If I were going to title this, I suppose I'd call it "The Best Birthday Present Ever." I can just imagine the flood of response nodes either criticizing the GTKY nature of my contribution, or one-upping the touching tenderness of the content. Better to daylog this one, and tell you that, were anyone to ask you to write an affadavit that spelled out in detatched but thorough detail just how he knew you were married in good faith, this would be the way to do it.
Now, my dad was an attorney, so he doesn't do affadavits. He does "Certified Statements". He does them with excruciatingly objective language and attention to rules of evidence. His feelings as a father and as a suegro to a nuero el mas respetable peek out like small children peek out from behind doors.
It starts out like this:
(Name withheld), of full age, makes the following certified statement, according to applicable law, in support of the continuing application of (Name withheld but it's Mi Marido) to advance his quest for citizenship in the United States of America:
His quest. Dad, really. Mom always said that men were more romantic than women. Now I know, she meant "Your father is more romantic than I am." My eyes are opened. Dad always liked his new son-in-law; from day one, actually, which was Easter three years ago. Maybe it was the romantic appeal of The Immigrant, here to pursue the American Dream, with all the implied bootstrap-pulling and sacrificing. You know, the quest.
The other paragraphs are concise, and numbered, and factual. They contain sentences such as "I observed them both make the appropriate wedding vows required by the Roman Catholic Church," and phrases such as "in the manner expected of husbands and wives." Nothing there to indicate how hard dad worked to clean up the house and yard for my wedding reception. Nothing about how mom carefully remembers to say "Love to Christian." Just the provable facts.
My favorite paragraph is paragraph 5. Goes something like this:
5. During their stay with us, {My Husband} devoted careful attention to learning and practicing the dressing of his wife's incision wound and caring for her temporary colostomy, including the cleaning of excrement from and freshening of her colostomy bag whenever needed; and they slept in the same bed during all this time, even though another bed was available should he have been so inclined.
And the Academy Award for the Best Use of the Word Colostomy Bag in a Legal Document goes to -- my dad has a positive genius for absolutely hysterical understatement. A world of better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health lies beneath that deadpan. This is supposed to be talking about a man who came here for opportunity and here's his fantastic opportunity: cleaning my infected incision. Actually, Papi said he didn't mind doing that; he used to stick his fingers inside chickens to check for eggs. I guess dad couldn't include that as it would be "hearsay". And my Papi doesn't even shift to the couch when his wife gets a colostomy. If they're going to fast track olympic figure skaters for citizenship, shouldn't they do the same for a guy who shared a bed with a bag of poop?
The best part, really, is that with that document, and the application and the copies of other things, I get to keep my husband. The guy who cleaned my colostomy bag. That's the best birthday present ever.