full moon

Marta: Don't look at the full moon.

Me: Why not.

Marta: Because it might catch you.

Me: And then what?

Marta: And then it will turn you into a robot!

This morning Marta attempted to ride her bike to kindergarten. She can ride for awhile but, sooner or later, she steers into a pole or a fence or the bike starts going in the wrong direction. We left the bike at Leenu's house and I carried her the rest of the way.

Marta: Are fish happy living in a tank?

Me: Well, there are trade offs, I think.

Marta: Trade offs?

Me: Good things and bad things. Like, in a tank, no big fish can eat you.

Marta: Like sharks?

Me: Mmhmm. But at the same time, it must get really boring swimming around in the same tank all the time. So if you live inside the tank, you trade freedom for safety. But if you live outside the tank, you trade safety for freedom.

We walk awhile, and I ponder if there is some profound meaning to what I have just said.

Marta: But what about penguins? Are they happy living in an aquarium?

Me: Well, they do get fed every day. But maybe it is boring to keep swimming around the same place over and over again.

Marta: But they do have homes. People build homes for them.

Me: You are right. Maybe a penguins life isn't so bad. And no one is trying to eat them.

Marta: Like sharks.

new relative/uus sugulane

Epp's cousin Triin gave birth to her first daughter on April 15. After some nameless days, Triin and Andres agreed to call the tyke Annaliisa.

I am really happy for Helle, Triin's mother and Epp's aunt, because she has always been so nice to our kids, and now she has her very own little granddaughter to smother with attention.

2010 seems to be a boom year for babies. I can't even name all the kids that have popped out so far and we are only four months in. Many more are expected. Congratulations to all.

bermuda, greenland

I am probably the only person who cares about this stuff, but I have to write it down somewhere.

When my grandfather Jerry married my grandmother Peg in 1941, it wasn't in a big church wedding. Jerry was just passing through Virginia when he met her, and they eloped after knowing each other for two weeks.

According to family lore, my great grandfather Sam was pissed. But he couldn't do anything -- he was in Bermuda. Yes, Bermuda. I always thought I made that part up because it sounds exotic, but I recently found out it was true: Samuel J. Petrone of Huntington Station, NY, really arrived in New York from Hamilton, Bermuda on Dec. 19, 1941. It's a true story.

But that's not everything. The same site -- Ancestry.com -- showed that he arrived almost exactly two years later on Dec. 30, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts. His departure point? Bluie West 1, Greenland. I know what you're thinking - where the hell is that? I had to look it up too. It's the old US Army name for Narsarsuaq Airport at the southern tip of Greenland, which was constructed in 1942 -- probably in part by my great grandfather.

Is there a travel gene? I am not sure if I believe in such things. I did read a book recently where the author said that if you want to understand families then you have to look at them over several generations. Either way, one (good) thing can be said of us Petrones -- we get around. I haven't been to Bermuda or Greenland yet. I do hope to get there some day.

passport control

An inquiry from a friend recently caused me to look into Estonian citizenship law. Both of our daughters are Estonian citizens -- this status was acquired by birth. They are also American citizens -- a status also acquired by birth.

I was under the impression that they would have to pick a nationality by the time they turned 18, but this does not seem to be the case. Instead, Estonian citizenship is seen as an inalienable blood right: once you've got it, you have to renounce it to get rid of it. That makes me happy; it's not a bad thing to have both US and EU citizenship. A big part of the world is your oyster.

During the early Bush years, I looked into acquiring Italian citizenship. This was around the time of the Axis of Evil speech, when I considered the idea that the "War on Terror" might spill into a number of different nations, some of them nuclear armed, perhaps requiring conscription of my young ass. This sounds far fetched now, but don't forget that Al-Qaeda had flown a plane into the Pentagon the same year, so anything appeared to be possible.

It turned out that I am entitled to Italian citizenship on the principle of jus sanguinis -- that is, I acquired it at birth without even knowing it. According to Italian law, even the great-grandson of an Italian immigrant can acquire Italian citizenship, if the immigrant's child was born before he was naturalized. The obstacle is that it has to be passed down the paternal line. This is the case in our family. My great-grandfather Salvatore Petrone was born in San Giorgio Albanese in the province of Calabria in 1894. He emigrated to the United States in 1910. My grandfather Jerry Petrone was born in 1916. In 1917, Salvatore filled out a WWI Draft Registration Card. Item 7 asks, "If not a citizen, of what nation are you a citizen or subject?" He responds: Italy. To make it clear -- that means that my great-grandfather was still an Italian citizen when my grandfather was born.

Now, I am not sure on what kind of paper chase I would have to embark should I actually go about proving my Italian citizenship to the state. We would be dealing with documents that are in most cases more than 100 years old. I doubt the Italian embassy in Washington would be very helpful. But the way the state views it, we have had a right to Italian citizenship since birth -- it's just that no one had informed us of it. Isn't that sad? Oh well, I don't know if I'll ever get that Italian passport. And things are obviously different these days. The US has Barack Obama, and Italy's still stuck with Silvio Berlusconi. Imagine calling him president?

marta's cafe

Marta: When I grow up, I'm going to be rich.

Me: Oh yeah, what are you going to do?

Marta: I'm going to work in a cafe.

Me: A cafe huh? I thought you wanted to be an astronaut.

Marta: No, I want to work in a cafe. You make people food and then they give you lots of money.