about the difficult i-word

I dreamed of living in the U.S. ever since my teenage years. For a year or two or five. Temporarily. For a while. I came here on numerous occasions in the past: to visit relatives or to stay with friends; I spent two years as a student on a US-government fellowship. I always felt comfortable and welcome. I would always leave energized and inspired, hoping to come back some time soon.

I married an American and our first stop was London. We lived there for almost five years, enjoying this incredible city, but nevertheless always treating it as a temporary destination. Once our daughter was born (you never treat the place you live in the same way again) we decided it was time to settle closer to at least one set of grandparents. We moved to New York – the city that I had always wanted to live in. But again, the city of dreams and aspirations proved to be a temporary stop. Two more moves and we finally settled in Princeton, an old (please remember that we are trying to adopt American standards in this blog) university town, nice, charming and interesting, about an hour drive from Manhattan.

So far so good.

We bought a house. I felt relieved. By that time my daughter had just started walking and I was very tired of moving and living out of boxes located amid IKEA furniture. “I am not moving around the corner,” I told my husband after counting that in the span of the previous nine years I had “relocated”12 times. For the first time in about two decades we were in a position to buy some nicer furniture (in the past, it always seemed there was no point acquiring anything we would feel attached to -- it would only make subsequent moves more difficult).

I always avoided the word “permanently” – save for your spouse (one would hope), family, perhaps a few close friends, our modern world does not lend itself easily to permanence. But I thought we would stay here for longer. Perhaps I could even say “for good”. It felt pretty good.

Until one day someone used the i-word...

Anxious about going back to work, I wanted some advice about how to navigate in the brave new world. “Give yourself some time” – I heard from a former journalist and a respected New York publisher. We were having lunch in a midtown sushi restaurant and he (having himself grown in a family of “relocated” Poles) must have sensed some frustration on my part. “It’s not easy to be an immigrant.”

A chunk of sashimi stalled in my throat. What did he say? An immigrant?!!!!

It suddenly dawned on me. Yes, I came here with a one-way ticket. This last trans-Atlantic crossing was different – this time, having unpacked, I discarded several dozen cardboard boxes (well, most of them…). It feels nice but there is a price tag attached. I am not “staying” here. I am not visiting. I live here. Forget about continuous tense. It’s Simple Present. There is this piece of inauspicious plastic, a card -- contrary to popular belief it is not green -- which I keep in my drawer (I was told to carry it with me at all times, but whoever came up with this idea couldn’t have realized how many times I have lost my IDs). It states as a matter of fact: permanent resident.

Day to day, and I do not think about it too much. But there are moments when it makes me feel uneasy. What does it mean to be a resident? And what does it mean to be permanent? Where do I belong?

I had never given much thought to the issue of immigration. Or if I did, it definitely did not relate to myself. And if I did, it involved new exciting possibilities, crossing boundaries in the good sense of the word – going forward, rising, aspiring. Isn’t it what we were conditioned to think about generations of immigrants who came to the US to build a better future for themselves, for the children and grandchildren? Who enriched this country and made it so wonderful? I believed it was one success story after another, wasn’t it?

It is not easy to be an immigrant. What did he mean? That I need to scale down my expectations? Slow down? Think down? Step down?

I struggle with these questions.

I definitely have slowed down. Having longed for some permanence, I now hope this slowdown is not permanent. I would like to step up and think up and speed up. And forget about the i-word. But I know I can't.

So I am trying (continuous tense :>) to come to terms with it. Stay tuned.