On questions of belonging
How the friendship of others defines for my sense of being part of a place
Passing through small European towns on trains to other places, I get a particularly intense variant of the longing one gets looking through the lit windows of a stranger’s house on a winter evening. I wonder what our lives would be like if we’d settled in Austria instead of America when we married. I imagine walking to the shops instead of driving to the grocery; struggling less and less with German as the years passed (one would hope), and growing the relationships we have here even as I miss the ones we’d have left behind. I find myself asking if I could ever have belonged here, and it’s one of the questions driving my writing.
One of the joys of writing from life is that my research is more about what we do, and the experiences we have doing those things, as it is about the history or statistics of the places we visit. The project isn’t so much about the history of Jews in Appalachia or Europe, but my own experience being a Jew from Appalachia whose family fled Russian tyranny in Europe, and who is now married to an Austrian whose own family has a difficult history we have to contend with in our relationship.
What I’m saying is, sometimes breakfast with friends IS research, as it was today.
Quite a lot of what I’m trying to figure out comes down to the simple question of where we—because Dominik and I are definitely and permanently a we—fit into the world of this moment, and how that question is impacted both by our family histories and the current state of affairs (by which I mean, in part, the resurgence of antisemitism as a motivating factor in national politics in both the US and Europe). And where we fit in the world is determined, in no small part, by who does (and doesn’t) accept us as belonging to and/or in the places we inhabit.
As a transnational couple, this question of belonging is already one we confront regularly. Dominik is an Austrian in American; I’m an American in Austria. There is no place, outside our home, where we both belong equally. (Perhaps Chattanooga comes close; Dominik, who is more social, has more friends in Chattanooga than I do and feels more at home there, while I have the privileges that go along with citizenship and speaking the language as a native. But even then, these are different sorts of belonging, not a sense of belonging that we share.)
This isn’t to say we’re alienated from our friends and family back home. We each feel very much a part of the other’s family. I love my in-laws and believe they are fond of me. Dominik loves and is loved by my family in West Virginia as well. And we have friends in the US we made together in graduate school and now as faculty at UTC who make up our community of beloveds there. But there is something special and lovely about the embrace of Dominik’s Austrian friends as they make sure that I understand they are also my Austrian friends.
Typing that, of course, fills me with a tiny moment of panic. My inner voice reminds me that it’s entirely possible that Dominik’s Austrian friends are just really, really polite and don’t want me to know that they can’t understand why he married me, and that he could have done much better. But let’s just assume that’s not the case, okay?
When I think of questions of belonging, I think of whether or not one is welcomed. Growing up, I understood there were places in West Virginia where I would not be. For instance, in sixth grade my class did a student exchange day with a rural elementary school, and on the advice of the principal, I didn’t participate because she expected I would encounter some unpleasantness. (I’m not sure she was right, but that doesn’t matter… once you tell a child they’d be unwelcomed somewhere, what’s done is done.)
And our Austrian friends and family have made me feel very welcomed here, in spite of the ways my current project sometimes shapes our conversations in difficult ways. And perhaps being welcomed is the most important part of belonging to any place or people beyond one’s own family and hometown. To be included in the place, in spite of not being from or of the place.
I’m very grateful.
Thanks Sarah for this. I have been unraveling (and writing) about the roots of my identity confusion (desire for "passing") which grows from my experience of othering where , for a long time, my sister and I were the only Jewish kids in school. Your story of the principal trying to shield you from possible rejection reminded me that I was that kid in a rural community. Helpful as I try to figure out why my sister and I were so much more wounded by anti-semitism than other Jewish kids who had similar experiences, like you. Degrees of separation make a difference. .
It makes me sad to know that you would be unwelcome anywhere, but realistically, I know that there are places and people who would be a bit hostile. You are such a loving and giving person (your mother's daughter)! It is difficult for me to wrap my head around why someone wouldn't accept you.
I can understand why being in Austria would give you pause. What was done can not be undone.
I have a friend who married an Argentine man. He gave her the choice of where to love and she chose to be in Buenos Aires with his family and friends. What she didn't know when she made the choice is how difficult this would make her life and that her husband and his family would contribute a large part of that. They didn't help her get a national ID card, which kept her from driving and working. She finally did get her license but there wasn't much she could do except stay home and look after their one child. She found some translation work online for some income, but it was frustrating to not be a part of society there. He even went so far as to not want to interact with other mixed couples (Americans married to Argentines) and told her outright that he didn't like those couples. The marriage eventually failed.
I'm not around you and Dominic so I don't see you interact in person, but from what I see on FB, he loves you deeply. I also don't know what contentions you have in your marriage so I can't comment. But he is going through this journey with you. I hope it makes you a better couple in the long run. You relationship appears to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from my friend's.