Arrival
We approached the border, my heart raced. My hands trembled as I picked up my bag, digging for our passports. We drove up to the gate where I saw a camera flash and heard an alarm sound. "Is that for us?" We approached the sensor line for the rail to lift and nothing happened. Heart pounding, passports in hand. Cuauhtemoc moved the car an inch further, the light turned green and the rail lifted to let us in.
We continued into Mexico. The roads became strange and unforgiving. The first large speed bump crunched against the bottom of the car. "Sorrio Volvo!" Traffic was a tense situation, streets merged with uncertain proceeding. The maimed and poor walked the middle of the streets with cars zipping around them.
My map was automatically unhelpful and the street names held no resemblance to those of our directions. Thank God for modern technology and that Cuauhtemoc's data was still good, GPS saved us from having to ask directions. Normally I wouldn't mind but that day in that way was anything other than normal.
My lovely husband felt moved to compassion with every beggar and I felt compelled to keep the windows up and the money away. 'Please let us just get to the hotel.' This was my begging at the moment. Cuauhtemoc drove on, though in his heart he was passing out US $ to all in need. God bless him for his pure intent.
We finally saw our hotel, our gated little sanctuary. Walking in was respite to my weary pregnant body, hyper-alert from hours in the car and the stress of surpassing the unknown.
Medical
I told him I was going to eat and go back to bed. I told him that I wouldn't be bored or in want of distraction because I would sleep, wash laundry, read my books, and work on dance. I told him, but it must have been a lie. I did eat. I came back to our room and sent him a message on Google Hangout- Llegaste? He didn't respond, maybe his data didn't work anymore? Maybe he didn't have time to respond as the shuttle was late getting to the hotel that morning.
I laid down on the bed, watched videos on Facebook about protesting police brutality toward black Americans by kneeling during the National Anthem and another about a Holocaust survivor who embraced her authority to forgive. I read some e-mails from family. Then I lay there on the bed holding tight to the shirt he wore the day before, squeezing it as he had my hand before sleeping.
He left only an hour and 15 minutes ago. This will be an exhausting wait.
.
.
.
.
This referred to the entire moment of Juarez. That moment of Medical was a glimpse of the wait I would have today, Friday, Interview day.
Thursday passed as the calm before the storm. We exercised, we washed our clothes, we went to the fingerprint appointment, we ate, and went to a movie. It was a day of preparation, like nesting before the magnificent trauma of birth.
We argued about things to say, about how to respond to certain questions. We fell silent. I felt many things of anger, doubt, fear, and a little hopelessness. But not so much to take away my power to act on the bright glimmer still beaming inside my mind's eye. So I pulled him to me, I held him, and maybe gently slapped the back of his head. We were meant to be together on that night, not torn apart. And so we prayed. I blessed his mind and body and called for angels to go before his face, fill his mouth, and the ears of the official with the words of a Visa secured.
And we slept.
This morning he rose, bathed, dressed. We dedicated this day, this interview in prayer to the sanctification of and receipt of the Visa. I walked him downstairs where he boarded the shuttle, then walked back to our room. That walk, my sleep moments before, are a memorial. Though I slept, I knew every minute of that night. As I walked, I felt every solid piece of ground under my feet. Now, as I type I feel the weight of my being in this space. But there are moments between then and now that must be shared.
I entered the room and began to supplicate the involvement of all I know. We need you. I wrote to them all: "Cuauhtemoc's on his way to the Consulate. I've pleaded for angels to surround him and to speak for him. Now I'm pleading for the officials questions to be worded in a way that Cuauhtemoc can answer with confidence and surety."
Knowing that action to be wanting, I began to speak. I spoke to Father, Mother, Earth, Space, Distance, Jesus Christ and all things good within the reach of my movement. I let my lips plead our case, I let the air in my throat flow out forcefully. I wanted nothing more than to act, to move in some way that will push ongoing power to my husband in his moment of solitude. We will be able to accomplish more in the world from having residency in the United States, my argument. We will be a source of goodness and warriors of truth and light, I bribed. I reasoned that our intentions have always been to amplify our influence of goodness with this process of immigration, that it isn't a selfish inward motion but rather complies for the wholeness of all. I begged, let us go home with a Visa!
