Yes, after a mere 28 years in this country and 19 years with a green card, I finally made it legal and became a citizen. Some of you may know that I’ve been going through this process for a couple of years now: I applied shortly after we moved to Colorado and passed my tests (history and language) almost a year ago, but getting my oath ceremony scheduled turned out to be surprisingly hard. So finally I got my invitation to the oath ceremony on October 18th in Denver and so off we went to join 300 other new citizens and their families.
The oath ceremony took place in a theatre and the first 20 or so rows were for citizens only with the supporters in the rear and balcony. The ceremony started about 20 minutes late, probably to allow us to get sufficiently revved up by the patriotic screensaver as we waited. It turned out that the 300 of us taking the oath came from 89 different countries (not counting my two) and the main speaker rhapsodized about how many of us had come here with just a suitcase or less to our name. I honestly couldn’t say how many suitcases we had when we made the crossing to New York in the QE2, but it may have been more than one each. I was feeling like maybe my sacrifice wasn’t so great. But then again, I was only fleeing the wet and overcast weather of England, not the janjaweed of Sudan or worse.
We then took the oath, and recited the pledge, and then sang the national anthem along with a prerecording of a singer who was not singing to be sung along with. It was like a mariah carey or beyonce who sings slowly, and uses their own syncopation to “make it their own” but turned out to be very hard to sing along to. After that we watched some montages of other people taking oath ceremonies to make sure we knew how we were supposed to behave at ours, and then there was an optional rendition of “proud to be an American” to stock images of America. And then we were done to much applause and photo taking. After it all I felt full of America – much like I feel when I eat too much creme brulee perhaps.
I then went straight away to give my newly acquired certificate of citizenship (I bet most of you don’t have one of those) to the folks waiting to take my passport applications, so sadly I can’t show you what it looks like, but it’s quite official looking and even has a picture of me on it, which I was surprised by. I guess it’s a fairly life-changing turn in one’s life, so a good official looking certificate fits the bill.
On friday night, Mandy threw me a “citizenship ball” though I think she might have called it something different. IT was actually very touching how many people came and gave me the staples of american life. Dave Fish might have hit the nail on the head with baseball, apple pie and 40’s of budweiser (not my old favorite Olde English 800). The Baros put together a remarkable pop-culture quiz which frankly was more difficult than the citizenship exam – I don’t know who the 4th member of the rat pack is, nor did I know who shot JR, though that may be more a product of my age and distaste for soap operas than anything else.
Anyway, now that I’m american citizen I can vote – just not in this election because Colorado has a stupid 29 day registration cut off, so despite being encouraged to fulfill our civic duty at the oath ceremony, I’ll just have to wait two more years. But then I can’t even register my dislike of dubya as he’s not even running again. Well shoot, I guess I’ll just satisfy myself with agitating for now.
