Brand New Citizen

I would just like to congratulate my wife on becoming an American citizen a few weeks ago. I don't think most Americans who were born here, as I was, truly understand the weight of that event. She and I were married during a war. I recall her saying the first day we met that she never considered America, that it seemed like a big circus to her, that she was a European woman, and would always be a European woman. After the war she had dreams of studying in Paris or Milan, and neither of us expected to fall in love. What's the saying, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans?

She was happy about becoming a citizen. With 2 degrees and looks that could kill it certainly will make her life and path to success easier. Without doubt it will make the nightmare of travel ling on a Bosnian passport much easier as well. The constitution test was a breeze, due in no small part to her brilliance, studying under one of the country's top constitutional scholars and a deep passion for history and truth.

It was funny the day she was sworn in, among several hundred Muslims, Africans, Mexicans, Russians, and sweet folks from most every nation and culture on the planet, she was eager to take an active part in politics. With great passion she looks forward to the upcoming presidential elections. By the way she's an ardent Kucinich fan, given her strong idealistic and moral bent, regardless of whether she believes he might truly have a chance or not. We differ on that. We differ on many things, but then I never had intentions of marrying a mirror of myself, and couldn't imagine life with a woman who wasn't strong and self-assured.

But citizenship comes with a bittersweet price. That other place is still home. It will always be home. It may well be true that you can't go home again, but home never completely abandons us. That place where the sky was wide to the horizon, bounded by the sea, embraced by mountains or painted with the desert sands, the air in our lungs, the minerals in the water, or the crops and animals that grow from that land, whether we were born to a cruel leader or a benevolent king, if we walked to school with no shoes or enjoyed all the blessing of never wanting they infuse themselves into our DNA and become us. Like a structure is defined by the land it is built upon, soft earth, a slope, a rocky plateau, though successive layers are built the foundation always remains the same.

I watched as certificates of citizenship was handed out to immigrants from around the globe, and to my wife. Each carried a story and a long history. Any one of them I would be proud to have as a neighbor, to stand with against a common enemy. Their histories are as important and sacred as the new life they are now forging in this great land. It wasn't the end of a road, but joining with a new one.

Good luck to all of them.