Saturday, April 28, 2012

Saturday afternoon at the airport

My better half and I kept each other company on the drive back while the happy couple got reacquainted behind us. It took a year and a half for Immigrations to let Middle Daughter’s husband into the States; and that was on top of a year and a half before they were married. (Don’t get me started on how well our wonderful bureaucracy works: I work with a lot of non-Americans who can tell endless stories of INS foolishness.)

O’Hare isn’t a very comfortable place even when you’re used to it, and I gathered that Madrid hadn’t been all that wonderful either: nothing had looked good to eat but a glass of wine. And the temperature was 45F when we trooped outside--not quite what he was used to. A pity he couldn’t have arrived in March when it was warm.

We’ll try to make him welcome with broken French, but I can only make out one word in ten, which complicates conversation with requests for translation. It doesn’t make for smooth and easy exchanges. (I didn’t take the opportunities to sharpen my French when I had them...)

It is good that he’s finally here. We're going to take some getting used to.

2 comments:

  1. Similar experience having two boys who spoke mostly Romanian arrive as teenagers. And we are wondering what the Romanian now living in Norway will bring us for a daughter-in-law.

    It's easier for vaudevillians such as I.

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  2. My niece and her fiance are struggling with immigration issues, but since he's Irish, at least there's no big language barrier.

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