Member-only story
THE NARRATIVE ARC
My Farewell to America
A European’s journey through six decades of American dreams
I Remember When You Were My World
I remember when America was Richard Scarry’s colorful pages, where I’d lose myself for hours. I must have been about five years old. His drawings became my reality — bright yellow school buses I’d never seen, orange pumpkins larger than my head, mailboxes with little red flags, and fire hydrants dotting sidewalks. I didn’t know it then, but I was learning to love a place I hadn’t yet visited, adopting its imagery as universal.
I remember when America was a bedsheet hung with ropes in a dusty garage, where my father projected black-and-white Laurel and Hardy films on my sixth birthday. We enjoyed American culture, humor, society, and even the urban landscape — a far-away land filtered through a decades-old Hollywood lens.
I remember that America was the reason why my parents survived to meet at all. Without the sacrifices of your soldiers, my father might never have emerged from imprisonment at the end of the war in Europe. Without your victory, my mother would surely have perished in her concentration camp in Asia. The extermination order was already issued, including the instruction to leave no trace.
