Chapter 8

I’d longed to escape since as far back as I could remember. Funny, the word escape – as though my life was somehow a tragedy that I needed to flee. Still, my slightly overzealous dream that the grass was ever so much greener on the other side never seemed to diminish.  In high school and college I dreamt of studying abroad, but my parents were vehemently against those kinds of things.  As a girl raised too well to follow the rules, it never even occurred to me that I could actually run away. Throughout my twenties I made a few stodgy, yet valiant, attempts; I applied for postgraduate studies in London. I highly underestimated the rigorous British application process and was quickly denied.

A couple of years later, I traveled for an immersive language program in Barcelona, Spain. A bit older then, my parents could no longer stop me. They didn’t need to approve either. So with meager savings, I stayed as long as my little bank account could sustain and was forced to leave much earlier than any of my new international cohort of friends. I was considered the “old person” at the ripe old age of 26, but it was the first time in my life I truly felt free. I shared a quaint apartment next to the Sagrada Familia metro stop with two other girls. Each morning, I would meet up with friends for a quick bikini – a ham and cheese on toast – and a café con leche before heading to class followed by cheap price-fix lunches and dancing the night away to Spanish club music. 

I had a life back home – a new puppy and a boyfriend who I would one day marry. But in Spain, life felt fuller. Sitting in McDonalds, sheepishly hoping nobody noticed that I was an American in the most American of places, I listened to the stories of my new Brazilian friend Eva who was secretly making out with German Theo, but felt nothing because she really had a thing for Belgian Sophie. At night, we would pre-game at one of the local bars, El Gato Negro – cozy with stone walls and cheap wine. One night, I made eyes at a Romanian boy with hairy knuckles who ran one of the program’s hostels. Hours later, after the clubs closed, we ran through the streets, hand in hand, sweat soaked from hours of dancing. I realized he was leading me back to his place. I stopped between two parked cars and said no. He looked at me and then my hand, dropped it, and said, “Ok, bye!” taking off, leaving me in the middle of Barcelona at 4:30 in the morning. Living next to that massive Gaudi church was the only reason I managed to find my way home. 

When the course was over – friends newly Facebooked and photos downloaded – I went back to a life that felt non-specific yet secure. For five years, I barely went anywhere. Then, years later, after my divorce and with a better job with more realistic vacation days, I began traveling again, starting in Scandinavia of all places. Sweden, Norway, Iceland and best of all, Denmark. 

My first trip to Copenhagen came on the coattails of the end of my relationship with Fred. It’d all been too much. I couldn’t handle even the smallest of upsets. When a friend offered to drive me to JFK so that I could take a cheap flight, I jumped at the chance. It was November – chilly, rainy and dark – perfect for a woman going through her first post-marriage breakup. Within five short days I fell in love with a new kind of life.  I trudged around gray Scandi streets, huddled on the buses next to adorable blonde Danish babies in bespoke strollers, and felt a sense of calm amongst the city’s low buildings. I felt cocooned into a new world of people, listening to the sounds of their guttural language yet able to tune out while staying close.  It felt like home. 

Over the years, looking back on that trip, I remembered very little of the day to day, but relished in the sense of freedom and belonging I had. I hoped that when I returned, it wouldn’t have turned out to be some cruel joke. A ruse where I wouldn’t feel the same as I did during those chilled autumn days, wrapped in my black waxed winter coat. 

That trip spurred on years of exploration around Northern Europe. I had to get back. I had to figure out a way to stay. Forever. 

I’d thought about all of the ways I could escape. Move as a student? Clearly, that didn’t work and by now I was getting too old for that sort of thing. Be an ESL teacher? Maybe, but I’d most likely end up in Asia while the dream was Europe. Say fuck it, pick up and go? Tempting. Oh how I wished I could. I heard so many stories over the years of people selling all their worldly goods, packing a bag and heading into the unknown. No job, no plan, just the wind pushing them towards greatness. I was too pragmatic for that and too broke. I needed to find a sensible, stable way to throw caution to the wind. What about EU citizenship, I wondered. 

At that time I was set on Denmark. I mean, how hard could it be? Turned out you needed to live there for 26 years before you could be considered a citizen. Ouch. With so many people starting new lives around the world every day, I felt disgruntled as to why I couldn’t make it work when they could.  

Maybe I could go through Lithuania? My grandparents' long journey from Lithuania to the United States came to an end with their arrival on March 15, 1951. My grandmother, Daina, came from a small, but stable Baltic sea town called Palanga. After they landed at Ellis Island she enjoyed her first meal in the States, spaghetti. She then ate spaghetti every March 15 for the rest of her life. That day, she was already six months pregnant with her first child, my mother, later born in June. 

Daina lived in the same semi-detached house in Philadelphia for fifty years, raising her four children mostly alone. Part of the reason I chose Philadelphia for university was that it was the only east coast city I knew, besides Boston, having made a few short trips to visit over the years with my mother. 

