It’s hot in my parents little bedroom. I’m rolling impatiently, back and forth, back and forth across their big bed. The bed that still has a body-sized divot in the middle. The water stained ceiling and peeling strips of wallpaper heighten the sense of drama. Of things-as-they'd-once-been melting away.

My mum and I are engaged in the latest skirmish of a battle I’d been waging ever since the school year (1st grade) started. Except now I was more ready than ever to do battle. I’d come a long way from that awkward foreign boy in white tights and home-made sweater my great grandmother knit for me – Ausekli (plural - the ancient Latvian pagan symbol – and Indian/Sanskrit too! - for sun) dancing across the belly. I could speak English now - having soaked it up in what seemed like an instant and could speak quite fluently. With just a hint of an accent that was fading fast with every day. I knew things now too. I played nerf football at recess and and although I'd never actually seen them, Knight Rider, the A-Team, and Charles in Charge where my absolute favorite TV shows. This is what my clan of friends and I discussed at great length in the narrow coat room, just behind the classroom proper, that was our exclusive boys-only territory.

Our argument had started, of course, with me insiting, yet again, that it was our (my younger brother and I's) unalienable right to have a TV. Ernie was too young to care yet - but I was speaking up for his rights and future too. I'd already gone through my ever-growing list of reasons: everyone had one, I couldn't keep up with what my friends were talking about, it was educational, I'd turn into a developmentally stunted asocial weirdo (a "mulkis") if things kept going on like this....

As I continued to roll, peeling the sheets of the bed around me into a protective cocoon my mum launched into an equally familiar tirade about the evils of America. Americans were lazy, spoiled, devoid of history or culture, slaves to their commercials and need to buy crap that no one in their right mind could ever need. TV, the vehicle for transmitting this poisonous influence, would never be allowed in our home under any circumstances and that was that . The Latvian word for American is pronounced "UH-merikani". But she'd always put extra stress on the first syllable - which made being American sound like a dangerous disease to be avoided at all costs.

An suddenly the perfect argument occured to me - one that had been germinating slowly for the past few months. "But, mum, I'm half American!" I said triumphantly. I knew this would tick her off even more and I couldn't wait to see what she'd say. After all it was perfectly true as I'd learned recently.

"Oh no you're not!" she said. And that was that. No room for debate. The final word. We didn't get a TV until my junior year of high school.

To explain - until a year before, I might as well have been living in a different country. My world was Latvian through and through. No one would dream of speaking English in my family (outside of homework) and that ironclad rule applied to my dad as strictly as it did to us - he'd learned and studied Latvian for years before marrying my mother although his pronunciation could always make my brother and I howl. I started Latvian Saturday school, where I had begun to learn to read and write (in Latvian, of course), a full year before American kindergarten. And then there was Latvian Cub (and later Boy) scouts. And the folk dancing ensemble, summer camp (8 weeks every June-August), church, sports and a whole calendar of other activities revolving around our cultural center in Brookline. I already knew I’d one day go to one of the three Latvian summer high schools in the US when I was old enough. And then of course a year of college in Germany – just like my friends' older brothers and sisters. I couldn't wait until I too could participate in the rallies and demonstrations in DC and outside the UN. It seemed like so much fun.

All of our friends and relatives were Latvian and we did everything together. There were never outsiders. What 4th of July? We celebrated Janu Diena - the ancient pagan celebration of the summer solstice and a kind of Christmas/Easter/Independence Day all rolled into one - complete with fireworks, bonefires, drinking, dancing, the singing procession from house to house and yet more singing until the sun came up cause 'kas gul Janu nakti gules visu vasarinu' (he who sleeps on Janu Day will sleep all summer long) . You name a subject in any way related to nature, farming, animal husbandry, beekeeping or the pastoral life in general - and I can (then and still) recite or sing for you half a dozen songs and poems that discuss it in detail or touch upon it in some way.

For us our way of life in America was a matter of survival. Our moral duty to those whose bodies slept (Latvians always use euphemisms for tragedy) in the never-ending expanse of the Russian taiga. Our duty to those lucky enough to have made it back only to wait in 3 hour lines for a loaf of bread. Pretty much everyone in my family who was alive at the end of the war and had decided to stay went straight to the Gulag, except for an Aunt who managed to escape to the forest hours before the NKVD arrived to cart her away to the cattle-trains. Of those maybe half had survived. For my friends' families it was exactly the same - and in some cases those who'd escaped were the only survivors, the last of their line. Who knew when Latvia would ever become free? Certainly, no one in the free world but us seemed to care. The Soviet Union was one uniform and threatening monolith to them. Filled with Russians - our enemies. Who knew that (other than Lithuanian - a close cousin) Latvian was as different from Russian as could be - an ancient language and the European tongue most closely related to the Indo-European Ur language (also to Sanskrit which has many words in comon). Who knew that Latvia had been forcibly annexed and had submitted only in 1956 when the last guerilla fighters had been wiped out along with tens of thousands of others - imprisoned or executed for such crimes as 'being an elementary school teacher'.

To top it off, we and our parents knew well that Latvia was being strangled while we enjoyed our freedom. The Soviet policy of Russification had been underway for decades now - with every effort being made to stamp out our language (to them the dirty peasant tongue of their former serf-slaves), culture, and way of life. Until then we were the torch bearers. And as soon as it was free everyone would go back.

Fast forward to August 2006: I smile as the deep longing and grief, now strangely familiar, overwhelm me. 'You’d think it would be easy the 3rd time', I smile to myself my insides trembling. I turn to my mum, sitting next to me. I can see her cheeks are already wet. And I avoid her eyes and the 60 years of desire and dreams of what-could-have-been and what now is lost to us forever. Just knowing it’s there is too much and it sets me off good. It’s already useless to hold back and we both know it – knew it long before got on board. Quick as I can (to minimize my exposure to the rest of the passengers – I’m getting to be an old pro at this!) I reach over and hold her tight with my right arm, bringing my trusty worn travel sweater up to my face with my left. And together we sob our eyes out until their dry, as soundlessly as we can. Our cheekks and tears pressed together, we crane our necks to the window, transfixed. We hold each other tight and watch little Riga spin and turn and grow ever smaller until the mist rushes in and we are swallowed up up up and beyond the clouds…

The chasm between what I thought then and what I know now is too enormous to sum up in a sentence or even paragraph or two. I feel this gap is at the core of my being and something that’s weighed heavy on my mind for more than 10 years (since the time Latvia, much to our surprise, became free again). But even more so now – as I’ve spent the last two summers visiting my family and seeing this world and our family’s history with new eyes and sense of self. The story that bridges this chasm is not just one of ethnicity or a tale of a 2nd generation immigrant’s son working out his loyalties between the old world and the new. This story IS America and directly involves ALL of the ideas about construction of race, gender, privilege and the American dream we are exploring in our readings. Particularly race (which I haven’t mentioned yet but can’t wait to get to). And in ways that are quite surprising and shed light on these issues from an angle most people would have no access to or wouldn’t even realize existed. I am excited to explore these ideas, which I’ve more or less kept to myself for years, in this blog. I'd like to contribute to this post and build upon it as the class moves forward. And also to bring in dire More to come soon…