. Mam and Dad had been penpals and Mam had come over from Slovenia to marry and settle in 1957. So this was like a double love story and, while they didn't like the prospect of me going to live so far away, they could understand my choice. They still haven't met Don, but like him very well through email and chat sessions - the power of which I'm well aware, since this is mostly how Don and I kept in touch.

The petition

I had to send over birth, marriage and divorce certificates which Don then forwarded to the INS with his I-129 petition, biographic details forms (amongst other things they wanted our addresses and work history for five years...) photographs, and a $75 fee. Within a few days these had been acknowledged and returned; I believe the documents arrived on February 13th and were acknowledged on Valentine's Day 1997. Less than two weeks later came the answer, dated March 11: the petition had been accepted and the details were being forwarded to the American Embassy in London. At this stage I had been allocated an alien number, also known as the A-number, used in all correspondence with the INS.

Then began what seemed like a long wait; I don't remember how long exactly other than that it seemed to be an incredibly long time... I think that towards the end of March or the first few days in April I received the package from the Embassy. It was all incredibly formal and scary: "Thou shalt this, that and definitely not the other..." The forms were confusing and I had to write to the Embassy after a long period dancing round the voicemail jail. As I recall, there was one form I had to fill out twice, sort of a declaration that thus far I'd violated no immigration laws or any other laws, let alone committed "moral turpitude", plus another with more general biographic information (again) - this time, it wanted details from the age of 16 onwards! These I had to forward as soon as I could, and then I had to use the other document as a reference to collect the paperwork required for the next stage. This treasure hunt took forever.

Paper Chase

Don had the dubious pleasure of putting together the Affidavit of Support, or I-134, a document designed to show that Don had enough money to make 1.25x the poverty level for two people - something like $14,000 a year. This entailed getting letters from his employer, copies of his last tax return, and bank reports - his bank charged $25 for putting together a simple statement of his deposits and he has not been friends with it ever since. He then had to get the document notarised and swear that the information was correct. He express-mailed this stuff to me; it took two weeks, by which time he'd given up on it and sent more copies, normal mail. The normal mail took just three days! (There is now a new affidavit form, significantly more complex than the old...)

I received this in May, and the very next day the police certificate came. Finally, I mailed off the document to the Embassy, stating that I'd collected all the information, and after that I just had to wait for the interview. Oh boy was that wait seemingly without end. I was wound up, and there was more than one point where it all got too much and I ended up howling.