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"Whatever happened I apologize. So dry your tears, baby, and walk outside. It's the Fourth of July"

By Siva Vaidhyanathan

I published this on Media Matters - Altercation:

Hi. It's Siva Vaidhyanathan here. I am subbing for Eric today, and following the great LTC Bateman. That's a pretty tough role, like Jason Giambi coming up after the second-greatest baseball player in history (who was the greatest? Do you have to ask?) But I will try to do my best for y'all.

I have not done a full Altercation since last summer. I miss it. So it's good to be back among friends. I stand amused by the banter of the past few days between those who cheer for Ohio and dismiss Michigan, and vice versa. Please. Both Michigan and Ohio are fine places filled with excellent people (but Pierce -- Nugent? Come on, man). On this most patriotic of weekends, let's not turn on our fellow citizens for their choice of states.

Well, except for Oklahoma. There is really nothing worth celebrating in Oklahoma since the Gap Band broke up. Whenever I say the pledge of allegiance, I say, "One nation, indivisible (except for Oklahoma), with liberty and justice for all (except for Oklahoma)." Hook 'em Horns, y'all!

About year ago my family and I moved from New York City (home of the greatest sports franchise in the world) to lovely Charlottesville, Virginia. It's been a pretty radical change of lifestyle. But it's been almost all good. I miss the bustling streets, the dozens of languages, the energy and the greatest baseball stadium in the country (see, Eric never should have left me the keys to this place).

But here in Virginia, we can actually afford to raise our daughter. The cost of NYC was killing us. This place is pretty amazing in its own way. Our jobs are much better, of course. NYU, where I used to work, is a harsh and nasty place that does not respect its students or faculty. The University of Virginia, in contrast, could not hold the interests of its students any higher. And that creates a mood of respect that permeates everything we do. So it's been a really great year and promises to be a great life.

Yesterday afternoon my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter came home from day care and she proudly showed me the flag she had colored that day. "It's for America's birthday!" she said proudly.

I was actually deeply moved, not only because it was so darn cute. But I immediately began wondering if she would ever really be able to grasp what this country means to her and her family.

I am the child of one immigrant and another Navy brat who had seen her father go off to fight in three wars. So patriotism could not have been a stronger part of my moral orientation.

Growing up in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, I worked to find a reason to believe. And I did. My family needed this place. We chose to live here. We took risks. We made sacrifices. We paid the cost of separation and solitude. But we ended up about as fortunate as a family can be.

My daughter, in contrast, is far removed from the sacrifices and risks that her grandfather and other relatives made to get here and build lives. She might hear me wax on about them. But she will never see anything but an old, fat, happy, over-educated, comfortable family living safely in big American houses.

So some day I hope to tell her these stories that solidify my patriotism every day.

I remember the day my father became a citizen. I must have been six years old. My mother baked a cake decorated like the Stars and Stripes. I stared at it for hours before the party. I am not sure I had seen many American flags before that. I am sure some neighbors flew them from their houses. But I don't remember thinking much about them. That day, however, was special for all of us.

So the symbol etched itself in my consciousness. It's always stood for the choice my father made, one that made my life possible.

My father had to take a test to naturalize. And he shared the test-prep books with me. They had all sorts of information about basic U.S. history and the Constitution. So my father's naturalization was the beginning of my indoctrination -- or, as I would rather see it, my education. That same year, I got in a fight with the kid across the street because we were the only house on the street with a McGovern sign in our front yard. In Jack Kemp's congressional district, that was a rare sight. But, in that great American tradition, I stood my ground. In the great tradition of McGovernite liberals, I lost the fight badly. But I did not back down. And, of course, I got to say I told him so soon enough.

The next few years saw our vice president resign and then our president resign in disgrace. Then my country lost a war for the first time since 1814. Patriotism for me was not about glory or victory. It was about hard, harsh lessons and striving to make our nation better and more just. Through most of my life, right up until the stolen election of 2000, that remained the case.

Back at the end of the last century, all of my father's eight siblings had come over from Southern India to various parts of the United States. And most of them had stood for citizenship so they could sponsor their children for immigration as well. My grandfather had also immigrated in the late 1970s after my grandmother died. He came to live with us. By 1990 all nine of his children and all 21 of his grandchildren lived in the United States. None lived in India.

One July, my uncle invited me to come up from Austin to Dallas for his naturalization ceremony. One of my friends had clerked in the federal court in which my uncle was to be sworn in. So my friend snuck me into the jury box during the ceremony, while most of the other family members of the 200 or so new citizens had to watch from a remote television in another courtroom. As soon as I took my seat, one of the INS employees approached me with a boom box. "Are you the one who is going to sing the anthem?," she asked me. To my deep regret for the rest of my life, I told her no. Fortunately for everyone, the real singer arrived soon and stood next to me in the jury box. During the oath, each new citizen must relinquish allegiance to any and all other states. For most of the new citizens, this was just another promise to be mouthed along the way. But to my uncle, this was not so easy.

