Here it is, practically a year and a half later, and what exactly has changed, you ask? My apologies in advance .. this is going to be a long one.
If you know me, then you know that in June 2007 I went to Kenya and met William. I was there for two weeks, and something happened. I can't quite explain it, but it happened. He told me he was going to marry me someday, I laughed at him, got on a plane to come back to the US and thought that was the end of it. In 2009 he came here for a month to visit me and officially asked me to marry him. I told him no and sent him home. A few months later I couldn't stand it - we talked it over and I started paperwork for him to be approved to apply for a fiance visa to come back so we could get married. After almost three years and someone actually joking about starting a betting pool to see if it would ever actually happen, it did. After going through the process not once, but twice, his visa was approved in May 2012.
Since we had no idea how long this process was going to drag out, I decided to take a trip to Kenya to visit him in May 2012 as well. His visa was actually approved four days before I was getting on a plane to go visit him and we actually went and picked it up the day after I got there. It was an amazing trip. We stayed at his cousin's place in the barricades for the Escort Unit for the President of Kenya (kind of the equivalent to our Secret Service), and I got to hang out with and really get to know William's other cousin Oduuh, who has turned out to be one of the coolest people I have ever met. While in Nairobi, we went to Nairobi National Park and to the animal orphanage, where I got to actually hold one of four lion cubs that were orphaned because Mom got a little too adventurous and kept leaving the park to go out into one of the local villages in search of food. That night, on our way out to dinner, I tripped down the stairs, hurt my foot and we ended up spending most of the evening in the emergency clinic, where they did x-rays, shot me up with some painkillers AND gave me 2 prescriptions for additional painkillers, all for a whopping total of about $40. Makes you really wonder about the healthcare system in America where you can even get the painkiller shot part of that ordeal for less than about $200.
Over the course of the next week and a half, despite what ended up being a severely broken foot (more on that later), we spent several days at the Maasai Mara, travelling through some of the Rift Valley lakes and back to Nairobi before I had to hop on a plane and head home. We both really needed me to take that trip. We had been through so much to get to that point and now that we had reached that final step, with so much that had happened that we couldn't control and so many outside influences, we needed to be sure that we were ready for that final step. After a pretty heavy and serious conversation, I got on a plane to come home, ready to finally plan our wedding.
After that, it was all a whirlwind. I had to have surgery on my foot a week after I got home. I had broken all five metatarsal bones in my right foot. I must have had hairline fractures that were too small to show up on the x-rays in Kenya and basically shattered then over the course of the next two weeks. Five and a half hours of surgery, three metal plates, about a dozen screws, a temporary pin, a cast for eight weeks and a walking boot for four weeks finally fixed it (sort of - over a year later, I have permanent scars and will never be able to wear those fancy heels ever again). I had to move in with my mom for three months, was off work for over two months if you count time off for my trip, worked from her house remotely for about a month, was finally allowed to put on something other than a walking boot and given permission to drive exactly five days before William arrived in the US.
Three weeks later we were married in the courtyard of the nursing home where my grandfather was a resident. It was the perfect day in more ways than one. We struggled so hard to get to that point - I still have no idea how I managed to get through it without crying. Two weeks later my grandfather died. Enduring the constant comments about how he had hung on just so he could see me get married and that he was waiting for William so that he knew there would be someone to get me through it were almost unbearable and at moments brought on such extreme bouts of guilt that I almost couldn't stand it.
Since then, we have started the green card application process, moved into a bigger apartment, I started a new job, quit my part-time job, William has a consistent job where he has fit in fabulously, and in October we'll be welcoming a little baby boy into our family - almost exactly on the one-year anniversary of my grandfather's passing. The significance of that hasn't been lost on anyone involved. We've certainly had our fair share of struggles but given that we have now spent every day of the past 10 months together after spending all but seven weeks of the past six years apart, I think we've done better than anyone ever expected. They say the first year of marriage is the hardest. If that's the case, then the rest of our lives will be a piece of cake. We certainly deal with daily struggles that the normal couple has never and will never face, but we get through them. We make each other smile every day and we have never gone to bed mad. They say that newborn babies can immediately recognize the voices of their mother and father. I told William last night that there's no doubt in my mind that our little boy will also immediately recognize the sound of his parents' laughter. And for that I am grateful and feel blessed every day.
