East or (Mid)West, Home is Best

Recently, CAG remarked that for a self-proclaimed rootless cosmopolitan I sure hate to move. His observation wasn’t without merit: To maintain minimal sanity during the packing stage of my last three moves I had to imbibe several glasses of wine daily; and acclimating to a new place—unless it has spectacular views, is located within a 10-minute walk to a 24-hour supermarket, and is in a city that I have visited numerous times before—takes at least two months and a small bucket of tears.

Despite being a hereditary diaspora-dweller and a nomad by Russian standards (by the age of ten I’d lived in three apartments in different neighborhoods of my home city and changed three schools), I did not have a heightened preoccupation with the notion of home—Where is home? What makes a home? How to make a strange place into home? Is it people, things, feelings, or memories that make one feel at home?—until I moved to America. And I don’t mean to New York, where everyone was too busy or too blasé or themselves from some other strange place to ask questions about another person’s place of origin. It was my stint, reluctant to begin with, in a small(ish) city of the upper Midwest that bred my obsession with home and reluctance to leave once it’s found and established.

According to a study that was released around the time of my relocation to the Midwest, “nearly half of adult residents [there] say they have spent their entire lives in their hometown.” The state I moved to ranked among the highest on the “Low Magnet/High Sticky” scale, which denotes low percentage of current population born out of state and high percentage of those born in state still living there. Moscow of the Midwest is a home to a prominent research university that attracts students and faculty from far and wide. But even at the university the discourse of origin is present in—and perpetuated by—the distinction between “coasties” and “staties,” which each side proudly and often loudly enforces.

It was there that for the first time I faced the question “Where are you from?” posed over and over again by this or that friendly—Midwest-style—stranger after detecting an accent in my response to his/her remark about the weather, traffic, bus schedule, or another trivial matter they chose to talk to me about. To answer “From New York” seemed as misleading as “From Russia”: on the one hand, I didn’t want to imply I was born in New York (although to me, it is as “home” as it gets), but on the other hand, I had come from Russia more than a decade ago and was sufficiently Americanized—having become a baseball fan and taught, ad hoc, remedial English and civics to college students in my sociology and Russian culture classes—and therefore didn’t want anyone to think I was fresh off the boat; plus I never considered Russia home even when I lived there. But it was even worse when I traveled and people I met wanted to know where I was coming from: claiming Moscow of the Midwest as home seemed strange—and defeatist. So I usually replied with evasive “It’s a long story” or “It’s complicated.” 

But now I have an absolutely legitimate, if not entirely desirable, home—or at least a home state—in this country. My citizenship certificate (the first official credential one gets as an American) no fewer than three times connects my new American status to the state of my current residence. By an edict of the Department of Homeland Security sealed with the US coat of arms, I am now a native of New Jersey and a certified member of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd.

While NJ is neither “sticky” nor “magnetic,” I plan to fully embrace it as my home state even if I don’t intend to live here for long. Sometimes, I already tawk like I was born and raised here. Next thing you know, I will be on “Real Housewives of New Jersey” or on “Jersey Shore”—or at least on a conference panel making sense of “Noo Joisey” and its place in the American imaginary. 

So, just like CAG's great grandfather, who came from somewhere in the Russian Empire in late 19th-early 20th century and settled in Cincinnati, was “from Newport, KY” (just across the Ohio River from Cincy), I, from now on, will be "from New Jersey," the backyard or, rather, the landfill of New York City. I think I like it—it sounds kinda homey.

I Am In! Naturalized and All

A few days ago, I jumped through the final hoops, cleared the last hurdles, and became an American, an American citizen at any rate. My naturalization interview, the final step in the process, was originally scheduled for mid-August, but because CAG and I kept moving around the country it took place two months and three states later. But even then, the whole process from being "examined" by a government-authorized medical doctor to the oath ceremony took less than four years. And that, supposedly, is enough time for one to become American, at least if she’s married to another American.

