On the seventh day

Lucky number 7!  We drove through the freezing air, past frozen wastes of icy pastures, mountains of snowy ice by the sides of the highways, then parked our cars, reminded each other again to make sure there were no Swiss army knives on our keyrings, then ran across the road avoiding slipping on frozen puddles, and into the Federal Building, where everyone got through the metal detector scot-free except for me, who had to be scanned with a beeping device, which found: coins, a Swiss army knife (!), a buckled belt, and bracelets and rings which set off embarrassingly loud sounds!  The official was very nice though, and every time I said "sorry", he replied with a big smile, "Don't worry about it."  Nick kindly ran back to the car with my Swiss army knife.

Then we all congregated hurriedly together with the lawyer's assistant, who informed us that we were all late except for me, but that she had sorted it with officialdom and everything was fine!  The lawyer had told Tim that we would probably all go in as a group and it would last about 15 minutes, not individually and taking two hours as promised in the letter of invitation.   But of course that did not happen.  Bureaucracy must have its day.

While waiting to be called, Matthew stressed that I should not make a fuss about any question, like if they asked "would you be prepared to bear arms for the country at war?" I should just say "yes".  I said, "They're not going to ask me that, are they?"  But of course my interviewer asked that specific question, and I answered, "Do they really want a 58-year-old woman to carry a gun and kill people?" which was exactly what Matthew had warned me against.  But she was very sympathetic and said that no, of course not, women were exempt from that kind of duty and that she wouldn't want to do that either.

We had learned our 100 questions and answers well and all four passed with flying colours, 100%!  The three of us were kept waiting on tenterhooks for ages for Tim's interview to end, which took forever, but at long last he appeared through the glass doors walking down the passage towards us, and was given all the paperwork we had been given, so we were all suddenly naturalized Americans, like Albert Einstein, Madeleine Albright,  John Muir, Isaac Asimov, Dave Matthews, Isabel Allende, Pierce Brosnan, Yoko Ono and Nadia Comaneci! Well, we still have the swearing-in ceremony to attend, but we have passed the final test.  As Jess said, now we are real African-Americans!  It is a strange feeling.  As Matthew wrote in a poem just after we arrived here, when we were all longing for our familiar world back home, which was actually published in a book ironically titled, Poetry by Young Americans, "The shape of my country is in my heart".

With our letter from Barack Obama welcoming us to America!

The Cold is upon us again, -13C and wind chill even colder, I suspect, when I stopped to fill up my car on my way home from school this evening.  It was like torture, standing there mentally urging the petrol pump to hurry up and the numbers to go faster on the little dial!  Even though I had all the clothing required, I was chilled to the bone when I got back into the car and set the heater going full blast the rest of the way home!

When we arrived in America it was bleak winter, with ugly dirty snow everywhere, and one Sunday we were lying in bed and I asked Tim incredulously, "How did we end up in a country where you can die from the cold?"  There were times when the boys could only go outside for 15 minutes at a time to play, otherwise they were in danger of their eyeballs freezing!  Our house then overlooked a sheltered bay, which froze over for six weeks one winter!  Sea-water.  Frozen.  You could walk on the sea.  

Dogs don't mind the weather, they just want to walk and run with you, no matter what.  I miss my crazy Molly-dog.

Mad Molly in the snow a year ago.