A More Perfect Union

I have a complicated relationship with the US. It had long been my desire to pull up stakes for Europe. I blame this on art school, reading about the Paris exiles, and a lot of misleading movies in which some not quite well formed young American goes abroad and becomes exactly who she’s meant to be, while effortlessly riding a bicycle in a skirt and some girly shoes, of course.

I pursued this idea and I lived with an English boy in gritty Brixton, a London neighborhood that has long since gentrified, but was home to race riots between the predominantly black residents and the police right before I moved there. We had very little money and lived in an apartment with a shared bath on the landing. The hot water was provided on demand by a coin fed meter. I didn’t feel deprived and I didn’t think once about my safety in this rough, mixed neighborhood; the biggest challenge I faced on a daily basis was understanding the local language, which went from the deepest of London cockney accents to rich Caribbean. I’m sure most of the shopkeepers and neighbors thought I was either hard of hearing or quite dim; I could barely make it through a conversation. Financial distress and language barriers aside, this version of Living in Europe was actually quite close to what I had imagined, though it did not last. I was very young and the boyfriend was not a good choice. It needed to end, and I returned to the US.

I’m not sure I believe in a Judeo-Christian sort of god, but sometimes I suspect the presence of The Fates. I imagine them a pantheistic group, not so much Old Testament vengeful in their choices, but more like they’re playing a giant game of SimCity with us. I haven’t played SimCity for a very long time, but I remember that in early versions of the game, you might find a Godzilla unleashed on the paradise you’d created. This always made me laugh, even while I watched my thriving imaginary utopias destroyed.

There are many days when I feel like The Fates unleashed my husband upon me, not as a harmful force so much, but as one designed to make me reckon with the imaginary constructs I had built for myself. It’s a vanity to think I matter to the forces of the universe at all, but I picture these Fates, a bunch of jokers, looking into my SimCity and saying, “This one wants to live in Europe, she says. Let’s see what happens when we give her that choice.”

Note to those formulating their desires: Be specific or the jesters that control your fate will find an absurd scenario. In my case, they did not give me the continental urban European of my dreams, but rather, a good looking just over 30-something from an Alpine village that smells like cows (the village smells like cows, not the husband, he smells great). In spite of the fact that I rejected that version of Europe, it has been nearly 20 years now; he sleeps in the early mornings while I write, still. His Europe, while offering an excellent daily life, was too hard for me. I was an auslander — an outsider. I was lonely. I missed Thai food and my openly gay friends and I needed to be in a place where I didn’t stare at the black kid waiting tables at that very traditional cafe up the road purely because he was black. I needed to be in a place where a west coast secular Jewish woman did not pass as diversity. Over the last 20 years we have stitched together an odd sort of marriage that has a tremendous amount of alone time in it, while we each live in our home countries doing our own work, fighting our own battles. And sometimes, we are in the same place, and that is good. It is not a traditional marriage, but it works for us.

It wasn’t easy for me to reject the comfortable European socialism that The Fates offered me. As what the social analysts call “a creative” I am ill-suited to regular employment, but affordable health care in the US has, until very recently, been something anyone who wants to work for themselves has had to forgo. I wanted national health care, I wanted it badly. As I crested my 40s, my health insurance payments became the second largest expense I have, after housing, and last year, when I was hit hard with dental bills and an unprecedented income slump, I seriously questioned my choices to remain in the US.

But even as the bills piled up, I remembered the weight of my own minority status whilst in small town Austria. It’s not like I had to deal with confrontational Antisemitism on a daily basis; far from it. But there is rampant Islamophobia. Every time I opened a newspaper I felt like I was battered with a racist, fear driven screed against the Muslim population. Seemingly reasonable neighbors would open conversations with “…those people.” I did a mental find-and-replace often, swapping out Islam with Judaism, and the resulting despair made me so, well, tired. “Why are we still doing this?” I thought, and I thought it All The Damn Time.

I don’t have to do this in the US, not on a daily basis. I’m hardly hiding my Jewish heritage, but it’s not something that comes up. While my time in Europe has made me feel my minority status more acutely, it’s simply not a factor in what, 95%, of what I do in America.  Based on that alone, I naively think that we’ve evolved to include The Other in our American society. Obviously, I’m wrong about this because on June 17, 2015, a white kid named Dylann Roof went into a black church and killed nine people because they were black. This was the latest in an unforgivably long string of killings in which the victims died because they were black. The latest, we call it, as though we know the inevitable next is right around the corner.

