Waiting to Land
Watching pigeons, blackbirds, and swifts with my infant son while suspended in quarantine
Before he learns the sign for milk, my son points to the top of the seven-foot high, Kahlo-blue wooden fence which protects our rooftop patio and chews invisible seed, mimicking the birds eating from a terracotta dish. Will we go see the pigeons? Can you see the pigeons? What are the pigeons doing? My husband asks the baby many questions, and this is one of the first words he clearly recognizes. When he begins to be unsettled, pigeons snaps his eyes to the glass and swivels his head to search out their small forms. He smiles. He points, and we take him there.
For the first 56 days of his life, my son had no nationality. He was not automatically British, like my husband, because he was not born on British soil. He was not a U.S. citizen, like I am, because he was not born on U.S. soil. Despite being born in Alicante, he could not be Spanish, because he has two parents foreign to Spain.
He was ours. He was mine.
In the hospital, the two of us slept in shifts so we could watch him at all times. We kept on the 24-hour Spanish news cycle to help keep ourselves awake and I saw the same clips of people walking and running from a Walmart in El Paso dozens of times.
