He was fourteen. In his bedroom, barely graced with a thin,
grey light, he saw his breath as a mist floating just in front of his face. He
grabbed at the thin wool blanket that he had kicked to the bottom of the bed
and dragged it up around his chest and shoulders.
His eyes stared at nothing, remembering the vision that had
filled his dream. A huge, white ship. A ship docked at Halmstad. The ship that
would take him away from his little town and the young life that had become too hard to
understand.
Kurt’s memory of the white ship faded as the sounds of his
father’s rhythmic snoring traveled from the other end of the house, down the
hallway and into his room. He pictured his father sprawled on the little cot
where he slept in the deep oblivion that only a night of hard drinking could
bring him. His father, who could tell raucous tales to his pals until they bent
in half with laughter. His father, who’d collected fourteen children beneath
his roof—eight from his first wife and six
from his second wife, the quiet and patient woman he’d brought into his house
to feed and care for all these children. His father, whose dreams, and the
obstacles that hemmed them in, taught him to drown every dead-end frustration
in glass after glass of beer.
Last night, like so many other nights, his mother told him
to go get his father and bring him home. He was the only son who could cajole
the man out of a tavern without getting cuffed for it. So he pulled on his
short wool coat and headed for that part of town where the taverns sat on
contending corners lustily calling out to those passing by, “Hey! In here! It’s
warm and we’re having a good time. Over here!” He was never sure which one
would draw his father on a particular day. Sometimes he got lucky and guessed
where his father would be sprawled across a table. Other days he had to visit
all three before he found him. And then he would coax and drag him out the door
and down the street, finally pulling his father up the stairs to his little
bed. Kurt would wrestle his father’s
shoes off his feet and then pile the slight man onto the mattress. Then he’d
pry and tug the blanket out from under his father and make sure the man would
be protected from the night’s cold. Only then would Kurt make his way to his
own bed to sleep until morning. On his way to his room, Kurt would see the
door almost completely shut to his mother’s room. Just a little light in there
to let him know she wasn’t yet asleep. But she would never call out to him.
Last night the ship in his dream had sailed into the Halmstad harbor and right onto the land. The ship had come to a stop right in front of
him. When he bent his head back the ship’s hull was so massive it almost
blotted out the sky above him. And as he looked up and up the ship’s bow, as he
saw the sailors scurrying on the deck above him and heard them shouting and
laughing to each other, Kurt knew he would soon be on that ship sailing far
away from his little Swedish town. His mother was very dear to him, but he knew—had
known for months now—that he had to leave.
***
This
story my father told to me when I was maybe seventeen.
Two
weeks before my mother died suddenly of a massive heart attack, she told my
sister and I that her early years married to my father brought her many nights
when my father did not come in until very late. He, like his father, chased his
demons away with help from a bottle. I was in my late forties when she told me
this. Neither my sister nor I had any inkling that our mother’s first year’s of
marriage were spent waiting for her husband to stumble in the door. And she
without any sons to go looking for him. She, waiting in a little Chicago
apartment, too ashamed of what was happening to her husband to ever talk about
it with anyone. Two Swedish immigrants in Chicago trying to make a life for
themselves and two daughters. My mother kept silent about these most difficult
years until she was in her seventies.
My
aunt tells me that the two weeks before my mother died she called several
times. She was happier—lighter—than my aunt ever remembered her being. “She was
happy,” my aunt said. “She was writing and calling all sorts of relatives that
she hadn’t talked to in a long time.” After my mom died and I was going through
her papers, I found a little notepad full of letters that she had written to
distant second cousins, old friends who’d moved away, and neighbors she hadn’t
spoken with for years. “Hej!” the letter would begin. “This is your cousin
Hannah. How are you?” My mom called me, too, during those two weeks and we
talked happily and easily as we had not spoken together for years. I felt as if
the mother I’d always dreamed of knowing had suddenly appeared in my life. I
just wish we’d had more than two weeks together.
***
At
the age of fourteen my father ran away to Halmstad and signed on to a freighter
as a cabin boy. The ship that took him across the ocean all the way to
Argentina was just as he’d dreamed—a huge white ship.
One
voyage followed another until my father had been at sea for thirteen years. He
told his daughters about smoking strange pipes with long hoses in the old
quarter of Istanbul. He hung a round wooden plaque on the living-room wall
inlaid with ivory and slivers of wood that told the Egyptian story of Horus.
When I started smoking cigarettes in my twenties, my dad gave me a beautiful
silver cigarette case embossed with a llama that he’d bought in Peru. As we
became young adults, the stories he shared became increasingly raucous:
prostitutes in Argentina who walked the wharves dressed in nun’s habits, and an
island in the Canaries with the best red wine in the world.
He
had learned in his travels how to still the memories of his father, how to
erase the image of his mother’s worried face, by wrapping his arms around all
the wonders of the world.
