the dilema

It’s been two and a half years since I left my adoptive country to return to my birth country. You’d think that by now I’d feel at home in my birth country. But it hasn’t happened – at least not yet. Most of the time, I live with a dilemma. Who shall I be? How shall I act?

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The other day I realized I finally figured out how to count American change. My various purse pockets no longer bulge with coins. When I first moved back, I always gave dollar bills(or a credit card) because American change was just too confusing. Eventually I got tired of the many coins in my possession, so when I wasn’t in a hurry, I would pull out my coins and painstakingly count them out, hoping I hadn’t miscalculated. And that the cashier didn’t think that I was dumb. I’m American, after all, so shouldn’t I be able to count change easily?

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When I was visiting my friend the other week at her new apartment, she pointed at an empty spot in her laundry, and said, “I’m going to get an upright freezer because my fridge freezer isn’t enough.” I tried to act like I understood, but inwardly I was bewildered, “Why would you need so much food for just one person?”

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I step through the doorway to a friend’s home. What do I say? Permiso? They won’t understand that language. Excuse me? They’ll look at me weird. Permission? No, that’s the literal meaning. That won’t work either. So I mumble a “permiso”, and hope that no one heard me, because if I don’t, I’ll feel like I’m an intruder.

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I sit in Sunday School class, and open my mouth to speak. Words start coming out of my mouth, and then it happens – I get stuck. I don’t know how to translate the word that comes to my mind. I mumble, “Sorry, I can’t think of the English word.” Meanwhile, my mind whirls, and comes up with an English word that is inferior to what I was really trying to say.

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Who shall I be? My American self? Or my Latino self? If I’m American, I get confused. If I’m Latina, those around me will be confused. So I will trudge along, putting one foot in front of the other, doing my best to make the right decision at the proper time and place. All the while hoping that onlookers see a person that is more put together than she feels.

“So much of who we are is where we have been.”