If you read my post from February 26th, you know that I was sitting in the bar drinking an espresso and eating a brioche when I got the news that my citizenship had been granted. It was, I said at the time, the most Italian possible moment to receive that notification. I stand by that.

What I didn’t mention was that the journey from “citizenship granted” to “actually Italian” still had a few steps left.

After receiving the decree, I went to the anagrafe to start the final process. The clerk — who has been wonderfully patient with me throughout all of this — asked me to come back on April 1st. They were gearing up for a Constitutional Referendum and things were a bit hectic. Completely understandable. This is Italy. You work with the calendar, not against it.

April 1st I showed up with my documents. She looked everything over and said she should have things ready in a week or two.

I have lived here long enough to know how Italian bureaucratic timelines work. I nodded, I thanked her, and I mentally doubled the estimate.

And then this morning, less than 24 hours later, the phone rang.

Could I come by to sign some documents and bring my marche da bollo? And — by the way — she had set my appointment with the mayor for this afternoon at 3.

The Scotty Principle, for those unfamiliar: Italian bureaucrats, like the Enterprise’s chief engineer, always quote you a timeline that is longer than what they actually need. Usually this works in the other direction. Today, for once, it worked in mine.

I wore a wine-colored top. The mayor wore the tricolore sash. Joe came along as moral support and cheerleader — and he got a photo of me with the mayor at the end.

The ceremony itself took approximately three minutes. The mayor asked how to pronounce Waverly and what TN stood for. I told him: Tennessee. He nodded thoughtfully, as if filing this away for future reference.

Then I pronounced the words:

“Giuro di essere fedele alla Repubblica e di osservare la Costituzione e le leggi dello Stato.”

And that was that. After ten years, two applications, a half-dozen sets of fingerprints, a rejection letter, a law change, one language test, and more trips to various offices on two continents than I care to count, it came down to one sentence in front of a small-town mayor in the Apennines.

Sono italiana.

Technically I become Italian the day after the oath — so I woke up Italian this morning. That said, I can’t get a passport yet, because Italy now needs documentation that my name changed when I got married, which is a thing that happens in America through a sort of informal distributed honor system involving the Social Security Office, DMV and the bank, and not through any official channel that generates the kind of paperwork an Italian comune needs to check a box.

But that — naturalmente — è un’altra storia.