Wednesday had dawned just a tad cooler. 48 degrees was lower than the normal average of 54 but the day was destined to be typical of Southern California in the Springtime with temps warming into the low 70’s. Winds in Long Beach were light and no rain was in the forecast; in short, just another normal day in paradise. Not quite so normal for a young Canadian couple who would welcome their first-born, a baby girl, into the world as the sun made its way across the zenith. On what was just another Wednesday to the rest of the world, they named their daughter Sophie who as I write this has been the love of my life, and my wife, going on 35 years.
Bringing their baby girl home from Long Beach Memorial Hospital the young family quickly became ensconced in their new home. As for many young couples it was not an easy life but the parents worked hard and within a couple of years the family had grown with the addition of a son. Sophie attended Catholic School and was a typical SoCal kid who especially loved the beach and the water.
Eventually the family would make the move over the mountains to Colorado where Sophie would graduate from Columbine High School before pursuing Bachelors and Masters degrees in her quest to become a teacher. Sophie and I married and like her parents before we tried as best we could to build a life together. It wasn’t perfect, life never is, but we had our love for each other. Now retired, we relish the time we spend together. We still live in the first home we bought together all those years ago. What most would consider a ‘starter’ home has been our castle and our haven through good times and bad. Never ones to pursue excess it has simply been enough, enough for a good and happy life together.
I had written in one of my recent blogs just before the election that, regardless of who won, the world as we knew it would change. They say that all politics is local and within just two days of Mr. Trump being sworn in the winds of change are swirling in some anticipated but still unwelcome and very personal ways. The executive order regarding birthright citizenship signed by ‘our’ new President on Monday has my wife fretting over whether she is still even an American. Simply put, Mr. Trump, with a stroke of his pen, seeks to end the guarantee (thanks to the 14th Amendment) that children born in the United States of America are citizens by imposing his personal caveats on who is, and who is not ‘American’. My wife is now in limbo, according to Mr. Trump, simply because she was born to Canadian citizens starting out on their own American Dream on that warm and sunny day in 1966.
And her brother too. And what of her brother’s children, all born in the U.S. of A? If, with the stroke of a pen, the father is no longer ‘American’ then what does that mean for the kids? How far do the ripples go?
In my (American) heart of (American) hearts I’m optimistic that that third guardrail of the American system, the Judiciary, will quickly put an end to this foolishness. Mr. Trump told us during the election exactly what he was going to do and he is quickly following through. Whether the courts will support and uphold the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which Mr. Trump just swore to preserve, protect, and defend) is not guaranteed If they do not, then perhaps the America so many ‘Americans’ thought they believed in is well and truly gone.
With apologies to Bob Dylan, the times, they are a-changin.
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