Growing Up Open
When I was little, my mom used to take me shopping. I would always get hungry in the middle and we would go to the food court. My mom would buy me a cheeseburger and she would eat Chinese food. To drink I had what I called “orange” – that weird Slice soda that was so prevalent in the 1980s.
We would sit down to eat, my mom and I. She would offer me some of her hot and sour soup, which I loved because it was so spicy that it made my eyes water. “It’s good for a cold,” she said. Then we would move on to her lo mein, which she called, “Chinese spaghetti.” How I loved Chinese spaghetti! I could eat it all day long. Now, when I go to Chinese restaurants, regulars look amazed at how much hot and sour soup I can put away. What can I say? I was trained early.
My mom would eat some of my cheeseburger and then it was time to “do the dishes”, which meant throwing away our paper plates and returning our trays. Sometimes she did the dishes, and sometimes I did. When I rose to the occasion, she would say “Thank you for doing the dishes!”
Growing up I was exposed to a lot of different kinds of foods and cultures. All of my friends’ moms had accents. I didn’t think it was strange. Most of my friends were Jewish, or Chinese, or Indian, or Latin American, or some combination. I think I thought I was French.
Sometimes I would go to my friend Anna’s house. Her mother would make us meatballs and French fries. Anna still had an accent herself because her family had just moved from Russia.
I liked Anna. She was quiet and sweet and on Halloween we both dressed up as witches and went trick-or-treating together. I wore all black and she dressed, curiously, in red. A red witch! My older brother, a budding anti-communist, said that it was fitting. I was confused.
Then there was Sasha. Sasha’s dad was from Argentina and at his house we ate latkes with dulce de leche on top. I didn’t understand. “My dad’s Jewish,” she said. I still didn’t understand. I thought people from South America were all Catholic.
Years later, at 15, I became very close to a girl named Davni (the ‘v’ was added soon before we were friends – it’s silent). Davni’s family was from Bolivia, and they lived a few blocks away. Her house was different. She had older parents like me, but they often hosted parties. One night, I got to go to one of their parties and keep Davni company with some other friends. It was so exciting! Everyone was speaking in Spanish and so interested in talking to each other. It wasn’t like this with my parents’ friends, who were reserved and well, decidedly Anglo. Davni translated a few conversations for us; her parents’ friends were talking about how disillusioned they felt about Americans because they had allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the then young Bush administration. I was hooked on these people, on this open discussion.
Around the same time I was getting close to Davni, I formed an all-girl rock band with a girl named Shira. Shira seemed hard to get to know. Ultra cool on the outside, I couldn’t tell if she had an inside. One day, I slept over at her house. She started to open up to me about her family, about a boy that she liked; all of this after hours of references to cool bands and quirky T.V. shows. Most of the references I didn’t understand, but the opening up part was surprising and nice. I liked Shira, even though she scared me a little.
Over the years, my friendship with both girls grew. I started going to Shira’s house on Saturday afternoons, when her Chinese step-mom made Kosher food and served soy sauce on the side. It was heaven for me.
Davni’s family adopted me a little bit. I cooked for them and they nursed my burgeoning Spanish. Davni’s mom often set a place for me at dinner. She encouraged me to eat more soup. When I had some nice, new chocolate, I brought it over. When I offered some, everyone said yes. It was a process of giving and receiving that still felt new to me, but it was nice.
Now, I work with immigrants all day. I teach English at night and my students ask me about American culture. I feel like I am in on both jokes, the immigrant experience and the great, big bumbling This American Life. Sometimes we commiserate about how strange this or that thing is, how odd it feels to us. And then some coworker, some know-it-all real foreigner will say, “Why does it feel weird to you? You are American.”
But it’s not that simple. I am an insider who grew up looking out, if that makes sense. Like a little anthropologist, at eight I was doing informal field studies. But no, that isn’t quite it either. At eight, I was playing with my friends. I was watching them go home and be kids and have mommies who had struggles just like my own.
Somehow along the way, the immigrant experience wove itself directly into my experience, creating a personal narrative where one was needed. If my friends had been climbing mountains and I had traipsed along with them, then some part of me would be a mountain girl. If my friends had been hot-wiring cars and going for joy rides, then some part of me would be a little bit of an outlaw. But instead this was my reality; the home lives of my friends were distinct cultural enclaves, and as such, I feel connected to different ways of looking at and living in the world. I recognize that there is not, cannot be one way only. That instead there are millions of ways, that within each way is a new way, and that nothing you thought you knew about one person or one culture is going to be true across other people and cultures. It is this fluidity, this relativistic attitude that makes me a foreigner in my own country, and perhaps a foreigner in all countries.
