Oath-taking day - Day 14 of the Covid-19 lockdown

The Danish flag flies above the flags of the four other Nordic countries.
At Tønder, the border to Germany. Photo mine.

DAY 14 of the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark.

Today's the day I would've gone down to the municipal hall of Ballerup to take my oath as a Danish citizen, sealed with a handshake.

I don't know whether the state will choose to waive the handshake requirement or whether at some happy time in the near future the grundlovsceremoni will take place at last, setting in motion the process by which I may become a dual citizen of Denmark and the Philippines.

Eleven and a half years have elapsed from when I moved here, my mind made up at last, ending years of flying back and forth on short-stay visas. These past days I've been thinking a lot of what it means to be a naturalized citizen of this country, as well as the things that I had to give up when I left mine. Of the moments of disappointment, the loss of status, the self-doubt, the irrevocable choices, the stymied expectations (oh, I didn’t become American after all!), the burning of bridges. But also the rediscovery of talents, the opening up of language, the recovery of routine, the delight of travel, and -- once I had rejoined the workforce -- the feeling of making a difference in people's lives. And the growing realization that the welfare state with its exemplary health care system had my back.

***

When I began writing these daily updates, I was reeling from the shock of the unexpected nationwide lockdown to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The updates were a way to deal with what was, at the time, an inconvenience, a disruption. In the first days much was made about the mad rush for toilet paper, and it was necessary to spend hours on the Internet in an attempt to find out how people were responding to the COVID-19 threat, which in turn was an attempt to divine the future, my future. The notion of a collective fate was a far-off concept. And I actually thought that by the time the two weeks were over, we would be getting ready to step out of lockdown, relieved to have weathered the storm, eager to get back to work and to share lockdown survival tales with colleagues. But as the news turned from the merely worrisome to dire I felt the need to keep going.

The last few years I haven't had the confidence nor the energy to produce written -- much less literary -- work of my own. I've devoted most of my writerly energy to helping other people develop theirs. But as happens when you begin to articulate your thoughts, more come pouring in. New thoughts, new ways of expressing them -- a running commentary in the back of your mind.

So it may be time now to turn back to my unfinished stories, before the window of opportunity provided by this lockdown closes for good.

Plants bloom in the spring, or with the first rains, when conditions are most favorable for the perpetuation of their kind. But they put out flowers, too, when they are stressed, as their systems throw their resources into a desperate gamble to reproduce their genes or risk extinction.