Above, one of the photos from our Immigration Interview Photo Album.

When the Chaplain and I got married, we’d known each other for about 60 days. He had lived in the U.S. for a number of years as a college student. Since he was supposed to be leaving for seminary to become a Catholic priest at the end of the summer we met, he was here on a student visa.

When he dropped out of that program to marry me, he lost his status as a student. When we were deciding whether or not to get married, we knew if we didn’t get married, he’d have to go back to Tobago. And he already had bought the ticket to go back home.

My wise Grandma reflected when she heard that we were eloping that she had always said you should know someone through every season before tying the knot. She figured since it’s always summer in Tobago (with temperatures in the mid 80’s year-round, a rainy season and a dry season, I think in this case North-easterners can afford to generalize a little) and we met in the summertime, that we had covered our bases. I have always been grateful for her gracious perspective.

I remember watching Green Card, the 1990 rom com, with my family around that time with my new husband, and it was heh heh funny, not haha funny.

It’s not that we didn’t think we loved each other. We did. With a little more maturity, we can look back now and call it infatuation. But when it came to apply for status as the spouse of an American citizen, all we were thinking about was how to show the Immigration Office we weren’t faking when we really had nothing to show for ourselves.

One of the things we had to do in preparation for our interview was make a photo album. In it, we included photos from every event we had photos from, because there were hardly any. And at this time before smart phones and social media, a lot of the photos were pretty crappy.

Even though our appointment happened several months after we got married, we’d still only known each other for six months or so. It happened after Thanksgiving of the fall after we got married, but before Christmas.

I remember sitting in that beige office with this nice man on the other side of the desk, afraid that he wouldn’t believe us. I can only imagine what was on the Chaplain’s mind.

He did get approved for his green card. But I’m still not sure if the man who interviewed us thought we were legit or not. Maybe he recognized WE thought we were legit.

How can you prove something you yourself don’t yet understand? How did that immigration employee get what he needed to know from us?

When I think about how we felt about each other then and how we feel now, it’s hard to call that experience love, but I’m glad that didn’t get us a big red F from the Immigration Office. It makes me wonder how many couples they get like us – kids sliding in from a whirlwind romance with no idea what they’ve signed up for. Marriage and married love are like so many other things in life – you really can’t explain them to someone, it’s something you have to experience for yourself.

I don’t spend much time thinking about our immigration office interview. But sometimes I’m taken back to that room. To the nerves, the little photo album that felt inadequate to communicate the depth of our relationship, and how our understanding of love then seems so inadequate compared to what we have now.