IMMIGRATION BLUES

Life in La Cruz during Covid was slow, but good. I made some new friends and solidified my relationships with old ones. Covid made us all appreciate our lives even more than usual and we were grateful to be together in our happy place while much of the world suffered. In December, I adopted an orphan kitten named Pinky.

She filled a real hole in my world and I wondered how I had ever survived so many years in La Cruz without a pet. I treasured my life in La Cruz and wanted to be sure that nothing interfered with its continuance. Thinking my residency expired in February, I pulled out my documents in January only to find that my residency had expired in November when I originally applied, not in February when my green card was issued. I was crushed and humiliated. How could I have done this two years running? Seldom have I felt so stupid. I returned to California, at the first opportunity, to begin the process anew. The difficulty was that covid had changed everything. While it had never been possible to obtain an appointment online at San Francisco or San Jose, it had previously been possible to walk into Sacramento where they operated on a first come, first served basis. After making the hour-long drive to Sacramento, I discovered that they were no longer taking walk-ins. I couldn't even enter the building, although someone did come out to advise me to return under a tourist visa. Unable to remain in the United States because my caretakers had made me unwelcome in my own home, I returned to Mexico without my residency.

This might not have been an issue except that, in April, I bought a condominium in La Cruz. After careful analysis of my post-covid financial situation, it became aparent that the best course of action was to rent my home in Benicia and live permanently in Mexico. Covid had made it clear to me that I didn't really want to live in California, anyway, and the situation with my caretakers had become untenable. I gave them six months' notice on March first, planning to return in August to clear out and rent the house. The rest of my season in La Cruz was the best one yet. Our Monday night jam sessions morphed into a band and we became the opening act at the Brittania for the months of April and May. This was about the most fun I had ever had, although it was a lot of work to prepare fresh set lists every week. Wings, the boat on which I raced, had a great season and, despite the average of our crew being 70, we won the performance class in the Banderas Bay Regatta. I took possession of my condo on April 23rd and madly began shopping for furniture and making the improvements necessary to be comfortable in my own home. My caretakers suddenly informed me, around the middle of May, that they would be leaving by June first. As I had AirBnB guests booked through the month of July, I had to drop the projects to make my condo habitable and rush back to Benicia. This turned out to be a good thing as the project of disposing of several generations worth of family heirlooms turned out to be larger than expected. It took me three weeks just to scan, identify, and distribute the archive(six bins worth) of family photographs that had all, somehow, come to rest with me. Two successful garage sales only served to dispose of the items that had been in storage.

Once the photos were distributed, I made a quick trip to Southern California to deliver some items to family members and visit friends and family before disappearing into Mexico. I still, however, needed to resolve the issue of my residency in Mexico before I could cross the border with my truckload of belongings. Due to covid, Mexico had reduced the number of consulates processing visa applications. Those that were still doing so were only seeing about half as many people. This had the effect of reducing the number of available appointments by something like eighty percent. It was impossible to get an appointment in California before I needed to return to Mexico. I checked every state in the country and the only available appointment I could find was in Boston. I took it.