Yesterday we celebrated 20 years of operations at work.  To kick off the festivities, we worked in partnership with US Citizen and Immigration Services to have a Naturalization Ceremony in front of our building.  Nineteen people took the oath, pledged allegiance and became citizens.  They had come from Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Greece, India, Indonesia, Philippians, Poland, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom and Vietnam.  I find the whole ceremony moving -- from the opening National Anthem, to the reading of the countries to the final song and flag waving. 

The keynote speaker for the event was Under Secretary for Management, Patrick Kennedy.  He gave a lovely talk to the new citizens.  And he stressed the importance of involvement in all phases of their new home, from their neighborhoods, and schools, to civic engagement and the responsibility of the vote.  He spoke about the inspiration that the later generations will take from their stories of how they came to this country.

I sat there and thought about my husband.  I know parts of his story -- how he started to travel the world by welding on cargo ships, going port to port.  I know about his first phone call home after he docked in Portsmouth.  There are still parts of his past that I don't comprehend fully.  You know, why his parents let him leave home and go on a ship at the age of 15, for example.  But I admire his determination, courage, strength, and tenacity.  Selim has of the same characteristics as his father.  I hope that we can return to Turkey on a more frequent basis so that Selim can learn and understand half of his heritage in a more meaningful way.

When Nedim and I are teasing each other because we don't understand something, he will say to me, "What, you don't get it?  You have a masters degree and they didn't teach you this?"  To which I will reply, "You have been through the Panama Canal three times and travelled the world on a ship and still you can't figure it out?"  Not very mature of either of us, I know.

Lastly, during the ceremony yesterday I was also thinking about the complicated world we live in.  I'm trying so hard not to get all riled up by all the one liner zingers that people are throwing around out there in the social media universe.  Politics isn't a one liner.  Foreign policy isn't made with finger pointing, gotcha moments.  The choices we are faced with are not always black and white.  I hope that the nineteen new citizens will embrace the best that our democracy has to offer and help elevate the discourse.  I'm sure that a few of them could teach us a lot about the absence of real freedom and true democracy and what that is like to live with.  If we better understood how fortunate we are with our system, we might treat it with more respect.