Happy Immigranniversary!

Six years ago to the day I spend too many grueling hours in a tiny airplane, while eating pizza and ice cream our wonderful flight attendant Ike brought me (from first class!) as a 'Welcome to America' gesture.
I told him that if everyone in the US would be so nice as him I'd do just fine - once I got through Immigration.
Ah yes, Immigration.
With Philadelphia as port of entry, (or POE as we say in the immigration biz) and having read MANY stories about how awful it can be there and what not to do I was more or less counting on being send back immediately.
I was nervously clasping the Big Brown Envelope from the American Embassy (DO NOT OPEN!, it screamed, TAMPERING WITH THIS ENVELOPE WILL RESULT IN YOU BEING KICKED OUT OF THE COUNTRY!) in my hands while the Beloved encouragingly said nothing.

Sometimes that is the best course of action.

We waited. And waited. And were happy our connecting flight would not leave for another 6 hours.
And then they called me to the desk; I smiled, was poked and prodded and fingerprinted and that was it.

And then we had 6 hours until our connecting flight.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to get to spend their life with the person they want to spend it with. While in the process of the green card application there were plenty of stories of people like us who got stuck in administrative processing (or A.P. as we say in the immigration biz). Sometimes for years.
We were incredibly lucky with the nine months it took us to get me approved, interviewed and green carded - because it was ONLY nine months, even if they were the longest months of my life.

So today we celebrated six years of my green card and the process we went through to get it. With healthy soup and slightly less healthy icecream.
And so, so much love.