December 8, 2011
by Marcy Kennedy •
Life at Warp 10, Marcy's Blog •
Tags: crazy things we do for love, customs agents, freelance editor, immigration, Life at Warp 10, long distance relationships, Marcy Kennedy •
The customs agent accepted the two passports I handed him, but didn’t look at them. Instead, he looked at me.
“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”
He had. Three times. On at least two of those times, he’d been the one to search my truck and then come in to chat with me while the other customs agents photocopied my itinerary and I filled in the declaration form. The last time he’d seen me had been four months earlier, before ice clogged the river and prevented the ferry from running.
I gave my best nod and smile. “Yes, sir.”
“Where’re you headed this time?”
“Just to the airport,” I poked a thumb toward my fiancé, who sat in the driver’s seat, “and then back to Canada.”
“She’s dropping me off,” my fiancé said.
We’d hit the point in the conversation where an angry avalanche always took place in my stomach. Would he let us through without trouble? Or would he tell us to pull the truck aside and come in? Living in Canada, less than 40 minutes from the US border, I’d crossed hundreds of times in my life without a problem—until I broke a taboo that I hadn’t known existed and somehow became a flight risk.
My crime? I’d agreed to marry an American.
The first time I tried to cross the border to visit my fiancé after getting engaged, my mom and I spent over 30 minutes inside the customs building. We answered questions about the wedding date, and where Chris and I planned to live.
Then the woman in charge asked, “Do you own any property in Canada?”
“She has a house,” my mom answered.
“Do you live there?” she asked me.
“No, ma’am. I live with my parents.”
“Why don’t you live there?”
“We rent it out.”
“So you don’t own a home.”
Deep breaths.
“She owns a house,” my mom said.
“Then why doesn’t she live in it?”
“Why would she live in it when she can stay with us and rent it out?”
“So she doesn’t own any property?”
My mom and I exchanged a glance.
“I’m sorry,” my mom said. “I don’t think I understand the question.”
On this trip with my fiancé, however, the customs agent returned my smile rather than asking us to pull the truck to the side. “Are you going to cry when you drop him off?”
Naw. I was going to jump for joy because my fiancé was going back to his home, 600 miles away, and I wasn’t going to see him again for a month. I reminded myself that he’s just doing his job. “Probably.”
He let us through without the usual delay. Finally—someone who realized that, if I haven’t made a run for it yet, it’s probably a safe bet I’m not about to. Besides the fact that I’m compulsively law-abiding, we’d lose all the wedding deposits.
I dropped my fiancé off and took the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor, Ontario, anxious to go home.
“How long were you out of Canada?” the border guard asked.
“About three hours.”
“What for?”
“I dropped my fiancé at the airport.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Virginia, sir.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“He lives there.”
“Isn’t that hard?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, and swallowed a giant chunk of sarcasm. A couple months earlier, when a US customs agent noticed an apple beside me, she asked, “What are you going to do with that apple?”
“Umm…eat it?”
Even I’m not paranoid enough to think up malicious ways to use an apple. The best part was that it was a U.S. apple with the sticker still on it. It was simply coming home. It’s a good thing they can’t read minds, though, because if sarcasm was a crime…
After one particularly harrowing border crossing experience, where the customs agent told me long-distance relationships never work and treated me like I was destined for a bad break-up, my maid of honor said, “I don’t know if any guy is worth that hassle. You must really love him.”
She was right. I did, and I still do. And now that my husband and I made it through all the paperwork and almost a year of immigration hoops and are in the same country at last, we can look back and laugh at the crazy things we did for love.
What are some of the crazy things you’ve done for love? Do you regret doing them or did it all work out in the end?
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