Coming Home

by Madeleine Kando

I travel to Europe at least twice a year and have become very familiar with the routine of clearing customs and immigration on my way back to the States. Even though I emigrated to this country eons ago, the butterflies are still fluttering about in my stomach as soon as I enter Immigration Hall, with its red and green line marked on the shiny floor.

I was stateless for the first 18 years of my life, you see, and I have an irrational fear that the boot of the law suddenly would decide to kick me back from whence I flew.

That long red line conjures up a whole smorgasbord of emotions. I feel a tinge of superiority as I walk by the much longer green line packed with aliens. I am no longer an alien, my green card proves it. I am a member of the club now, albeit not an elite member yet. I throw unobtrusive glances at my fellow club members and try to adopt their nonchalant and casual air. Americans are like that, you know, they talk to each other in public places, they don’t put on airs. They feel comfortable in their own shoes, probably the result of a century’s worth of being the top dog in the world.

The burly customs officer in his intimidating uniform looks at my green card, then at my face, then back at my green card. He asks me to place my thumb on the glass, then my other 4 fingers, then tells me to look in the lens of the camera and asks me how long I have been away. If all goes well he stamps my passport and says: 'Welcome home, Ma'am.'

The officer has no idea how literal I take the meaning of those words. They trigger a concoction of feelings, most of which I couldn’t even analyze. Is it pride, gratitude? A sense of being accepted, of belonging? Probably a bit of everything. Together with the hundreds of passengers standing in line, waiting for their passports to be stamped, I have come HOME.

I had the bad luck of starting out life as a political refugee from Eastern Europe and I suspect this fosters some kind of desire to 'belong'. My family and I moved to France after the war, but France was much too busy rebuilding itself to be nice to it’s refugee population, so like a double whammy, I felt even more out of place in France than in my native Hungary.

Then, onto Holland, a small, clean, well organized, country with a lot of Dutchmen who are suspicious of anything too colorful and 'different'. When I turned 21, I asked the Dutch Queen if I could become a Dutch citizen and she approved my application in return for a hundred guilders. There is nothing majorly wrong with Holland (except maybe the sound of the 'g' in the Dutch language, which sounds as if you were being choked to death), but although I was now officially Dutch, I did not feel like I belonged to the Dutch tribe.

When I was old enough to travel on my own, it was time to test other waters. London was an adventure, a coming of age saga. Civilized England had all the makings of a perfect fit for my quest for a Heimat. But I was on a roll and couldn't stop the momentum; so beautiful Spain was my next destination. Malaga, the Costa del Sol… For an entire year, I was drunk on the sun, on olives and tomatoes. I loved Spain as one loves watching a favorite movie, but there was too much friction between the 'macho' mindset and my desire to be seen as more than a tall, blond 'Sueca' (Swede). I went back home to rainy Holland, with my tail between my legs. Was I the only one that struggled with finding a place where I could be myself?

But I refused to throw in the towel. I couldn't admit defeat. Staying in 'Frog land' (that's how the Dutch have nicknamed their own country because of all the rain), was too depressing to contemplate. So, almost as an afterthought, a last-ditch effort, I found my way to Boston, Massachusetts.

It is a tiny speck on the world map, a little hole in the wall, with lots of trees, mountains of snow in the winter, and suffocating humidity in the summer. It looks somewhat like England (hence the name New-England), very green, very old world architecture, in American standards that is. It is a halfway point between the old world and the new. It fit me perfectly. For the first time, I didn't feel like a square peg in a round hole.

My friends wonder what I mean when I say that I have affection for America. They take being American for granted. Why would you have affection for something that is so self-evident? You don't have affection for the air you breathe, or the water you drink, do you?

But they don't know what it feels like to feel the opposite of affection for a country. To feel unwanted, excluded by the place you live in and hence its people.

I know it all sounds arbitrary. Different strokes for different folks, you might say. But America is big enough to accommodate all sorts of misfits like myself and the irony is that finding a place where you belong is mostly due to the lack of pressure to conform, to be like someone else. I know it is not fashionable to say so these days, but I have a soft spot for this country. I don’t go around waving a little red-white and blue, but it’s a feeling that is there, inside me.

Maybe what I feel, is that I belong to a special class of Americans: the immigrant class, the adventurers, and the risk takers. After all those are the ones that built this country. I was reminded of this the month before, sitting patiently in the packed waiting room of the local USCIS office in Boston, when I had to renew my Green Card. Obviously I am not the only person that chose America to be their new home.

There might come a day when all the qualities I associate with America, or maybe just wish to be there, will no longer match reality. Like you, I abhor what’s happening politically, economically and even socially. But sitting here, looking out on my backyard in the suburbs of Boston, I am grateful that I moved here. It gave me the opportunity to remake myself in my own image, anyone else’s expectations be dammed. I am an American in my heart; I have American children, an American grandson and an American cat. Even the chipmunk stealing my tomato seedlings is American. He just isn’t familiar with my constitutionally guaranteed property rights. leave comment here