[Written recently after a visiting American friend yelled at me for my uncertainty over the placement of an end table. Well, okay, fifty-plus years in the States probably helped.]
When I first got back to Portugal, I found myself writing things like "Vive la wild, wild west. Let them all go offend each other to death and leave the rest of us alone." And "When the northern European character encountered the entitled individualism coddled in the vast American frontier, a kind of perfect storm ensued: the relentless expression of one's precious identity took precedence over anyone else's sensibilities, collective civility be damned." Run along free and easy with the buffaloes, they won’t care.
I've always assumed that the uneasiness in my gut came from being neither completely Portuguese nor completely American. But that actually hasn't been it. Now that I've moved back home to my birthplace, it's clear to me: I'm not just fully home, I belong here. I am European. Probably more Southern European, in fact. I know my blood is Northern European, unless I was switched with the other baby born in the British Hospital in Lisbon that day, the last descendant of Queen Philippa (oh how I used to wish that were true!), but somehow the Anglo-Saxon mind grip never quite took hold. Growing up here, my adopted Latin culture permeated my personality, suffused my soul…I see now that I owe whatever sanity I do have to this original Iberian care. At the time I had no idea what my missionary Baptist parents were doing here. That confusion would begin later, after being dragged back “Home” to Boston in 1964. Besides learning that the Beatles could be considered Satanic on that side of the Atlantic, I was introduced to the concept of The Saved vs. The Unsaved. And who might be the latter, pray tell, all my school friends and neighbors, the people I grew up with and hung out with every day? They were all going to hell? Não pode ser. No, I don’t think so. I’m only ten years old but I knew that was a lie. So the American (and rather Soviet) denials began, jeering renditions of It ain’t necessarily so and Because I said so pumped daily into the shell of this developing brain. It makes sense now why I could never feel at home in the US identity-subcultures over the following decades. It was never really an option. Academics, bohemians, evangelicals, hippies, lesbians, activists...I managed to be a disappointment to all of them.
I do hate blanket generalizations. How many lectures in my logic and scientific reasoning classes did I devote to avoiding them?! But I'm not ready to stop just yet: Americans will dump their abrasive, impatient shit all over you and then say you're overreacting and overly sensitive if you have the audacity to object. It's not unlike being racist or sexist, an approach to others infusing everything from flaming hot hatred to the lukewarm banality of everyday life. My black friends know that to survive in white spaces they will be expected to not only eat whatever is dished out but to make the entitled sons of bitches comfortable afterward because they "didn't mean it." Women survive abusive bosses similarly, if they want to keep the job. When an American suddenly goes all abrasive and impatient on you, this hierarchical power-trap locks into place: one must forgive the assholes for they know not what they do. Eat it. And help them feel comfortable with themselves again afterward because they were just tired and don't remember what they said anyway. It's your job to placate the bastards.
So after four months in Portugal I'd forgotten some of this stuff. I was waking up happy. I weaned myself off of the cocktail of anti-anxiety pills and antidepressants that sustained me for decades in the States because, well, I was now sleeping well, eating well, drinking moderately, enjoying friends, thinking clearly, and...I pretty much forgot what the pills were for. I wasn't just coping anymore, eking out a life around affirmation-laden days. I was moving smoothly from one thing to another without bothering to drag that old self-loathing around. What?! No self-loathing? That's the engine that powers American womanhood! That without which one would be a disgusting mess of overindulgent vices, one's fingers permanently stained bright orange from the Cheetos washed down by mediocre wine in front of mindless TV reruns....
Nope. I was moving through each day like I was supposed to be here, feet planted on solid ground instead of working so hard to hold myself a half inch off the surface of the planet. (Why and how had I learned to do that?)
I’m aware that irritable responses also trigger scenes of my father, brothers, husbands snapping at me. But why do American women do this? It is astounding to me how strong women in Europe are powerfully animated and expressive without being unkind. I wonder then, have strong women in the States simply taken on the worst of patriarchal condescension? White and black American women, each in their own way, drowning their strength and anger in this bitterness. Everyone fights like hell in the US to be recognized, validated, respected. And because one rarely is, the cycle of abuse continues. Evangelicals hide it behind their male head of household's special hotline to God. Pence hides it behind Billy Graham’s dogged insistence that women, other than his own wife-mother, are all out to seduce him (shroud ‘em in black in the hot desert then, that’ll teach 'em). Slaveowners and businessmen hide it behind hierarchical pyramids of order, the inborn right of a master to subdue the rest of the earth's inhabitants. Governing men build walls and pay their armies and State-sponsored mercenaries to shoot dead whoever stands in the way of their unjust plans.
But regardless of God’s Will in the matter, I am grateful that my mother and father followed a calling here, where I could feel at home, where I can give my daughter this heritage and sense of belonging. That it can balance the hatred and confusion in the US with a calmer and more communal way of life, where one can live freely among others and not merely survive in spite of unrelenting stress. My less-than-elegant reaction to this stress was no doubt the reason for being told repeatedly in the US that my idea of friendship was "different," that I did not understand "basic emotional expression." I now agree. Since it does not occur to me to suddenly and for no reason flip on someone, I was continually perplexed by the "let it all hang out" idea of American friendship. That closeness meant you could say whatever sloppy thing you felt at any moment. That intimacy gave you the license to be rude. That emotional maturity involved putting up with this insanity. I never got the hang of it, doing it or accepting it.
The opposite of messy and hurtful is not superficial connection, as Americans believe; it is rather genuine civil interaction based on deep respect for another human being. I adore my countrymen and women for this reason.
And intimate details can arise in any conversation, café to tavern to kitchen table. I am not lacking in meaningful contact. I just never figured out how diminishing the Other is integral to enhancing oneself. Thankfully I won't need to figure that out now.
6 SEPTEMBER 2018
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