After couple more fingerprinting and background checks, I was to appear for the citizenship interview and test where my fitness to be an American was going to be evaluated for the final time. Of the three states where I have had to deal with immigration authorities, my current “home state” of New Jersey seems to be the most sadistic: my appearance before the authorities was scheduled for 8:15 am and since we had to drive for about an hour (to cover a meager 35 miles—welcome to New Jersey the state of convoluted highways with no U-turns), we rolled out of bed before dawn, a memorable occasion in its own right.

I was somewhat concerned what getting up this early would do to my English-language skills and my more general mental abilities, which I needed to remember who had authored the Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson), how many amendments the Constitution has (twenty-seven), and what was the main concern during the Cold War (Communism, for those who are not from the other superpower). For the supposed victor of this war, the US is sure obsessed with the potential danger that Communism might still be posing to the freedom-loving world: every green-card and citizenship-related forms I have filled out inquired whether I’d even been affiliated, in any shape and form, with a Communist Party. The officer conducting my interview also wanted to know whether I’d been a communist; to be fair though, she also asked whether I’d been a drunkard, a prostitute, a polygamist, or a racist. They say that affirmative answers to these questions don’t automatically disqualify one from American citizenship, but I do wonder how many alcoholics or communist sympathizers are willing to disclose their inclinations.

But despite my concerns and reservations, my interview went without a hitch: I was out of there in less than half an hour and the longest part of it was to convince the Homeland Security computer that I no longer (never, as a matter of fact) was a resident of Washington State. After verifying my personal data, the female officer with a typical Irish last name and pronounced New Jersey accent administered the civics exam and tested my English reading and writing skills. Neither was particularly difficult, especially for someone with a near completed PhD in social sciences. I answered all six required questions (mine were about the Supreme Court, the Congress, slaves from Africa, Joe Biden, constitutional amendments, and taxation without representation) without a second thought and successfully read and wrote computer-generated but appropriate for the occasion phrases “Who can vote?”—“Citizens can vote.” (This citizenship office is located in Mount Laurel, which I am sure by pure coincidence, was a hometown of Alice Paul, a suffragist and champion of the 19^th amendment, which gave women the right to vote.) At that, the officer congratulated me on being approved and recommended and invited me to be back later that afternoon for the oath ceremony.

The piece of paper that served as official invitation to the oath-taking ceremony stated that it was going to be a “solemn occasion” and sternly recommended “appropriate attire.” I wore a suit to the morning interview but, as the weather was cooling off and I more and more was feeling the effects of sleep deprivation, I wanted to be more comfortable yet somewhat formal and festive. The result was my “suffragist” blouse and the Blue “Stand with Wisconsin” Fist. The two dozen of us from seventeen different countries who gathered that afternoon to “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which we have heretofore been a subject or citizen” represented not only the whole spectrum of skin colors but also an entire gamut of outfits from formal three-piece suits and snazzy snake-skin shoes to nurse’s pink scrubs to the supposedly-unsuitable-for-the-occasion jeans and polo shirts. But America accepted us all—black and yellowish, Liberian and Russian, with perfect pedicures and with bed hair. 

The officer who MC’ed the ceremony—himself white, male, and native-born—was very enthusiastic, bordering on cheesy, in welcoming us, the newly-minted Americans, to our new homeland. Yet he acknowledged what I’ve felt all along—that I had been part of this country long before taking the oath of allegiance: I’ve considered New York, this country’s best city, my home for the past fourteen years; I’ve learned and learned to love baseball and have been a fan of the best and the most despised by the rest of the country baseball team for the past decade; I’ve contributed, without giving consent, to financing of last two wars that this country’s waged; and I’ve campaigned for candidates in the last two presidential elections. And that is why it didn’t seem like a big deal—the test, the oath, the citizenship certificate (not to mention the Liberty Tree—a plastic Christmas tree decorated in red-white-and-blue—that adorned the ceremony hall).

And yet it is a big deal: I actually can’t wait to serve on a jury or to finally be able to vote—and hopefully vote out of office all those who I believe aren’t leading this country in the right direction. Although with the current field of potential contenders, I might have to vote for a third party candidate. Which would be terribly ironic: did I really have to move to the United States of America to vote communist?!