citizenship!

In June, after a journey of 18.5 years by one count and 22 months by another, my husband got his Irish citizenship.

The ceremony was in Dublin, and we went down a day early to have a celebratory dinner and not risk missing the ceremony by counting on the trains on the day of. :)

It was actually VERY EMOTIONAL and we both cried all over everything, by which I mean, I sniffled gently while he wiped away a few manly tears, of course. The ceremony itself was really quite nice, and primarily featured one of the army bands playing a wide variety of unexpected music–like, they started with the Indiana Jones theme, and at one point played Born in the USA, causing my husband to say, “Which country am I joining again?” :)

There were a couple of relatively short speeches and then the judge administering the declaration of citizenship (whose name was Deirdre Murphy, which is also my sister’s name; I took a picture of the woman, sent it to my sister, and said, “You’ve changed,” to her :)) did the declaration bit, which she began by saying, “I’ll say “I,” and you repeat that and then your name,” and she did that, and people like my husband, who have 2 syllable names, were done rather quickly, but some people kept murmuring for Quite A While, causing her to say, “Some of us have longer names than others!” which got a laugh and was a nice bit of levity. :)

The declaration itself is a rather lovely little thing that basically says “I’ll be a good law-abiding citizen of Ireland,” without any difficult conflicting bits for people who retain citizenships in other countries (unlike, say, Canada, which I believe still requires you to swear allegiance to the monarch of England, which is an affront to both the American and the Irish woman in me. :D), and it was just really wonderful and emotional. “Quietly intense,” as my husband said, and he felt it was just the right amount of ceremony and fuss and bother to make the whole process feel emotionally worthwhile and not anti-climactic. ♥