Life is Like a Box of Chocolates

As reform of the U.S. immigration system is in the news again, I pondered the choices that people make each and every day to leave their home country and establish a new life somewhere else. Politics aside, those stories stem from real people with real lives that have stitched the cultural patches of the American quilt.

My own extended family has an immigration background.  Both of my parents left the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as refugees right before the wall was built. With just a couple of suitcases and the most important documents, they arrived in a West German refugee camp, a country that shared a language with their former home, but not all cultural components. My father's family had to leave behind my aunt, who was expecting her first child and was not able to follow them before the construction of the wall was finished.

My father in law left the impoverished region of post-war Black Forest in Germany in the 50s and arrived under sponsorship in California with one suitecase and $25.  He was a trained painter, and knew that going back was not an option.  He had to make it work and was able to live the American Dream through hard labor and perseverance.

I am myself an immigrant.  Albeit a choice I made not out of economic hardship or political prosecution, but out of love. I went through culture shock, adapted to my new "Wahlheimat" (my chosen home) and emerged as a German-American hybrid of sorts.

Over the years, I found myself drawn to people from different countries, always curious about their reasons for leaving their "Heimat" (home country). Here are a few of the stories that touched my heart:

• I have gotten to know refugees from the former Yugoslavia, where a terrible sectarian war in the 1990s and sniper attacks caused a family to leave their beloved town of Sarajevo to ensure a safer life for their 8 year old son.  They became our neighbors, we shared a European background and learned to love their coffee culture. Their son became fluent in English practically over night, reciting "Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you're gonna get" in that perfect Southern accent by Tom Hanks in "Forest Gump". His father was a former engineer for IBM, who now worked as a pizza delivery man.  There was a lot of sadness for leaving their beautiful country which doesn't exist anymore; their son gave them hope and paved the way for a new existense.
• Shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union a young Ukrainian couple was able to come to the U.S. under amnesty consideration.  They were both trained teachers, he was an interpreter as well.  Years later, they were Ukraininan language instructors for me and my husband, as we were preparing for our move to their country of origin. They slipped small anecdotes from the past into their lessons, such as the one about the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, where all teachers were asked to report back to school with rubber boots and assist in a school cleaning by hosing down the roof with water.  Upon our departure, they gave us their cousin's address, whose family we befriended and who taught us the richness of their culture.
• There is an Ethiopian family, who came to the U.S. via winning the green card lottery, the lucky ticket to come to the land of dreams. As most immigrants, they had to work their way up, get certified again in their professions and push their children to perform at the top of their class in school.  They still refer to Ethiopia as their home country, longing to see family and friends, but it is their children's future that keeps them here.  There is no alternative, no turning around, just moving forward. I learned about the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, roasting green coffee beans, fake grass scattered across the living room floor to replicate the outdoors and incense burning, filling the house with smoke.  I danced Ethiopian dances and practiced ululation, a rapid tongue trill to express strong emotions and learned to love their food, wrapped in injera, the spongy, sourtasting flatbread.
• Another aquaintance of mine left her home country to seek medical help for her son at a major American research university.  They left everything behind, their beautiful house, their employment, their belongings, their younger son's toys, their friends and family. Despite not being able to get the medical outcome they had hoped for, they decided to stay for now - one of their older children planning to go to college here. His enrollment status dilemma is a story in itself and shows how difficult it is to navigate the complicated immigration system despite English fluency. The young man is caught between two chairs during the college application process, not qualified as an overseas student, not qualified as an in/out of state student - so what box to check? What does apply? What scholarships is he eligible for?
• My hairdresser is from Korea - a woman who is working hard to get her two children through college and whose faith is deeper than the ocean.  She has a little English-Korean dictionary on her table at the hairdresser. In her free time, you will see her reading it, always trying to improve her English just a little bit more. I told her how much I loved living in her home country, a place she has not visited in years. The tickets are too expensive, the journey too long, there is too much work to do here. It visibly pains her when I try to share some of my favourite memories of Korea. So we have decided to find more neutral conversation topics, such as gardening. We talk about how our flowers are in bloom, which ones did not make it through the last winter and which ones are our favorite: I learned she adores daffodils in the spring. I have never seen her garden, but it sounds lovely when she describes it. She is trying to bloom where she was planted, the reasons for her immigration story I will never know.

My current neighborhood is a global tapestry, a microcosm of the ideal melting pot. Our private summertime water hole, aka the community pool, is enjoyed by people from all parts of the world: I have met people from China, Taiwan, Honduras, Korea, Argentina, France, England, Germany, Croatia, Yemen, Morocco, Turkey, Slovakia, Ethiopia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Hungary, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, Russia and of course various parts of the United States. A small UN village with just over 300 residents, whose children go to the same public schools, are kissed and hugged good bye in many different languages every morning, and shutteled to a public school county which embraces 200 different countries and 160 languages.

We will never really know who all these people are whom we categorize as "immigrants", but we owe them one thing:  listening to their story. They are human beings, parents, spouses, men and women who oftentimes don't leave their home country because they want to see the world. They leave everything that they have ever known and what meant the world to them because they would otherwise not be able to survive, make a decent living and raise their children. They came for hope, they came for love, they came for a better life. And these are the stories we may hear, if we tune in.