I have never been one to jump into things and commonly cogitate for three weeks to come up with the perfect retort for some rude comment. Even so, thirty-nine years of indecision must set some kind of record. That's how long I lived in Canada before I applied for citizenship.

It was a practical consideration more than a surge of patriotism that finally drove me to it. My microfiche immigration record was turning to dust and replacement cost nearly as much as a citizenship application.

Having married a Canadian, I had tearfully left my home and hearth thirty-nine years earlier. "Just a one-year adventure," he had promised. I always figured to go back. My options narrowed when my kids grew up and married locals. A return to the arms of one family then meant tearing away from another.

By then I had already adopted so many subtle Canadianisms , like removing my shoes at the door , that I no longer fit back home. Even though I began to refer to Canada as "home," I didn't quite fit here either and for many years I was a lady of two cultures, belonging in neither.

Finally resigned to making Canada my permanent home, I determined to justify those thirty-nine years by scoring a perfect mark on the knowledge test. I researched and crammed and asked friends to quiz me. A last-minute glance at the instructions revealed this first-on-the-list instruction: "Applicants over age fifty-five do not have to take the test." What kind of age-discriminatory injustice was this? My protest to one or more of those dignitaries whose names I had memorized was sensibly replaced by a hot bath.

Aside from the test that I didn't have to take, the citizenship process had been a pricey, paper-shuffling formality. On the appointed day, I would dress in something maple leaf-red and appear at city hall to receive a wallet ID with a sour-faced photo that surely couldn't be me. This ID would grant me the right to vote and the responsibility to pay attention to Parliamentary pugilism. Citizenship would otherwise have no impact upon my life whatsoever. It was no big deal.

That day I swaggered to my assigned seat, haughtily aware that I was conceding a monumental favour to Canada through my participation in this process. I did my part to maintain the dignity of the occasion by pretending not to notice when a Legion colour guard accidentally rammed the lance point of his flag staff into the entry overhang where it stuck, causing an abrupt and unceremonious near pile-up of the parading dignitaries. When the judge began to speak, I was thinking about the Pilates class that I was missing.

So I was totally unprepared for the surge of pride that welled up when I raised my right hand with the others to repeat the Oath of Citizenship. By the time we reached "I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada," I was entirely overwhelmed. Choked by this unexpected emotion, I sputtered my incoherent vow through quivering, uncooperative lips. Remnant indifference was washed away by my soppy sobs during the singing of "O Canada.".

Canada and I became resigned to each other that day. It was a very big deal.

Barb Shave, Gray Matters