***
For
many of the thirteen years that my father sailed back and forth across the
Atlantic Ocean, and along the coasts of the Mediterranean, his travels often
ended in New Orleans. Sometimes his voyages took him to New York. And he gradually
formed the opinion that, of all the places in the world he’d been, America was
the country where he would someday settle down. It was, he decided, the best
country he’d ever experienced. And he had a sister living in Chicago with her
husband who would give Kurt a job as soon as he decided to give up his life as
a sailor.
One
summer, in-between voyages, my father went to visit his sister in Chicago. A
friend of his, another Swede, fixed him up on a blind date with a Swedish woman
visiting her relatives in the city. Kurt and Hannah continued seeing one
another for three months after that blind date. And then they married. My dad’s
mother and father traveled all the way from Sweden to help them celebrate the
wedding. The pictures I have of my grandparents in Chicago show both of them
looking stunned, shivering in the November cold outside the Lutheran church
where the wedding was held, sitting with stolid expressions and amazed eyes as
they perched in an American restaurant booth after the wedding.
For
Kurt, America was the only place to begin a new life. Though Hannah wanted to
return to Sweden, Kurt saw no future for them over there. No, they would take
the money he’d saved and buy a small piece of real estate in Chicago, a
two-flat where they would live on the first floor and rent the second floor to
nice Americans. And so Chicago acquired two more immigrants in 1955. At that
time there were more Swedes living in Chicago than in Stockholm. My parents had
plenty of friends to share their experiences with. All of them chose to settle
here believing that the land of prosperity would soon share its wealth with
them—provided they brought their best smarts and strongest work ethic to the
bargain. These Swedes were devotees of the most traditional version of the
American Dream.
***
That
last paragraph is about as familiar as an American immigrant’s story might be.
The problem is—and the reason I’ve recounted all of this is—for the last few
years, ever since 9/11 in fact, I’ve had the growing sense that my parents
would not have chosen to settle in this country if they had arrived here
recently. So I’ve been trying to figure out why they came, why they stayed, and
what it is about America today that I’m pretty sure would have led them to
return to Sweden. As a first-generation American, here’s where my story and the
expected immigrant myth part company. What’s puzzling to me is why the next
part of my immigrant tale is not published more often. I do not think our
family’s experiences in American were so unique. I know there are other
immigrant families out there who are wondering if the decision to come to
America has turned out as they hoped it would.
My
parents grew ever more wary and disappointed in this place they’d chosen. My
mother especially was deeply disturbed by the assassinations of John and Robert
Kennedy, and of Martin Luther King Jr. Our whole family was frightened by the
race riots in Chicago and across the U.S. These events, and the horrors of the
Viet Nam war led my mother to look upon her new country as a frightening,
troubled place.
My
father’s experiences with America were affected by his place in its economic
system. Making enough money to support his family was difficult in America—so
much so that in his thirties he abandoned one career to apprentice as a laborer
and eventually become a carpenter. But even as a tradesman who belonged to a
union, my father struggled to support our family during the 1970’s when a
terrible economic recession devastated the housing market. We scraped by, but
those were very scary times for our family.
Through
the times of worry, my parents would put those fears aside by taking long walks
in forest preserves, going on family picnics, swimming in Lake Michigan, or
just sitting in the yard after dinner. Why I think they would flee this country
today has to do with a frightening combination of economic inequality, and the
undeniable reality that economic forces are intent on destroying any beauty
left in this land. These problems would have left my parents asking, “What is
there to stay for in this country?” Even the simplest lively-hoods and the
gentlest pleasures are being taken away from ordinary people. How far is all
this greed going to go?
And
so here I sit, the first-generation American who loves the writings of Shakespeare,
Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Zora Neal Hurston and Martin
Luther King Jr., and who feels compelled to examine critically what is
happening in this land where my parents chose to bring me into the world. They are both gone now. I cannot ask them what they think of what is happening here and now. I
know from many conversations with other immigrants’ kids, that there are many
of us with questions about what is unfolding in America. Maybe because we have
grown up with stories of other countries and the lives our relatives live there, we are still able to take a hard look at what America claims to be versus what
it actually is. Once I thought that the strongest American heart and its most
passionate dreamers could be found in immigrant communities. In part, I
continue to believe that. But these days I also think that many immigrants
spend more and more time facing the difficult realities that America brings to them.
We
are a country of immigrants. All our stories are a little good and a little bad
in one way or another. None of us were perfect when we got here and we’re
certainly not perfect now. If only we could bring that same sense of acceptance
about our country’s imperfections to the way in which we approach its problems.
If we could look at the dark and light in our country—honestly and with a
rigorous attention—I think we might design ways to do a little better
within our borders and in our actions overseas.
If
these thoughts are shocking or insulting to anyone reading this, I promise that
I have not written in this way with the desire to create offense. No, I hope to
spark thoughtfulness, and new ideas.
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