Illustration by Dola Sun
Maybe you’ve heard that our country has a big anniversary this month: 250 years since we broke from the Brits. I have an Independence Day anniversary of sorts, too. Thirty years ago, on July 4, 1996, my parents dropped me off at the CVG airport for my first flight ever. On the most American of holidays, I was headed to England.
I’d just graduated from NKU, but I was taking a five-week summer literature class through the university’s study abroad program. I remember boarding that huge jet, eyes as wide as the ocean I would cross, and for the first time in my rather predictable, close-to-home life I didn’t know what awaited.
I’d lived at home for college, never even entertaining going away. It’s true the Ketteler policy was to pay for college yourself, and all of my siblings who went (I’m the youngest of seven) did just that. If I had really wanted to go away, I likely could have used my youngest child magic to make it happen. But I didn’t. So putting real miles between me and my childhood bedroom was a big deal.
Speeding down that runway into uncertainty was the closest thing to a declaration of independence I’d ever made. What could be more American than my quiet revolution of one from seat 35C?
The thing about transcontinental flights is that they’re long enough for too much thinking, but not nearly comfortable enough for sleep. Also, since I worried about every calorie and gram of fat I put in my body, I just picked at the meals they served.
I arrived at Gatwick at 8 a.m. hungry, exhausted, and disoriented. The bus ride from London’s far airport was eternal. As we drew closer to the city, climbing narrow, twisty streets, the tour guide kept talking about buildings that were 1,000 years old. “You don’t have those in America!” he said.
I was in the land of Beowulf and Chaucer, of old wars and old architecture. It may not have occurred to me until that moment how young in the world the U.S. was. How we had bluster without gravitas. And wasn’t the same true of me? I was just a girl from Ft. Wright whose life up until then had existed inside a 1,500-square-foot ranch house built in 1958. I was 21 and naïve, with big dreams that still needed maturity. Like my country, I still had a lot of growing up to do.
After checking into our dorms, we were forced to do a walking tour in the rain. The idea was to keep us all from collapsing into bed, so we could get on London time more quickly. I’d never been jet-lagged before, having never actually been on a jet, so I didn’t understand why every system in my body was breaking down.
By dinnertime, I was toast. I staggered into the shower in the communal women’s bathroom and sobbed loudly. I had spent a year saving the $3,500 for this trip. What had I been thinking? I was ready to retreat. Tell the revolutionary troops to fall back. I just wanted my mommy.
Of course, a good night’s sleep fixed a lot of things. Though I fought homesickness for a while, I started to find my rhythm and make friends, including a girl named Meredith. She was slightly older than me and gave off big sister vibes, which is exactly what I needed.
The college where we stayed was near Kensington Gardens, centrally located to do everything. We rode the Tube around the city, took day trips to Bath and Brighton and weekend trips to Wales and Paris, and saw as many literary sites as possible, from Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf.
I kept a journal, recording everything I did and who I went with. The sheer amount of what I packed into five weeks is a pretty good argument against the idea that youth is wasted on the young.
When I read the journal now, I see more than a travelogue. It’s a record of me trying to come to terms with what it meant to be a person in this world. The biggest questions of my young life were all happening that summer, in that place, a country away.
Did I know how to deal with adversity? Would I ever find love? What did happiness actually look like?
I often wrote about a feeling of numbness that came over me, making me question if I was “normal.” That I didn’t marvel enough at seeing Stonehenge, that the white cliffs of Dover didn’t inspire my own poetry, that I could still feel lonely strolling in Holland Park with my new friends. . .what was the matter with me?
What I understand now is that I was sitting in the gap between expectation and reality. I’d been there before, but not on the scale of a month in another country, where the stakes seemed much higher. Every time an ideal fell short, I felt like I was wasting something.
Three things were going on. First, I was hungry. I had a lot of disordered eating. Every time I would call my mom feeling down, she would say, “I think you need to eat.” I would assure her that wasn’t it. But of course it was.
Second, I hadn’t lived long enough to understand that, for me, meaning tends to happen after the fact. Experiences are transcendent in retrospect more than in the moment.
I make narratives after I’ve had a chance to process the experience. Look at me doing it right now.
Third, I was already so American in how I framed up situations and carried expectations with me everywhere. It would be 10 years before I would hear Barack Obama say the phrase “The audacity of hope,” but I’d surely brought my hopeful American audacity right across the Atlantic.
I may have been humbled by jet lag, but I never wavered on the idea that I was the hero of my story.
If going to London sealed my American-ness, three decades of Fourth of July celebrations since have given me perspective. I’ve felt a range of emotions watching the parades and fireworks, from pride and joy to frustration and disgust. And I’ve thought a lot about that audacity, how the U.S. has always played in that space between expectation and reality, baking it into our systems from the start.
Who else could espouse equality while enslaving an entire population? Who could celebrate the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness while trying to eradicate the population already living here? We said, “This could be. This should be,” and then a whole lot of people had to fight like hell—are still fighting like hell—to claim what are supposed to be basic rights.
That we’ve arrived at a nice, clean round number doesn’t change anything about that dynamic. Yes, a 250-year anniversary is something profound to commemorate. A quarter of a millennium is not nothing.
Perhaps we need some level-setting, though. Our big national milestone is basically the equivalent of a high school graduation, since, compared to iconic civilizations, we’re something like a teenager.
Have you been around teenagers lately? I have two of them, so I know a few things. They talk in memes and have big ideas, usually without a clear understanding of how to get there.
I try to tell my 17-year-old son that a skatepark in our backyard probably won’t work like he thinks, but he buys bags of concrete anyway. He mixes it up in our wheelbarrow, and all I can do is watch from the window as he wrestles with smoothing it. It’s so messy, but he has a vision.
I didn’t listen to my mom telling me I needed to eat, and my son doesn’t listen to me that it isn’t easy to build a quarter pipe, and democracy staggers forward. Like teenagers do, we’re going through some shit.
Our former presidents know it, and the four still alive are trying to be wise. Jenna Bush Hager interviewed them all: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. Interestingly, watching the clips, I was most compelled by W., the one among them I didn’t vote for and actively campaigned against.
Democracy is self-correcting, he said to his daughter, which is why he wasn’t too worried about the long-term health of our country.
I think he’s right, but it’s hard to watch teenagers fumble and stumble. They do such inane things. Really, America? You want that guy in charge? Then again, there’s nothing more American than apple pie with a side of ice cream and disappointment.
But we always get to try again. And again. Which is the biggest thing of all to celebrate.
Facebook Comments