Home sweet home - only better
Traveling in the U.S. reconnects me with my roots. Over the past few weeks, I’ve passed through places in Virginia and Washington where I used to work and go to college. Revisiting old haunts evokes that odd, lopsided sensation of a place so familiar that not only do you know the street names, you know every single step of the way.
It’s like being with an old friend, yet at the same time, different, often in ways that are hard to define at first. Here on one corner, I discover a new store, while the one I used to know disappeared long ago.
These are the moments when I sense my deeply-rooted need to show my kids the real America I knew growing up. Being in the U.S. sends me into a kind of panic, making me feel like I have to cram a whole childhood’s worth of memories into a few weeks of vacation, eliciting much eye-rolling from my kids.
For me, the thought that my children might not be able to communicate with my family in America or relate to the culture has always been unimaginable. They know America from movies and TV, but my home is the real America. I want them to relate to it, too.
But I’m not sure what the “real” America is.