What We Celebrate

A letter to the editor that I wrote for a local organization

We’re about to mark 250 years since the founding of these United States, and it’s a good opportunity to reflect on our history. What we could really call our histories. Because the thing about this country is it has never been just one thing. Not one religion, one cuisine, or one culture. Not one story. At least not a simple one. Because you’d have to tell about the long march many took across the Sonoran Desert. And the long march many took from Auschwitz. You’d have to tell the long march many took along the Trail of Tears. Through those sub-Saharan lowlands. Across that Emerald Isle. And it would seem all we are is but a people walking. And all we are is but a people boarding a ship. Who’d been so thoroughly stalked by the specter of violence and famine and persecution that we’d eventually had to leave our beloved homeland and set out for an unknown land.

Some people feel threatened by this, like we must forget where we came from in order to be here. But we did not come here with nothing. And we recognize that we’re better for bringing these parts of ourselves — our music, our food, our language, our past, the sheer unlikelihood, the joy of our being here. We welcome our most recent immigrants because we, too, were once strangers in this strange land. And we recognize every story makes us stronger. Another stitch in the flag.