This Is America

Last evening, we drove through beautiful, nausea-inducing-for-the-weak-stomached, country roads to go to the Bergton Fair.  If you're from around here, you might have, at one point, attended the fair yourself, so you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.  If you're not from around here, just imagine the quintessential small-town podunk  "fair"...
~ a large field of grass, usually empty, but on these nights filled with rows upon rows of cars
~ carnival rides, trucked in and assembled just days before, all lit up, enticing the young to come and ride
~ teenagers walking hand in hand with a boyfriend/girlfriend...or, lacking a "significant other," clustered with a group of friends
~ food booths, selling large quantities of foods, most of them fried in huge amounts of oil
~ tables with wilted produce, the vegetables and flowers having lost their starch in the summer heat, but still proudly bearing blue and red and other-colored ribbons
~ lots and lots of strollers, some holding tiny almost-newborns, their mothers nearby looking slightly frazzled but extremely proud
~ a few Mennonites sprinkled throughout the crowd, their head coverings giving away at a glance their commitment to be a separate people (but even Mennonites know how to enjoy a fair).  ;-)

I looked around me and thought, "This is America."

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Today we attended a wedding.  It was the wedding of one of Jeff's customers, a guy who became much more than a customer to Jeff through their deep, stirring spiritual talks which occurred whenever their paths crossed.  Truly, Vitaly has become a friend, and he's even been to our house several times, eaten dinner with us, participated in Bible studies, and let our cuddly David sit on his lap during Uno games.

Although Vitaly speaks perfect English and has adapted excellently to life in America, he is Russian...and so is his bride, who arrived on an airplane not so long ago from her native country, speaking very little English, but eager to marry her groom and adapt to life in a foreign land.

The wedding was all in Russian.  To my ears, it was a joy to hear that language flowing so effortlessly from the lips of those gathered because it swept me back to our years in Israel and our involvement with a mostly-Russian speaking congregation there.  I couldn't understand anything that was being said.  Well, I take that back.  I could pick out words here and there:  "slava," Bog," "spasiba," etc.  But besides enjoying the music of the language, it had no benefit to me...and none whatsoever to my boys, who gamely sat through the ceremony, not comprehending a word of it, but behaving quite decently regardless.  Shav kept me busy with pulling things out of the diaper bag to entertain him, but that was expected; and I was particularly proud of how the other three sat quietly and patiently.

During the meal after the wedding ceremony, I spent part of the time in the lobby, letting my boys run off some steam; and while I was there, the photographer (a Ukranian, although he's spent 25 years here in the States) came up to me and said, "Ah, so you're the American!"  Although many (but not all) of the other guests could fluently speak English as well as Russian, I guess we were the only "American" family there.

But were we?  Aren't we all, with the exception of those descended from Native American tribes, immigrants and foreigners to this land?  If you go back far enough, you would find that I'm Irish...and English...and German...and Swiss...and probably some other things, too!  To me, the fact that the families at the wedding used Russian as their first language and haven't lived here as many years as my family line in this country goes back doesn't mean they're not American.

As I watched the wedding today, which was done a little differently than most other weddings I've been to here in the U.S., and as I listened to the rich swirl of a foreign tongue all around me, I paused to consider.

I looked around me and thought, "This is America."