If it ain't one thing, it's another. Now it's watching the progress of Hurricane Henri as it roars across my "kuni." That's Japanese for my homeland, country, place where if I had to go there they'd have to take me in. I'm watching the storm move from Montauk Point on Long Island across the sound to Rhode Island and Connecticut, moving west across Hartford, narrowly (hopefully) missing Northwest Connecticut (the center of my "kuni") but slamming into Western Massachusetts before winding around and ultimately blowing into Nova Scotia. Lots of friends and family in that path. When friends write sympathetically about the forest fires in Northern California - my adopted kuni since the 1960s - I appreciate their concern and hasten to assure them I'm safe. I have been, so far, although we're still cancelling coffee with friends on the patio because of the bad air. Now it's my turn to hope if their electricity goes out that it goes back on before the food rots in their freezers.
And this bit of trouble is just one more bit of ugly reality, ruining what used to be a joy - sitting down with the Sunday New York Times - but is now a challenge to my sense of balance. God, they tell me, is in his heaven, but all is definitely not right with the world.
The badly managed departure from Afghanistan, the insidious self-serving politicians like Florida's governor DeSantis, climate change, kids falling behind in schooling and child development due to Covid, all is most assuredly not right with my corner of the world.
I had an uncle who didn't hide his contempt for my interest in Germany, the homeland of my mother. And when I went and made Japan my home, he gave up on me entirely. His world was the glorious victory over fascism that I was apparently embracing. We were never going to have a meeting of the minds and I was never going to convince him that what he was sneering at I considered a gift from the gods (my use of such a phrase would drive him even deeper into a rage), the addition of Germany and Japan as cultural homes.
Kuni and Heimat are not foreign language words, but terms that provide familiarity and give comfort. A part of me feels constant melancholy that I didn't pursue my youthful dream of making Berlin my home and becoming a German citizen. Another part of me wonders why I didn't take the path of becoming a Japanese citizen after discovering a strong sense of pride in myself when my application for "permanent resident" came through and I began getting involved in local neighborhood politics, and reminding my students that I could eat with chopsticks and speak their native language since before they were born.
Some might want to call it schizophrenia; I call it a broad embrace of multiple identities. I am German. I am Japanese. I am also Canadian (more Nova Scotian than anything else, actually). And I am American. (Well Alabaman or Floridian, not so much, but definitely Californian with New England roots.)
When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher asked our class to tell "where we all came from." My hometown was a mixture of people who identified themselves as descendants of the Pilgrims and people with European immigrant backgrounds, mostly Irish, Italian, Polish, but lots of others, as well. The single most common identifier in the class was Italian. I stood out by announcing I was German. Whereupon the Italians and other kids beat the hell out of me on the playground when we went out for recess. Dumb-ass teacher. How friggin' clueless. It was 1949 and much of the population shared my uncle's view that nobody in their right mind should presume to identify with the Nazis.
It was hard, as a kid, to explain to my classmates that my family were not Nazis, that the Fritzes and the Emmas I called aunt and uncle made great beer and potato salad, and that if they wanted to know what Germans were really all about they should listen to a boy's choir singing "Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein" (Sleep, my little prince, sleep) OK, the recording was made in the 60s, but we didn't know about such things in the 40s. Also, these boys are Austrians, but you get my meaning.
These days I'm pedaling even faster to convince myself Americans are not all imperialist assholes. It ain't easy, what with watching a repeat of the Bay of Pigs and the Fall of Saigon, to say nothing of the efforts on the part of an entire political party to disenfranchise African-American voters, and the most widely watched TV network and many of our religious preachers putting out a steady stream of advice to not get vaccinated against Covid.
I'm not simply trying to think positive, and I don't think it's a zero-sum game. But I am grateful that one of my identities, my American one, doesn't have to be associated with the likes of sleeze bags like DeSantis, Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham.
It can go with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers . And that includes the wonderful feminist observation that Ginger could do anything Fred could do - and she could do it backwards in high heels.
It can also go with Judy Garland and The Wizard of Oz.
And the song that gay people took on as their national anthem, back before the gay liberation movement was still a distant dream: Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
And I wish we could do what the Japanese do - declare human beings as national treasures.
One of the national American treasures that come immediately to mind is Bobby McFerrin.
Watch him get an audience to sing the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria, with them doing the Gounod while he accompanies them with his mouth-orchestra version of the Bach.
And then watch him with another audience doing The Wizard of Oz.
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