Writing memoir raises a slew of questions that clamor to be explored, always returning to the central question: who are you?
As an army brat, when people ask me where I am from I answer, “All over”. Growing up, I lived most of my formative years abroad. As a child I was clear and sure that I was American even though most of my young life had been lived on ‘foreign’ soil. In places that are often more home to me than anywhere in the United States.
I do not identify as American because I was raised in a common culture with my fellow citizens, not because I share common experiences and not because we speak a common language. It means I don’t look like my fellow citizens who come from all over the world. It means we often disagree about faith and politics. And on our better days our differences are good and give us the richness of our ideas.
What makes me an American are the ideas and the ideals my family taught me about what it means to be an American. My Dad instilled in me that I am a part of a grand experiment in equality, freedom and justice. My duty as a citizen is to always stand on the side of equality, freedom and justice.
It also means that I have the freedom to explore, to try new things, to expand my understandings and experiences… and to fail. As an American I was taught that failure, though painful, is not terminal. I can rise and try again. Try things that are born in my imagination. Fail spectacularly at reaching for the stars and make it to the moon.
Those are the things that make me an American. Freedom, equality and justice don’t stop at my borders. Having a responsibility to those ideals gives me a world vision. Knowing I can fail and not be defeated makes me ever hopeful.
And along the way I discovered that understanding myself as an American encourages me to claim myself as a citizen of the world.