I understand gun control doesn’t stop racism. But it might abolish the words “latest mass killing” from the American vocabulary. We could try gun regulation, though we don’t appear to be motivated by anything, not the murder of kindergarten children or college students or police or even bible study groups. My European home is hardly making great strides on race, but they do have a much better handle on gun control. There are multiple levels of licensing. You must have a certain type of license for your guns if you’re a collector, another if you’re a hunter — and that one includes extensive training. Handgun ownership is permitted only for those who have occupational reason to carry such a weapon — police officers, security guards, that kind of thing. Semi-automatic weapons are allowed in the military, end of discussion.

After the Charleston church shooting, gun rights activist and National Rifle Association board member Charles Cotton said the reason so many people died was that murdered Pastor Clementa Pinckney “…voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.” It didn’t seem to occur to him that maybe young Dylann Roof should not have had access to a gun.

This last week, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare. This year, Obamacare meant that I could afford to see a doctor when I was sick, that I could afford to have some annoying medical issues tested (all clear, thanks), that I could afford to get my migraine meds refilled. The vote means that I’ll be able to continue doing so, and that I’ll be able to continue to run my own business (which is finally picking up, again, thanks for asking). The Court also ruled in favor of same sex marriage. This means my gay and lesbian friends can move out of Washington State, where we have had marriage rights for a few years, and take those marriage rights with them wherever they go. Both of these things are great news. I’m directly affected by the protection of Obamacare, and while the marriage rights ruling affects me not at all, I am so pleased for those who are granted these rights that they’ve long been denied. My best friend, who married his husband on Valentine’s Day a few years back, sent me a text message saying “I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime.” I spent the day in a rainbow colored glow of joy. A nation that supports gay marriage and provides affordable health care? This is a country I can get behind. Here’s to our evolution. I am so proud.

But.

I watched the President’s eulogy for Pastor Clementa Pinckney yesterday afternoon, too. What a sobering moment in the midst of all that joyful celebration, in the midst of our country doing such big things because they are right. “What a good man,” the President said, and I was overcome with sadness. The President said a lot of things about grace in that poetic speech, but I could not hear them, I could not see the grace in what is a senseless, racist, murder. We responded with a call to pull down the Confederate flag. I understand the significance of this symbolic gesture, but I want so much more.

My experience as the other is so insignificant. I do not fear the police, I am not profiled for my color, I rarely consider myself to be in places where I “do not belong” — though I can tell you what it feels like to get the stink-eye from a pale tattooed thug on a central European subway and it is not a good feeling. My most extreme experience with being targeted for my difference is, it turns out, a joyful and positive one. While I was traveling in Kenya a few years back, locals would spot me, wave, and say, “How’s Obama!?!?” as though they could tell I was American just by looking at me. It made me laugh, every time and I was so grateful. Last month when I was in Trinidad, I was chatting with a woman — she was quite dark —  about her background. “My grandfather was from Scotland,” she said, “my sister, she looks like you.” Thanks to my dark hair and hazel eyes — I could be cast as “ethnically ambiguous extra #23,” especially in late summer —  I am a lost cousin in places in the world where people are darker than I am and the worst I’ve received in places where they are lighter than I am is a scowl.

We have shown remarkable national will under the guidance of this president — one I voted for reluctantly, one I did not trust to deliver on the issues that are so critical to my feeling that the United States is my home. These new rulings are huge, they are literally life changing, for me, personally, and for people I love. I want this feeling for all of us. We have evidence, right now, in front of us, that we can embrace massive, game changing reforms. “We have made our union,” said the President, “a little more perfect.”

Here I am, my pale skin, a get out of conflict free card. I hold dual residency and for the mere price of a plane ticket, I can leave the woes of our imperfect nation behind. What great privilege The Fates have bestowed upon me. Unlike so many, I have been given a choice. I choose this, this flawed America, even while I want, with my whole heart, for it to be better. A more perfect union.

Yes, please.