No. 56: Paper Tiger

The envelope arrives by first class U.S. mail.

It’s pale grey paper, with a fine woven texture you can’t buy at Target.

From the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Los Angeles.

The letter inside is printed on A-4 paper, you know, the longer and wider paper that everybody in the whole wide world uses except for us.  And Canada.  Which is sort of strange, because you’d think Canada would just go with the A-4 flow.

May 16, 2011

Dear Mrs. Ebel,

I am pleased to inform you that you and your child’s application for renaturalization has been granted.  Since the Certificate of Naturalization must be given to you in person, I kindly ask that you come to the German Consulate General any weekday between 08.00 and 11.00 am.  Please present a valid ID at the time of collection.

In regards of your child’s Certificate of Naturalization, please be aware that you, your husband, and your child have to appear in person.  All of you need to present a valid ID card.  In case your husband does not want to appear in person, you would have to provide a declaration of consent with his signature notarized by a notary public…

Yours sincerely,

Frau Bureaucrat

I stand in the foyer of my house, holding the letter.

Holy shit.

I stare at the piece of paper.

What is this?  How did this get here?  And what does it mean?

Paper.  Isn’t paper supposed to be over?  Doesn’t everything about us now fit on a jump drive?  Don’t we all have microchips implanted in our brains by Central Cffice, programmed with pre-approved spouses, shoe size, and favorite song?

My friend Dennis, senior management at an ad agency (and soon to enter this story more significantly, so here’s his introduction), comes to my office at the Major Media Corporation where I ‘ve worked as a senior copywriter for getting close to the last two years, to make a presentation.  He comments to me that whenever he walks into an office and sees file cabinets, he knows the business isn’t being run at the cutting edge.  Because there should never be file cabinets.  Not in the digital age.

But paper, Dennis.  It can’t be denied.  Paper still circumnavigates the globe, and it still has power.

This piece of paper is proof.  That I got me and my son through the hoops of a foreign country’s bureaucracy, through the hoops of history.  And now that country is going to become my country.  Or, one of them.

At least, on paper.

Without the paper that my fleeing paternal grandparents kept close to them, worried over, protected, and saved, 73 years ago, I wouldn’t be holding this piece of paper, now (See No. 12: The Number).

I barely knew my grandparents.  My gentle grandfather died, and my Teflon grandmother didn’t stick (See No. 26: Shopgirls; No. 32: Dust; No. 35: Yellow Menace).

But I still don’t know what it means.  John is home, down the hall, and I call to him.

I show him the piece of paper.

“Congratulations!” he says, but I am staring at the paper.  I can’t remember what I was thinking, and I don’t know what to think now.

“What’s the deal with this?” I ask, half joking, waving the paper.

“Something was taken away from your family,” he replies.  “And you and your brother got it back.”

I sigh.

Yes.

It all comes back to me now.