Today is the fifth anniversary of my family receiving our green cards as we became legal permanent residents of the United States. Accordingly, today is also the day we are officially eligible to become citizens of this country.
We moved here, as is so often the cause, for work. We were looking for opportunities in our careers and to broaden the opportunities for our children, and, hailing from Canada where my seasonal affective disorder was getting worse every year, we were looking for a place where the weather was less depressing.
We landed during the Obama administration and were full of hope for the future of the country. Then, a few months later — the 2014 midterms. It was sad, and troubling but divided government was hardly a new thing and how bad could it be? The answer to that query would be answered two years later with the election of Donald J. Trump.
My spouse and I didn’t sleep that night. We struggled with what this result meant about our new, adopted country. When I went to work the next morning a thoughtful co-worker had hung a sign that said “we love you, don’t leave!” with intertwined Canadian and American flags. But boy were we thinking about it. What kind of country would elect a person like that? Had we misjudged so profoundly? Were our values THAT divorced from that of the people here? In the end, living in California inured us to the worst of the Trump horrors and we decided to stay. But it was always an uneasy arrangement. As we made friends, and enjoyed satisfying careers, as our youngest passed the point where he had lived in this country longer then the one of his birth, as we enjoyed how “kind of Canadian, but with that weird American health care quirk” California felt, we wanted to be here. But in the back of our minds there always lurked the sense that if the creeping fascism we were seeing take over one of the two parties in this country continued its trajectory, we were prepared to hightail it back to the cold and lovely land we came from (and with the horrific advance of climate change our Nova Scoria home wasn’t even that cold anymore so while the earth feels closer to extinction, at least my SAD wouldn’t be so bad.)
Today, the country is polarized more than any time in perhaps the last 150 years. The aforementioned radical fascism that burrowed in to the GOP is more prominent than ever. Health care in this county is still absurd and your refusal to embrace the metric system like the literal rest of the world is maddening. But it’s also a country that tries so hard to prioritize the rule of law (and as of this writing Donald Trump has just been indicted for the second time, and the Supreme Court has just ruled that racist gerrymandering is a step too far — there’s still hope said rule of law still has a place), and the commitment to a separation of church and state — a uniquely beautiful innovation, and to free speech (not in the selective “Elon Musk, freedom of speech for nazis, bit not for people who make fun of me” way) speak to the best of this place. And as we split our time between two deep blue states — Hawaii and California — it’s easier to pretend there’s a little, progressive block nestled within the larger, often scarier nation.
So do we take that leap? Curiously, when visiting Canada recently, a group of friends unanimously said, “why wouldn't you? Duel citizenship is a very real thing and why not be a citizen, with all the rights that entails? And with duel, if things turn to shit you can always come home.” It’s Americans who have been saying, “why would you? Canada seems so much more inviting and less scary than this place. I’d rather go there!”
The thing is, this is home now. The great kid next door we’ve watched grow up Into an amazing young woman, the wonderful community we’ve settled in, the friends we’ve made, the causes we’ve become vested in — this is home. And it would sure be nice to vote. Even though our two home states, again, among the bluest in the nation, aren’t going to be decided by our votes, I might be that vote that helps Katie Porter become California’s next Senator or helps my friend, a former local mayor, win his next local race. It would be a major thing that would help us feel whole again. To feel empowered. To feel like we’re part of the great American experiment.
Today we’re eligible to become citizens. We’ll talk it over this weekend and make a decision. Our oldest has decided it’s not for him and he plans to one day return to Canada. That’s his journey and one we respect. For us, we’ll see what this place has in store for a couple of wandering immigrants, ones lucky enough to have the resources, the language and the privilege denied to too many, and we’ll see if this place can be the forever home. And hey, in those moments between the fires, draught and soaring temperatures, the weather’s still pretty hard to beat.