In all of that speaking, I was confiding in sources that I held confidence were on my side. Yet I began to shrink when I stopped speaking. I stopped because I felt faint, I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep, I felt the need to distract or to restore the energy. I began to curl up on the bed and felt fear put a blanket over me. I wrote: "Are you there? Tell me how perfect love leading will open my air ways. Tell me how to cast out fear. I am exhausted. I feel that I know why the disciples slept while Christ suffered. Could they have known the extent of the anguish, no. But they may very well have spent themselves praying for him. I am receiving constant messages of hope and Faith and petitions to the highest power yet I am weeping in my solitude because of his. I can do nothing for him but what is already done. Did I do enough?"
It was a question to myself, that strong part of me that I knew would not allow me to shun the fight. Because I knew she was still fighting within me to relinquish fear, I actually sent it to my sister. I wept waiting for her reply, waiting for myself to be personified in her because we are allowed to be one. As was my hope with all whom I spoke my power to, I was waiting for the echo to come back to me.
I wept and I tried to keep my body spread out across the bed. That strong part of me was not going to allow me to become small in the space I could affect. It must have given me courage to open that way, because I sat up and said aloud, "I will not allow fear to rob me of any strength or power that I might send to Cuauhtemoc in this moment!" Then the thought came, Que Firmes Cimientos is his favorite song. Listen to it. So I did, and it gave me power. How Firm a Foundation
Then the echo came back to me, my sister called. In all that was said, in all that was given, myself was speaking to me. She said, "You are more powerful now as a body in pain and suffering than you ever were as a spirit of light and intelligence. You knew things but you had no power to live." That is what I heard. You are living, she said. I am fighting. I am a warrior and I am sending forth power with my word.
The movement of my breath, the vibrations of my words, will push forth from rock to air, to tree and sea. The God of heaven and earth, Mother and Father, Christ, my family present on earth and in heaven, the Holy Ghost, all are working together for the good of our family. And I accept their sacrifices and their labor.
I accept the pain that comes with the birthing of a child. Immigration has been carried in our lives for seven years. Like a the baby within me will soon do, it outgrew its circumstances. I will not be able to supply life and nutrients to this child in my womb for much longer. Immigration can no longer be sustained in our hands. It is painful to push it out into the hands of someone else, but it is necessary.
It's been three weeks.
I finished typing that Friday at 10:29 am. Though I didn't consciously feel the shift in wind, or the tremble of the ground beneath me, the molecules of my body suddenly burst with energy. Their vibrations moved within me and I said allowed, "It's all finished now, he's coming, our Visa is coming."
The call I sent out returned more swiftly then I knew possible. They excited and calmed me instantaneously. And with this knowledge of success sitting on my heart, I had only two things to do: I sent my gratitude forth on the wind, through the Earth, into space, and on wings of prayer. Then again, I waited.
Around 11:10am, Cuauhtémoc knocked on the door. I looked out the peep hole to see him standing with a giant grin on his face. He had finished around 10:25am.
We celebrated. We rejoiced. We were humbled.
The wait for his packet to come, with his passport and Visa, felt eternal. We just wanted to get home and hold our children close. Yet here we are at home, three weeks from that Friday. That place seems distant now, as though it happened years ago. The anxiety attacks that used to wake me in my sleep, are now non-existent. I still wake up constantly, caused by waiting for the baby to come- heartburn, bathroom runs, getting constantly uncomfortable.
The place I'm in is no longer dependent on a physical space. In this place, there is breath, life, freedom. It is familiar, like it was always there but for fear and time, I couldn't see it. Moments in which this place quietly revealed itself to me along the way, I call those moments hope.
I can't wait to see what is held for us in this place.
