Fly Home, Wipe Phone, Touch Grass

We're coming to America. TODAY!

Strange days to be packing for home. Watch an ICE raid, roll my socks. Watch the courts melt, clean out the fridge. The world is grim and I’m a-grinning. Jenny’s talking grocery lists with her mom. My daughter’s been packed for weeks. My son can’t wait to catch snakes. New Zealand’s lack of snakes is a longstanding complaint.

To Americans I say: We’ll be in the States.

To Kiwis: We’re going to America.

To myself, I sing Neil Diamond: They’re coming to America! TODAY!

Any country is a dream with a name. We gringos conflate the two more than most. United States is our aspirational job title, and America is our spirit name, whispered at birth as the gods looked down. We sing America, like Neil Diamond, like Kate Smith, like James Brown in Rocky IV. Presidents beg God to bless it. The sacred flips easily to the profane: we grunt ‘MURICA whenever our angel shows her feet of clay. For lighter fare and daily chores, we stick to the acronym. USA for the stadiums, surfin’, and parties. “Free shipping anywhere in the US,” etc.

We’re not the only country with two names, or more. No one in the UK or Britain or England orders their contact lenses shipped to Albion. In the New World it’s old names first: Aztlán for Mexico and the US Southwest, Tawantinsuyu for the Incan Empire across modern Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. Aotearoa for New Zealand is a similar story, though it’s far more common in daily use and claims no other nation’s territory.¹ Islands have cleaner edges and tidier dreams.

But America’s maybe the only nation whose spirit name is more common outside its borders. Who says Albion but the Brits? New Zealanders call us America. They say it quietly, flatly, in that level Kiwi rumble. Call the Yanks what they want to be called, is the vibe. They can keep the dream to themselves.

These days I catch myself saying America like the Kiwis do. No reverb. Bite down on those breathy A’s. It’s a good trick to get through the small talk. Kiwi mates in the grocery aisle wonder how it all went so crazy. They tell me, gently, that we’re safe here. I smile and nod. My chest shrinks to a fist.

I ain’t gonna sing out a big AMERICA in the grocery aisle. I can’t handle the empty echo. America is too big and too far away. Out here there’s only memories and metaphor, promises and headlines. Out here America lives only in my head, my heart, and every dang feed on my phone.

We fly home to make it real again. We fly home to touch American grass.

This time we’re WLG to AKL to SFO to DEN to OMA. Take off from a smallish local airport on a damp winter afternoon, eat our way through three anonymous biggies, then touch down a smallish local airport on a sultry summer night. Omaha’s Eppley Airfield will be asleep. There will be a light-box ad for local steaks. The sidewalk outside like a crockpot left on warm. The silent exhale of an American parking lot at midnight. The chlorine bomb of the hotel’s indoor pool. Plastic forks for breakfast. A drive up the Missouri River in the flat grid between high corn and summer haze. The joyful shriek of Grandma’s screen door.

Bad grass too, I know. But I’m packing. Let me dream.

The first time I heard Neil Diamond’s America I heard it live. Mr. Riley the choir director had us fifth graders do a recital of Broadway showtunes. I sang the love duet from Oklahoma with a sixth-grade girl named Jenny (not the one I married.²) We professed our love to the darkened sea of parent heads. Sixth Grade Jenny nailed her line, but I ran out of breath before the end of my mine, and returned to the risers trembling with shame. When the show ended, Mr. Riley stepped out in front of the choir, fired up his keyboard, and banged out America.

On the boats and on the planes!
They’re coming to America!

This was not on the program. We’d never heard him rehearse. We stood at awed attention as his voice thundered through the cafeteria. I can see him now, outlined in the spotlight. Memory has added sequins. He raised an arm as if in prayer. Did our parents clap along? My own disappointment washed away. Great art will do that. If I could fly back to that night—that America—

Home
Don’t it feel so faraway
But we’re travelling light today
In the eye of the storm
In the eye of the storm

We’re stuck here, TODAY! In another twenty hours we’ll cue at immigration at SFO, passports in hand. As the line inches forward I’ll wipe my phone. I’ll delete the court’s surrender, the masked thugs, the unmarked vans. I’ll cue up Neil, in sequins, and step proudly to the desk. Sometimes the agents say welcome home and sometimes they don’t. They never say America. //

1. Howdy to my troll who comes round occasionally to yell IT’S NEW ZEALAND, NOT AOTEAROA. What small dreams you have, dear.

2. “You were waiting for the right one.” -J