Washington DC: Monday

I'm in Washington DC this week. Why? I was approved for Latvian citizenship. Latvia grants citizenship to children of Latvian WWII refugees, and my father was exactly that. I spent about a year working on it, doing one thing here and another thing there. And then it was done, and I was declared a citizen! I'm a dual citizen now. This means, by the way, that I can live anywhere in the European Union for as long as I want. So can Darwin, as my spouse. We're also eligible for EU health care.

Anyway, the final step is to apply for my Latvian passport. This requires an in-person visit to the Latvian embassy in Washington DC. My cousin Elaine, whose father (my uncle) was also a Latvian refugee, started applying at about the same time I did, and by sheer coincidence, we got passport appointments at the embassy during the same week! Also, our cousin Karina happens to live in Washington DC. So we decided to make a family event of it. This turned out to be a wonderful idea. I rarely see Elaine and Karina these days, and I'm pretty sure we've never done anything together, just the three of us, in this particular combination, so it was kind of cool to explore that.

On Monday, after a couple bobbles with the flight ("We're delayed by 45 minutes." "Nope! We're taking off in ten minutes!" "Sorry--we're delayed again." "Nope! We're heading out now."), I got to Washington and took a cab straight to Karina's house. I thought it was just going to be a few of us for supper, but what with one thing and another, a pile of other family was included, so it turned into a raucous family dinner party, and I got to meet a whole bunch of relatives and sort-of relatives I didn't know before, which was delightful. And the food was fantastic. No dill, either!*

After a fine evening of catching up and getting-to-know-you conversation, with cheesecake, I headed off to the little flat I'd rented. It's a really cool basement flat that I would have killed to have when I was in college. I conked out hard!

* This is an in-joke for the Latvians in the audience. Dill to Latvians is what gefilte fish is to Jews. You either love it or you hate it, but it shows up at every family gathering.

Washington DC: Tuesday

Tuesday was Elaine's appointment at the Latvian embassy. Karina and I went along for both moral support and to be celebratory. I also wanted to observe the process so I'd know what I was in for later!

We met at a Metro station and took a subway to the stop nearest the embassy. We deliberately gave ourselves plenty of time so we could get breakfast. Karina found a nice cafe, and we ate and chatted and kept an eye on the clock.

It was HOT. Boy, was it HOT! Did I mention the HOT? By 9 AM it was already 95 degrees out and humid, humid, humid. Whew! When we emerged from the cafe, we planned our route to the embassy based on what side of the street had the most shade. Fortunately, someone decades ago had the forethought to plant a whole lot of sidewalk trees, so there was a lot of it. 

We were on embassy row, and we played "guess the embassy's country by the flag." Elaine usually won.

We arrived at the embassy fifteen minutes early, but they don't let you in until the exact moment of your appointment, so we wandered around looking at other embassies and trying not to melt. 

At last we were allowed into Latvia's embassy. It was actually a little disappointing. We weren't allowed into the embassy proper. The lobby area looked a little like a basement church classroom. Small table with utilitarian chairs. Bulletin boards with stuff about Latvia. An easel with a white board on it. The clerk stood behind glass. 

Here we ran into a small embarrassment. None of us speak more than a few words of Latvian. All three of us feel a bit cheated here. If our respective parents had spoken Latvian to us as children, we could have grown up fluent in it. But in the 60s, it was what Karina calls "one-way assimilation." You are in America, you speak English! So we didn't learn it, and Elaine had to ask the clerk to speak English. The clerk clearly disapproved, and I suppose I can't blame her. They probably have a lot of new citizens who don't speak Latvian these days, and it must seem ... jarring. But there's nothing for it, so we forged ahead.

Elaine gave her paperwork to the clerk, who went over it and declared it proper. Elaine signed a couple of forms. ("Should I sign my name in English or in Latvian?" she asked. The clerk said, "You only have one signature, so sign it the way you sign anything else.") The clerk took her photo. ("Should I smile?" "No teeth," said the clerk, and the three of us dissolved into laughter, which made it hard for Elaine to get the photo taken.) Elaine paid a couple of fees, and it was done! Her passport will arrive in the mail later.

Outside, Elaine cheered, and Karina and I joined in. Group hug! Group photo! We also noticed one of those little library thingies. It was filled with books about Latvian culture, free for the taking. We each took one. 

On our way to the embassy, we had passed a modern art museum. Elaine likes modern art quite a lot, and Karina said she'd been meaning to visit this museum for years, so we decided to check it out. It turned into a very pleasant afternoon of wandering through galleries examining work of all kinds and styles. They had some famous pieces by O'Keefe, Picasso, Matisse, and Renoir, and lots of pieces by artists who were new to me. 

After a while, museum overload set in and we decided we'd had our fill of art. There was a lot to unpack and think about. Here, we needed to go our separate ways. There was a long, bittersweet good-bye. Because distance prevents me from seeing them often, I forget how much I like spending time with Elaine and Karina until I'm with them. It's our shared family history and a whole pile of common interests that all create a bonhomie you just don't get anywhere else.