By Anita Clark
Karma Tsomo will combine Tibetan traditions with her new American life as she celebrates the Fourth of July today with her family.
Her menu includes hot dogs, a favorite with her teenage daughters, and momo, tasty little dumplings filled with meat or vegetables. Her husband, Jamyang Dakpa, might make his special noodles.
For the first time, Tsomo will be observing Independence Day as a citizen of the United States, a status she attained less than two weeks ago in a ceremony in federal court in Madison.
She joins more than 640,000 people a year who become naturalized citizens. Today, on the nation’s 228th birthday, 13 ceremonies across the country will welcome new citizens, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
For Tsomo, it was another step on the journey that began in July 1998, when her husband was able to bring his young family from India after living here alone for six years. She didn’t speak English and her girls were little.
Tsomo got a job in a nursing home. “It’s very difficult. I’m trying to help, you know, but they don’t understand me,” she said Thursday, recalling her early days at work.
Now, she converses easily in English, but sometimes, when thoughts flow too fast for words, she turns for help from her daughters, Choney Nawang, 16, a high school junior, and Chemi Dolkar, 13, a seventh-grader.
“She wanted us to have more opportunities and better education,” Choney said. Her favorite class in ninth grade was U.S. history, and she tutored her mother for her citizenship test.
Tsomo, 41, works as a custodian in the Humanities Building at UW-Madison and part-time at Oak Park Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Dapka, 39, works at two nursing homes, Middleton Village and Sunny Hill Health Care Center.
They expect to be off work today to enjoy their holiday meal. By Thursday, Tsomo had already prepared the momo filling and dough.
Her fingers flew as she demonstrated the traditional Tibetan technique of forming a small disc of dough in her palm, patting in a dab of meat and pinching the edges into a round or half moon shape. The dumplings will be steamed.
“She said that we have a better say in the government here and we can vote for the president, and freedom of speech – she can say whatever she wants,” Choney said. “And freedom of religion.”
This family’s religion is Buddhism. A traditional Tibetan altar stands in one serene room of their home on the far East Side, holding images of the Buddha and other objects. Seven small bowls are filled daily with offerings of fresh water.
On the walls are thankas, traditional Tibetan scroll paintings of deities depicted in a complex and colorful array of icons and symbols. Dakpa, an artist, painted many of them in painstaking detail with hand-ground colors.
The altar is a place for precious things. On one side is a statue of White Tara, an important female deity with seven eyes who offers protection from dangers and bad things.
Tucked in the statue’s arm is the small U.S. flag Tsomo received at her citizenship ceremony.
At the courthouse, she tucked the flag into the silk apron of her traditional Tibetan dress. When she got home, “she was very happy and just put it on the altar,” Dakpa said.
What does she think about on the Fourth of July?
“Better freedom here,” Tsomo said.
Contact Anita Clark at aclark@madison.com or 252-6138.