My uncle had been a helicopter pilot and officer in the Indian Air Force for more than 20 years. He had seen friends killed in service to his country. He had put his own life on the line in two wars on behalf of the world's largest democracy. He has a scar on his forehead from a helicopter crash during the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan. As the judge reached this point in the oath, I looked deeply at my uncle's face. He winced. He hesitated. I thought I could see a tear in his eye.

Then he said it. He renounced another oath he had taken years ago. In India, as in the United States, military personnel are among the few citizens who have to swear allegiance as adults, with full knowledge of the gravity of such an oath. I could see him shudder. His love for his children and the promise of this country superceded his deepest public commitment. I could understand why he did it. I appreciated it deeply. But I also think I understood how hard it was for him to do it.

A couple of Julys before my uncle's naturalization, his father had died. The summer of 1993 was supposed to be a time of great fun. After all, the Beach Boys' box set, Good Vibrations, came out that year. I was going to spend an alarming amount of time with headphones on, immersing myself in Brian Wilson's genius. But instead, I ended up driving an Econoline van full of uncles, aunts, and cousins from Texas to Maryland to attend to my grandfather's funeral.

Hindus don't embalm bodies. Corpses are supposed to be anointed, prayed over, then cremated very quickly. Of course, state and county health laws don't always afford such ancient niceties. But somehow one of my uncles had convinced county officials to look the other way as family drove in from around the country.

So one hot July afternoon I stood draped in a white cotton dhoti with my uncles and cousins in the gravel parking lot behind a funeral home on the banks of the Potomac River. As we did our prayers, my father, the eldest son, gently sprinkled flowers over his father's body. Then he pushed the body, which rested in a cardboard box, along a the sort of conveyor belt that one would use to slide cases of beer from the back room of a Canadian liquor store, into a gas oven. This was not exactly as our Brahmin forefathers had designed the ceremony. But we had learned long ago to make severe concessions to modernity in exchange for the privileges of America.

As soon as my father began pushing my grandfather's body toward the oven, we heard the distinct blare of "The Star-Spangled Banner." I looked up, confused and -- I admit -- a bit amused. The song came from the loudspeakers above a Little League Baseball diamond across the street from the funeral home. So my grandfather, born under British tyranny, a young political leader in the years of Gandhi and Nehru, the father of nine new Americans, was cremated to the sound of the national anthem of the United States of America.

After the cremation, it was our duty to spread my grandfather's ashes in rivers. The most important destination is the Ganges in Northern India, of course. So one of my uncles flew over a month later to perform that rite. He also places some in the Cauvery River in South India, where my grandfather was born and grew up.

As I drove my uncles and aunts and cousins back to Texas, we made a series of stops at rivers along the way: starting with the Potomac and ending at the Colorado River that runs through Austin.

When, in Baton Rouge, I stepped out of the van and climbed a levee to sprinkle ashes into the Mississippi, I could not help thinking how much my grandfather had enjoyed reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with me when I was a child. I thought about how my grandfather would wake up at 5 a.m. on any morning on which there was a rocket launch that would send Americans into space. Born into a world without electricity or internal combustion engines, he never got over the wonder of powerful American machines. I remembered how he used to come to the curb to see me get on the school bus, and all the kids on the bus would laugh and tease me because he wore his dhoti. And I thought about how, in 1984, he argued with my then-6-year-old sister over the election. As an old man, he thought we should re-elect the old man then running the country. My sister, as precocious as I was at that age, was a Mondale-Ferraro supporter, of course.

I don't think you can get any more American than that, my friends.

We have long, funny names. We conduct strange religious rituals in a dead language that even we don't always understand. We dress funny. We put dots on our heads.

But we hope, dream, cry, laugh, work, buy, invest, study, play, and vote as if it all might disappear tomorrow.

That's because, like all who are Americans by choice, we can never forget how special this place is. We can never take it for granted. We can never forget those who gave their lives to make this place possible. We can never forgive those who try to destroy it. We can never let go of the basic, clear, strong beliefs that were so succinctly expressed in those study guides that my father used to study for his citizenship test.

Even through these dark days, when my country seems to have lost its bearings, lost its mind, lost its soul, lost its values, and lost its sense of decency, I still believe. And I always will. As long as there are new Americans, whether by choice or by birth, there can be a new America.

So I hope I can do my duty to convince my daughter not to be too cynical about her country. After all, it did not have to turn out this way. Anything is possible. She could even be its president someday. Or she could grow up to play baseball for a living. Or she could just be a decent, responsible, honest citizen who treats her country with respect and her neighbors with kindness. I would be happy with that.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and takes the time to reflect on all we have been through together.

Peace.

Full post as published by SIVACRACY .NET on July 03, 2008 (boomark / email).