I am German but my daughter was born in Wisconsin, which means, she is American. (We sometimes call her “our gringuita,” as my husband is from Venezuela …) We moved to the United States almost five years ago, not knowing if it is going to be a one-year gig or rather a lifetime thing. Well, we just received our Green Cards, so it looks like there’s rather “midterm lifetime” in the cards for us right now.
My girl turns four this fall, and I’ve started to think more about what this means for her and her identity-building. Will she see herself as an American, or half-American? Or more like a “global citizen?” Will this place, Auburn and Alabama, be her “home?” She isn’t very verbal yet, probably because three languages are creating a mess in her brain, but I see how she’s picking up more and more English, and I know the day is near when she’ll ask us “Why do you both speak so weird, mommy and daddy?”
The funny thing is, that I basically live my own journey through her: I was born in Germany, but spent most of my childhood and youth in Tokyo, Japan. And despite my parents being both German, they spoke the language very well. My entire upbringing was bilingual and very “Japanese” — I had mostly Japanese-speaking friends, was fully emerged in the Japanese kid’s culture (animé, manga comics …you name it), and rice and chopsticks have been my jam until this day. I clearly remember myself wondering, just around my daughter’s age, why I was the only one with non-black hair in our preschool class.
When I had to move back to Germany as a teenager, it was pretty rough on me. Sure, I knew the place from our summer break visits, and I knew the language and the mentality. But that’s not all “a place called home” is made of. And so it comes that I, more than 25 years after leaving Japan, I have a special connection to that place. Certain landscapes, foods, smells, or even sounds – like that of a Tokyo underground approaching your station – immediately transport me there.
Don’t get me wrong – certain landscapes and the smell of German bread does the same trick for Germany. After all, I lived there for over 20 years. But the first ten or so years of our lives are inextinguishably imprinted somewhere deep in our brains and souls. And while I wouldn’t say I’m traumatized or have identity problems, all these mixed feelings about the places I am made of left me thinking that I had a broken relationship to the concept of “home”.
Only after moving to the US — first Wisconsin, then Alabama — and opening up to an unknown country made me realize that my story of home is not that of a loss but that of a win. At this point, I can say I feel home in three (very) different places. What a freaking privilege that is! Home and identity is like a layer cake; you can add one flavor on top of another, pretty much unlimited.
Wherever life will take us in the next few or many years, I hope my daughter will feel the same way: That her identity and feeling of belonging is not limited to one place or one facet of herself. And that, in the end, it doesn’t matter where she comes from as much as where she wants to go.
