The mail carrier today delivered a certified abstract of my grandmother's birth certificate. This marks, I hope, the last item I will need from Italy in my quest for my Italian passport.

It is sad that I was able to get all the information from Italy a lot quicker than I can get information from the federal government. I am still waiting for my grandfather's citizenship paperwork from the Department of Homeland Security. There are still about 1,300 requests ahead of mine and during the last month there does not seem to be any progress made.

I am still holding off getting the rest of the birth, marriage and death certificates until I receive the citizenship papers. No use spending all that money on those certificates if the citizenship papers disqualifies me from Italian citizenship. Those papers are really the last big item because the other papers will be easy to get in just a few trips because they are all located in Dayton and Lima, Ohio.

The return receipt for my request for my grandmother's birth certificate came in Tuesday's mail. I sent the letter on Nov. 10 and they apparently received it on Nov. 25. I received their reply Dec. 2. So the time of mail is about two weeks one way.

Is it too much to hope that on the same day they received my request, they pulled her certificate and dropped it in the mail? Probably, considering they ignored my first request altogether. Still, if they did, I should expect that letter any day now. I think I will choose to remain optimistic.