Two Rivers

What does it mean to live across cultures?

I think of it as being an amphibian.

I dwell between water and land. Probably a frog or something. I’m constantly pulled toward where I was born and where I am pushed to be for biological reasons. It’s in my DNA to look for better.My grandmother was the first to get her university education, my mom was one of the first in our to get a PhD. It’s not in my blood to look back.

But… it is.

I cannot help where I am from. I am the rope in the tug of war between two countries. The U.S. promises “better”, promises “fair”, something elusive and dreamy. It promises better education, fair government, a happy and successful ending. Meritocracy wrapped dreams that drew my family to that stolen soil like moths to a flame.

And yet my roots bind me to my mother country. There’s something about the smell od fried plantains and palm oil in the house at all times. Something comforting about the small community and its silent promises to kindness. The gari and condensed milk in the morning. Sweet little memories that linger in my mouth. Warm and filling. Sweet and comforting.

There is a constant pull on both sides, dual daughter, double expectations, dissecting me right down the middle like a frog on a middle school lab table.

On one end stands my mother, arms open, expectant that I accept all of the culture that I am thrown in to, hitting the ground running, and never stopping. Never ceasing to push for the sake of posterity and prosperity and service and all those wonderful ideals of the American Dream that aren’t really real. On the other side is her again, wondering why I look so different from how she did at my age. Why I don’t have the tongue for our native language, or traditional food. Why am I so opinionated it hurts her ears. I imagine her both push me toward my American peers and their liberal outlook, and pulling me home.

It feels contradictory to call anywhere home, and yet both places have full rights to call me a daughter. I felt for a long time like two of my feet had to stay in two different rivers, feeding from somewhere far off. I have always felt alien in both places, not really one or the other.

I still feel this way.

But now I have discovered that I am not standing stagnant between two beautiful bodies of water, but rather the river the converge into. I am both, a person from both cultures. Both bodies of water, both loving arms have wrapped around me, embraced as if I am theirs. Because I am theirs.

That is what it means to live across cultures.