#37 - Divided

With immigration back in the headlines, especially in Alabama, I thought about what being an assimilated immigrant means, especially when you maintain healthy roots to your homeland.

I’d like to explain what I unoriginally call The Change, and it’s not menopause (though I probably could talk about that one too). My Change happens when I go from one country to another, and it’s automatic, natural…basically instinctive. Let me explain.

Here in the States I’m bothered by cigarette smoke, trash in the streets and smog. It angers me that I agree to meet with a friend for coffee at 6 and she waltzes in 20 minutes late. I’m certain that a good chunk of my day I think only in English. I celebrate wholeheartedly the customs and holidays of this country. I love the freeways, the efficiency and logic of most every social process. I anticipate the hurried pace, the distances, the lack of time. The occasional homeless people I see surprise me precisely because it’s so rare to see them. In other words, I adapt and thrive in the urban landscape of living in Dallas, right smack in the middle of the First World.

Then I go to my homeland, to Mexico.

I share the table with six people and I’m the only non-smoker. I’m hit by the unpleasant smell of cigarettes, smoke getting in my eyes, and I don’t even bat an eye. People arrive late and I happily greet them with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. In cars it feels like I’m on horseback, jumping around in the backseat with no seatbelt while other cars flash by furiously and dangerously fast, a couple of inches from us, and still I’m able to smile like a kid. Downtown children literally play with fire for a couple of coins, as do clowns, jugglers and musicians with their marimbas, and Indian women sit with outstretched hands. Though saddened by the blatant sight of their poverty, I know them to be an integral part of my city. While there, English doesn’t come to mind. Someone suggests taking me to a Starbucks and I react offended. Don’t get me wrong, sadly I’m one of those people that keep Starbucks in business in spite of their overpriced coffee and coffee paraphernalia. But over there it’s the last place I see myself. So I insist on those small coffee shops that are unique to the city where my friends and I make that last of cup of java last for hours in delicious conversation.

As you can see, in my homeland I am another person. I’m the One From There, the one that lives with smog, smokers, poverty, chaos and social tardiness. And there I know myself to be also in my element.

As I said, what’s amazing is the ability of going through The Change. It’s like turning a switch. Click, and I’m the One From Here. Click, and I’m the One From There. One denies the other.

How can we explain, say chemically or physiologically these two consciousness, these two ways of being? Does a specific area in my brain become active while another has to totally shut down?

This is what being bicultural and bilingual is all about—being divided. I’m divided in two: I understand, love and belong to two countries, two languages; I have two pasts and two loyalties.

And this is how I go through life…divided.