[We’re recounting the difficulties in receiving a Mexican residency permit. It’s continued from here, here, and here]

The ongoing pleasantness at the Boston Mexican consulate continued unabated. Officially, my wife and I had separate interviews. The consulate official asked if my wife was with me. Of course! Well, fetch her out and let’s have a look at her! We’ll take care of both of you at the same time.

I hadn’t disappeared into the inner sanctum for enough time, so when I returned to the waiting room, my wife spotted me and made her charming Oh-No-What’s-Wrong Face. Did you screw it up already? If they chase you up the street, I’m going to pretend I don’t know you.

Relax, honey. They just want to talk to both of us. They’re nice. I know it’s hard to believe, but a person behind a counter in a government office can be nice. Serious, efficient, and thorough, but pleasant. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it myself. We’ve all become so inured to martinets in ill-fitting polyester uniforms, badges askew, GED intellects on display, barking orders at us in the lines at the airport that we’ve forgotten that the slightest bit of authority doesn’t have to devolve immediately into imperiousness.

I’ll give us a little credit on that score. We understood that we were asking Mexico for a favor, and acted like it. Let us live there. We weren’t in a position to demand anything. You could be turned away for most any reason. It doesn’t even require a pretext. I don’t like your sweater, so beat it is always on the menu. I’m as charming as a cactus, of course, but they couldn’t wait to invite my wife over for an extended stay. She was going to bring a cat, and me, and some luggage with her, that’s all. In no particular order.

The clerk had already pored over the financial portion of our requirements for a married couple. We had plenty to spare, so the questions for my wife were scant compared to mine. The Mexican woman was too polite to ask, Did you really marry this guy? You’re not a hostage or anything? Seriously? He didn’t hold the deed on your family’s farm, and force the marriage? He didn’t threaten to tie you to railroad tracks unless you said “I do?” You’re not blind? You really stay married to him on purpose?

She just went over all the documents and made sure they all assembled her maiden and married names in a regular way. People make trouble for themselves with their elaborate married naming predilections these days. We find hyphenated Americans do it to keep one foot out the door at all times, starting with the bridal suite.The consulate just wants to figure out who you are. Our apostilled marriage and birth certificates with Spanish translations helped here.

American naming conventions differ from Mexican in other ways, too. They have very traditional customs with four names, generally. That’s how you end up with María Fernanda López García and similar. First name, middle name, dad’s last name, mom’s last name. Husband might be José Antonio Hernández López. Same naming order. His name doesn’t change if they marry, hers can. She might add “de Hernandez” at the end of her full name, but I guess that’s dying out except for in very formal settings. Most just keep their names, same as hombres. A very few go the hyphenated route. When you have kids, they generally drop the mother’s names off the end and smash the two grandads names on there. María Fernanda López García marries José Antonio Hernández López and their daughter might be Consuela Hernández López. So it is possible to end up being a Hernández Hernández, but fairly unlikely.

Back to the action. We were informed by the internet (teehee) that it might take up to two weeks to receive the canje visa stamp in our passports. I dreaded the idea of another trip into the belly of the Boston beast to pick them up, but it was not to be. We were directed to wait in the aptly named waiting room, and it would be done for us shortly. We spent a pleasant hour or two chatting in broken Spanish and fractured English to the other folks waiting around. They were all Mexicans getting other documents straightened out. A fellow from Guanajuato and I hit it off a bit. He’d been living in Rhode Island not too far from where I grew up. There was a charming, round-faced little girl with delightful cartoon pigtails and an adventurous spirit marching up and down the aisles. She really liked the pictures my wife showed her of our cat. A balam! (the Yucatec Maya word for jaguar).

The “sarcastic” guard came out and gave us our spanking visas, and gave me another wink and a “You did good” one more time. We were instructed that the visa was only good if we entered Mexico within 180 days, and then once we landed, we had 30 days to finish the job at the INM, the Instituto Nacional de Migración.

Gulp. I guess now we have to move.

[to be continued]