I was never very close to my grandmother, but then, I never felt like my mother was very close to her either. Perhaps it was the eight hour travel time between us that made it difficult or my mother’s interest in breaking away from her own childhood. Each birthday I would receive a crisp $100 bill from my Grandmama. This was nothing to scoff at. For a kid in the 80s and 90s it could very well have been a million dollars. I would dutifully make the long-distance phone call to thank her, nervous as we spoke so infrequently. After a quick chat, I would palm the phone off to my mother, bouncing away so I could go play, dreaming of what I could buy with my riches. Those Thank You calls paid off. By his angsty, jaded teenage years, my older brother had stopped receiving his birthday checks. If he cannot call to say thank you, I cannot send him a present, I can hear her saying with her quiet, yet resolved Lithuanian tone.

Over the years I looked into the process but found that to receive Lithuanian citizenship I would have to renounce my American one – something not worth considering. Then one day, years later in French class, I mentioned it in passing as we lamented the state of American politics. My teacher said I should look again, sometimes the rules changed. The rules changed. 

In 2016, Lithuania changed the requirements, permitting dual citizenship. I stared at the government website in awe. Could I make this happen? Was it real? I read the rules – my grandparents’ rights were my own. I could apply. 

If only applying for citizenship was as easy as talking about it. Anyone who has ever had to slug through the process of government transactions knows there are rules, regulations, time lines, miscommunications and a myriad of other trials and tribulations.

First, I needed to get my documents in order. I started with my mother – no luck there. Her collections of documents contained her children’s paperwork, not that of her mother. Next, I tried out one of my aunts and my uncle – Daina’s precious only son. Through email exchanges, long searches, and lots and lots of waiting, we managed to find proof of my grandmother’s citizenship – German displaced persons documents, a work visa and passport, issued during WWII. That passport was her ticket to a new world. Now it was becoming mine as well.  

I continued the process, collecting documents from around the world. German issued passports, English marriage certificates – my grandparents married in Leeds in 1949 where they met –  American birth certificates and more. With each document, I ticked another box off the list, yet with each and every retrieval a new issue would come up. Once I obtained the Leeds wedding certificate, after calling England and speaking with a lovely civil servant, I had it mailed to the U.S. only to then mail it back to the U.K. for apostille, a common international document certification. 

When it came to my mother’s marriage to my father in Philadelphia in 1974, I had to go to the office directly to get a copy. As I rode the subway to Town Hall I couldn’t help thinking, thank god I lived nearby, otherwise that would have been a long trip for a little piece of paper. 

Finally, documents in hand, I was ready to go to Washington D.C. to apply. Setting that appointment alone took four additional months of calling the embassy day after day, waiting for the right person to finally confirm a date. 

I took the train to D.C. and went straight to my 11am appointment at the Lithuanian embassy. It was a balmy autumn day. I strolled down 16th St. NW, looking at all of the embassy buildings lining the pristine sidewalks, bleached white in the bright sunshine with leaves on the trees just starting to golden. I rang the bell at the gate and was met by a stout, formidable Lithuanian guard. With a grunt, he looked at his clipboard then escorted me into a small entrance room with two plastic chairs and a rickety table. From my seat, I could see very little down the dark corridor into the embassy. It was just me and the guard at his window-box station watching Russian television. 

I watched people come and go – a group of women going out for lunch, a middle-aged man heading out for a run.  It was close to two hours before anyone acknowledged I was there.  My heart fluttered – did I come at the wrong time? Did something go wrong? Was no one going to come to speak to me? I sat in quiet panic until finally Jurgita arrived.

Jurgita looked like she could be my cousin – tall, thin with blond hair and a slightly pronounced nose. Though I have my father’s build, I’d always been proud to say that I looked Lithuanian. Once, as a girl, I saw a photo of my aunt standing next to a set of dresser drawers in an old-fashioned nightdress. “Mommy, where did I get that nightgown?” I asked. 

“That’s not you,” she smiled, “that’s your aunt Daina.” I was stunned. I looked in the mirror then back to the photo – she looked exactly like me, or in actuality, I her.

Jurgita smiled, I hoped she thought the same. She was also very impressed with my incredibly organized file folder of documents, each copied, apostilled and translated in tabbed and labeled sections of my black accordion folder. “Very Lithuanian of you,” she remarked proudly. 

We went through my documents – everything was in order. “When will I get my papers back?” I inquired.

“Never,” she replied frankly, “We do not return documents.”

Panic set in. I had my mother’s original birth certificate from 1951, when writing them by hand was still the norm. She would kill me if she never got that back. I pleaded with Jurgita,  what could I do? “How old is your mother?” she asked.

“Sixty-eight,” I replied. 

“Oh, no, no, no. She will never forgive you. You cannot give me this,” she shook her head. “Take it home, and apply for another copy of her certificate, you can send the new one back to me.” 

I sighed in relief, but also exhaustion. It felt like I’d never get this done. “Do not worry,” she reassured me, “we will complete this task.”

I left my small enclave in the front of the embassy – excited, nervous and utterly devastated. I needed a new certificate, which I needed to apostille, which I then needed to translate, which I then had to send back. And wait. Again. “As long as there are no issues with your application, you should have citizenship in twelve to eighteen months.”

Twelve to eighteen months?!? How was I supposed to escape if I had to wait another two years?! I plopped down in a cafe, nursing an afternoon cocktail – half in celebration, half to regain my composure. Ok, if this was what I had to do, this was what I would do. I would get another document, get it sent on, and wait.