To belong....Finally!

So we received our citizenship interview letter this weekend and it set off a slew of emotions and thoughts thru my mind from shock to disbelief to amazement to immense joy all in a matter of seconds.  At first I could not believe the day was here where I was actually holding this letter and a million questions started racing thru my mind at once- is it for real?...is it really in writing...wow!!  I must have read it 50 times over to make sure they had not made a mistake....  Its been 23 years since I came to this country(legally)...23 years....thats more than half my life.  A thought that was in the back of my mind the day I sat down and buckled my seat belt on that zambia airways flight in 1986 to travel to an unknown land of opportunity. I didn't know it then, and am just barely getting the grasp of the events of the past  23 yrs and the moments leading up to this day.  I always knew that the number 23 had a special magical way of following me in my journey of life.. If I had known then that it was gonna be 23 yrs later that I finally would belong to this country..  would I have stuck with this path in life or decided to give up and move on?  After all.. there were many other places in the world that offered opportunity...but somehow my life's journey was meant to keep me on this path and experience all that I have been offered - good and bad.

After the initial set of flurry of emotions my mind started to wander as to what this letter really means to me..Is this it-  Does this mean I finally belong to someplace, can I officially call it home( a feeling that I have possessed and felt for years but was never reciprocated the same way by the US immigration system..), can I finally vote for the first time in my life.  This is more than just a passport, there are so many feelings attached to this letter.  

Born in India, raised in Africa, always living under the fear of being kicked out from your foreign home country, moving to the US with hopes of a better education.  As I moved thru the US education system a wave of knowledge flooded my mind on how to progress through the visa system- F1, to H1 to the ultimate ticket to freedom...THE GREEN CARD.  So many tested times to reach the green card stage.  Offers of home created green cards and marriage proposals (I am sure in jest..at least so I think)offered by friends and coworkers. But the hardest time was 2001, where all visa doors seemed to be closing in on us and looked like hope was running out...Was it time...the time for them to kick me out of this country, where do I go, what will I do, how will I adjust in a land unfamiliar to me....  But we survived one more curve in the road and continued on our Green card journey.  I think my dream of the green card seemed so unachievable at times that this day is truly a dream come true!!  BTW..on a funny note..I was shocked the day I learned the green card was actually not green!!

So where does one really belong to:  is it where you they were born or where they were raised or where their parents reside?  Is there any one good answer?  What is that gives a person a sense of belonging?  And I am not talking about ones heritage or culture, that is something that is ingrained in their upbringing and their value system.  My heritage has never been a question in my mind throughout this whole process.  That is something that was always very very clear in my mind but this sense of belonging always mystified me...

 

Life has a way of working things out and and with  love, support, hope and most of all faith...anythings achievable. I am not sure I know the answers to all of the above questions or will ever know but I do know today....that I belong here...right here with my three angels.   Angels that have been sent from above to love me for life and make my life complete and whole in a place that I can call home...Officially!!! 

Example By parents...

Started of my morning reading/seeing an article that deeply disturbed me. People, are so hard to understand..why do they do what they do. It makes you question, if you ever really knew them at all, was everything they did and said lies? Are people born devious or does their environment steer them that way? Is there a moment of weakness between doing whats right and whats wrong. When kids do something wrong, you for once can even forgive them and move on but when adults do wrong..where does one go? Do parents not have a responsibility towards their kids? If they do not teach them by values and ethics and example...who will? Don't parents realize how much of an influence they have on their kids and how kids look up to them.

Kids live by their parents example, and we as parents always need to remember that...even in those moments that we might be on the brink of faltering... we should stop and think what will this do to the future of our kids, what will this do their mindset, their faith in us, their future hopes, dreams, desires, relationships. Since the day they are born we have dreams, aspirations, of what they will be and what they will become. We as parents cannot continue to tell our kids what to do..we have to show them what to do. If they see us reaching for the sun, they themselves will be more inclined to reach for them too. We have to teach them that they may fail, but guess what they will land among the stars. And part of not achieving their goal is also a learning process- sometimes we win and sometimes we just try harder next time.

When parents do wrong, its also the kids that get lost along the way. The kids are the ones that do not comprehend of why something was done. They have to deal with the watchful and judgmental eyes of the society that they live in. They feel this sudden loss of friends/home/life as they knew it because of no fault of their own. I feel bad for the kids involved and the bad choices that their parents made and now they have to live with their mistakes forever. The mental footprints, that mistakes like these leave on the kids minds is unerasable. Parents may move away, and take all that they have with them..but can they give back the future moments/relationships that they have stolen from their kids. How do these kids cope with this sudden loss of their lives....

So before we parents judge our kids actions/mindframes..we should look inside ourselves and see where exactly we stand on certain issues in life. We are growing alongside our kids and as we ask ask them to strive higher and higher in life they are watching us with their innocent watchful eyes to see what we do in our lives....Live by example and not always by words!

I hope the kids of these households find peace within themselves one day. I also wish them lots of strength and positive energy to deal with all the harsh looks/comments that are gonna be coming their way for the rest of their lives. I wish those kids a new beginning within finding themselves from within!