Guys! i have such good news and i have to share it with the blogosphere, ie my 4 friends who read this! ok drumroll....
MY DAD JUST PASSED HIS CITIZENSHIP TEST!!!
yes, my father is officially a US citizen!! finally just 6 days after this 58th birthday, after exactly 40 years in this country he can officially call himself an American. these are things that people with American roots never understand. LIke talking about politics is kind weird because you can't really say "who are you voting for" since they can't vote. And when you go on vacation your family has to split into the citizens and non citizen and you say "we'll meet you in baggage claim." I think my father has always had this romantic view of Mexico as being like his real homeland. I mean, this is not to say that he doesn't love the US because he might love it more than your average middle class American. But people often don't think about what they would do in those situations. They criticize and say "well just go back to (fill in blank for original birth country) if you love it so much! how ungrateful!" The truth is though, that if i moved somewhere else, no matter how much i loved it i would still have a really special place in my heart for the United States. And i'd probably dream of someday movign back when i get old. And i'd have a really hard time giving up my citizenship because that's like giving up your name or something. So when he finally decided to apply for citizenship early this year I asked him waht had made me change his mind. He said that he was driving by the Staples Center one day on his lunch route and they were having a swearing in ceremony. He said he saw all of these people who looked really, basically fresh off the boat, and i mean like they looked real foreign. He said he looked at them and thought to himself "i am more american than these people! this is silly." And he decided to go apply the next day.
and now i just feel so happy that he passed. I also feel really sad that i wasn't there to take him to his test, or to help him study. I didn't even remember to call him for his birthday! i feel like a terrible daughter.
2 comments:
i forgot to say this to you yesterday when this was your gchat away message but, that is really awesome. congrats to your dad.
and i forget to call my dad on his birthday almost every year.
okay, so first off congrats. seriously.
second off, your blog is in my reader and was following a bunch of posts by emily so when i got to yours i still thought i was reading emily's blog and was uber confused cause i was like "wait, bruce is mexican?" (that is emily's dad's name right? i forgot). anyhoo, as i was trying to figure out why i never knew that Emily's dad was an immigrant from Mexico and how "wood" could possibly be a mexican last name, i accidentally clicked on the blog and realized from the layout that it was your entry and not hers. oh silly me.
third of all, i feel you. congrats to your papi once again.
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