My Wife Getting Kicked Out of the USA – Flashback

…continued from the last post.

Sara’s sweet 16 was coming up so we decided to visit her in Vancouver. Ted was on summer break and it had been a year since Lisa and Ted visited their home city. We borrowed my sister’s car cause it was bigger and more suitable for the trip.  We packed it to the roof for the long haul up. (Lisa must’ve intuitively known she wasn’t coming back cause she packed way more than she needed.)

It was the first vacation the three of us actually took in 2 years. We decided to take the scenic route and drive up the coast. Lisa and Ted finally got to really see California’s beauty. We had been living together in LA, but we never seemed to have time to go out.

As we drove out of LA along the coast we began to finally feel a sense of peace, something that had been missing from our lives.

I recall a specific incident where we pulled over along side a steep ledge. Ted hiked down a bit to connect with nature, the way a teenage boy who desperately needs to pee does. I found a cool tree stump and stood on it to take in the breathtaking view. I took a slow deep breath then screamed as loud as I could! I screamed a couple times. It felt great to release the built up tension from the year and release it to nature’s beauty. My screaming probably scared Ted a little, as he was just down the hill going pee – haha.

The rest of the trip was pretty peaceful. There was a definite shift in energy as we approached the Canadian border. Lisa was happy to be home and I’m sure Ted was too.

The following several days were spent visiting a few people and getting reacquainted with Vancouver. We made an additional 8 hour drive up to the interior of British Columbia to visit Lisa’s mom on her ranch. It tops my list of one of the craziest drives ever – long windy roads and cliffs of death. Some of the roads weren’t even wide enough for oncoming cars, and it was like that for miles.

It was the first time I met Lisa’s mom. She knew we married and was anxious to see us. After a long adventurous road trip into the prairies across cowboy town and witnessing wild goats roaming the main roads, we arrived at the ranch. But it was another 30 minute drive to get to the actual cabin!

That 30 minute drive to the cabin was more like an off road excursion. It was my first experience having to open and close wooden gates in order to drive through. On the other side of those gates… yup – cows. Lots of them and they don’t get out of the way of a moving car. Instead they look at you without a care while they fart out of their mouths.

When we finally got to the cabin I realized it was in fact a log cabin, no electricity, no running water and a detached outhouse. It was something out of a movie. For some reason it seems more of a novelty when watching a movie.

All the things normal people take for granted, Lisa’s mom was living without. I couldn’t fathom why Lisa’s mom chose to live this kind of life.

Then I found myself wondering how long we had to stay. No cell phone reception, or any kind of reception! We were engulfed by 300 acres of nowhere land. The only other experience of being out in the boonies was in the Marines. And even then we had means of communication available. And… I was armed!

The visit was an intense emotional twister for Lisa. She and her mom hadn’t been on good terms. I kept myself occupied by chopping firewood, walking through piles of dung to tend after dumb sheep (yes they’re extremely dumb), watched the cows tongue their nostrils and spread their poop all over themselves with their tail, ate by candlelight, cooked on a wood stove, had the experience of sharing a bucket of water to wash, had to get all bundled up to go take a dump at the outhouse or take a piss in the middle of the night wondering if there were any wild animals roaming about, listened to stories of finding dead cows and animals on the ranch, taught Ted how to drive a car in the open country, and visited areas on the ranch that have never been set foot on by any human! It was cool and really not cool at the same time.

Well the tiny log cabin was at max capacity with the four of us, and a cat. Lisa and her mom were starting to butt heads, so it was time to go. Thank God!

There wasn’t any huge celebration for Sara’s sweet 16. She didn’t want to go to the ranch with us. Although she was happy to be back with her family there was a definite darkness present in her. There were residual childhood issues and emotions from years before I entered into her life. Looking back, I don’t think I would’ve been strong enough to handle her if she lived with us in LA. It was pretty overwhelming already.

It quickly became time to head back home to LA. This trip was an important one to make and it was coming to an end. We hadn’t even left yet and I could sense the uneasiness in Ted and Lisa to go back. But we had a lot to tend to and needed to start figuring out what we were going to do, as it was still unclear.

So we left Vancouver and headed to the U.S. border to go home to LA. When we arrived at the border we were asked to pull over for some reason and step inside for further questioning. At this point I still didn’t know why and was still confident that it would be fine.

During questioning they pulled Lisa aside to interrogate her privately. The border officer interrogated her for 6 hours!!

Lisa didn’t respond well to the harsh pressure and interrogation. I guess that’s the point for these border officers though. Ted and I had to wait patiently, and we knew 6 hours of interrogation wasn’t a good sign.

Lisa and Ted previously couldn’t get an extended visa and we hadn’t applied for greencards yet. So they could only enter the U.S. as visitors.

Hours of questioning later he was about to let us go cause there was no further reason to hold us. But before he let us go, he decided to ask Ted some questions. And that’s when the tables turned. He asked Ted where he went to school. And Ted said LA.

Even though he and Lisa were technically visiting, for Ted to go to school in LA meant we needed a visa. The border officer knew we were just trying to keep the family together, but he had to do his job. Even though I’m a U.S. citizen, he wouldn’t let Lisa into the country, even though she was my wife!

So we were forced to go back across the Canadian border and back to Vancouver.

Our lives changed in an instant. My wife couldn’t come into the States! (Temporarily that is – but long enough where I knew we couldn’t be separated so long.) The realization that I had to move to Vancouver became very real. I really had no other choice.

We were lucky enough to camp out at a friend’s place, who had a tiny one bedroom cottage home. It was roughing it to say the least. We brought a tent so we set it up in the front yard and that’s where Lisa slept while Ted slept on the futon in the main room. This was to be home for Lisa and Ted for over a month. Not exactly a “welcome home” back to Vancouver.

Now that they had somewhat of a roof over their heads, it was time for me to drive my sister’s car back to LA and figure out how Im going to pack everything up and leave my own home town.

What went through my mind? @#%#$! That kind of sums it up.

…to be continued, again.

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