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closeFrom the editor: One day in Germany, I became an American
Heather Meier
Every Independence Day, I like to reflect on the moment when I first understood what it means to be an American.
I was 10 years old and my family was renting part of a house in a small community called Fisching. It was a dying German town with a population smaller than my graduating class. The locals were mostly farmers, though some worked down the road in a tourist town, which catered to other Germans who wanted a break from the big city.
For most of the locals, we were the first Americans they had ever met.
There were moments that were awkward, like the time a waiter laughed and berated us for requesting a doggie bag to take home our leftover pizza. It was a quick lesson in German dining etiquette.
Other times were humorous, like when a German couple sitting at a table behind us spoke in English through their entire meal so the rest of the customers wouldn’t understand their intimate conversation. As my mother left she thanked them for the entertainment.
Our months of German lessons at the YWCA in downtown Seattle before we moved helped us when asking for sliced ham at the town’s butcher but didn’t prepare us for any kind of deep conversations.
It was my mother who fared the worst — my father’s colleagues spoke English and I attended an international elementary school. She was left at home all day.
Germany was a lonely time for us. We forged a stronger family bond during our car trips and evenings playing board games.
It was during this time, surrounded by customs and accents that didn’t belong to us, that I became an American.
Being born in the U.S. 10 years earlier was simply luck, not anything I had control over. My ancestors left England, Germany and Ireland to come to America long before Washington became a state. My nationality, therefore, was something I acquired.
There were many moments in Germany when I missed my family and friends, the house I grew up in and the ease of shopping malls. But during one moment in particular, my homesickness was much further reaching.
To this day I can’t remember what lead up to this, but, in tears, my mother and I climbed onto the kitchen table where we proceeded to belt out the National Anthem.
It set the tone for the rest of my life.
I’m proud of being an American and wear my nationality as a badge of honor. I don’t feel it’s something to apologize for.
I’m proud of the men and women who rushed up the towers, endangering their lives to save those of others.
I’m proud of the first casualties in the Iraq war, who were killed when they stopped to help a man change his tire; he turned out to be a suicide bomber.
I’m proud of America’s pioneers — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Sandra Day O’Connor, among others — who sacrificed themselves for the whole county.
America has seen its share of horrors, but we shine light on them, teaching students about the times when officials closed schools rather than integrate them, when Japanese Americans were interned and when a ship with Jewish passengers was sent back from American shores to Nazi Germany.
I’m proud we teach these shameful moments because knowledge keeps us from repeating history.
When I moved back to Europe almost 10 years ago in the middle of the Clinton scandal, people would ask me if I was proud of my country.
Yes, I would tell them. I had learned at an early age that being an American has little to do with who is the president — it’s something you feel deep down in your soul.