Friday, November 19, 2004
The Famous Molli Malou
Believe it or not, those were the words of the consular officer when we shoved all our paperwork under the bullet-proof glass of the bomb-proof consular offices of the deeply entrenched U.S. embassy on Dag Hammerskjoldsvej:
"The famous Molli Malou! Is this the girl I read about in the New York Times?"
"It surely is!"
And so we filed forms DS-240 (Consular Report of a Birth Abroad), DS-11 (Request for New or Replacement Passport), and DS-110 (Request for Social Security Number), along with our own passports, birth certificates, marriage certificate, my own certification of divorce, Molli's birth certificate and naming certificate (along with two photocopies of each of the foregoing documents), and a self-addressed, stamped envelope with 51.50 crowns worth of postage. We topped it all off with an 857-crown processing fee.
Net result: Molli should be Americanized within 10 days to three weeks.
Meanwhile, back at home, unbeknownst to us at the time, Molli's Danish passport had arrived in the mail. So she's fully Danomated, also.
On top of it all, but a propos of nothing, at 3:30 this afternoon it began to snow although there wasn't a single cloud overhead. (There were clouds in every direction, but none overhead.) It snowed Hollywood-style bb-sized pellets for about twenty minutes before petering out. The sun was setting, and where there were clouds they were the color of old bruises. I don't know why I mention that. Maybe just to etch the day into my memory just a little more deeply.
It's illegal to photograph the embassy, and my camera was embargoed at the security screening, but I had managed to snap at least one shot as we approached, and before I was within the control radius of anyone in a uniform:
It's been a long time since I've seen one of those so gallantly streaming!
"The famous Molli Malou! Is this the girl I read about in the New York Times?"
"It surely is!"
And so we filed forms DS-240 (Consular Report of a Birth Abroad), DS-11 (Request for New or Replacement Passport), and DS-110 (Request for Social Security Number), along with our own passports, birth certificates, marriage certificate, my own certification of divorce, Molli's birth certificate and naming certificate (along with two photocopies of each of the foregoing documents), and a self-addressed, stamped envelope with 51.50 crowns worth of postage. We topped it all off with an 857-crown processing fee.
Net result: Molli should be Americanized within 10 days to three weeks.
Meanwhile, back at home, unbeknownst to us at the time, Molli's Danish passport had arrived in the mail. So she's fully Danomated, also.
On top of it all, but a propos of nothing, at 3:30 this afternoon it began to snow although there wasn't a single cloud overhead. (There were clouds in every direction, but none overhead.) It snowed Hollywood-style bb-sized pellets for about twenty minutes before petering out. The sun was setting, and where there were clouds they were the color of old bruises. I don't know why I mention that. Maybe just to etch the day into my memory just a little more deeply.
It's illegal to photograph the embassy, and my camera was embargoed at the security screening, but I had managed to snap at least one shot as we approached, and before I was within the control radius of anyone in a uniform:
It's been a long time since I've seen one of those so gallantly streaming!
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Feeding Molli
In the cold, dark Danish winter, in the midst of a global war, on the heels of a devastating sinus infection, my entire life was brightened yesterday by the simple act of loading half a teaspon of apple-banana mush into my daughter's mouth.
Tomorrow's weekend Almanac will probably be posted late, maybe as late as Saturday, because tomorrow morning we have an appointment (set two months ago) with the U.S. embassy to begin the process of making my Danish daughter half American. I'm going to try and chronicle as much of the process as possible, since I know there are many mixed-nationality couples reading the Almanac. (Although not so many reading this blog, since hardly anyone checks in here anymore, since I hardly ever write anything in here anymore, especially now that the Moronic Underground--see link, top right--has opened. The nice thing about the Moronic Underground is that even if I don't say anything for a while, there are plenty of other Morons to entertain you.)
