Resident Alien - Dec 28 2020

 

Resident Alien

Dec 28 2020

Our family name began as Groen.

But some functionary at the border

puffed-up with self-importance

in the port of Saint John

must have thought it too exotic

and swapped the o for e,

Green

another 5 letter moniker

that means literally the same.

Because it's all about belonging

our need to fit in.

Of course, we are more broadminded now

when it comes to name

and gender

and colour of skin,

and if there were still a phone-book these days

it would be full of foreign-sounding folk

who feel equally at home here.

But I also find myself explaining

that going back

we were not English or Irish

but Dutch.

Perhaps because

we hold on to identity

even centuries later

to anchor who we are,

taking too much pride

in the small differences

we cling to for certainty.

7 billion souls, and counting,

of which you and I

are each only 1;

so we seek out some thing

to proclaim our uniqueness

our roots

our claim on history.

Whose ancestors came to Holland

on their way somewhere else,

displaced Jews

wandering among the nations

to find themselves.

So really not the white Lutheran Dutchmen

of frugality and wooden shoes

the ancestral name implies,

but permanent outsiders

with a sanitized alias

who take for granted belonging;

here, a once proper British colony

turned lately cosmopolitan

and welcoming to all.

Accepted, but still wary

of human nature

its fear of strangers

and tendency to demonize,

even though I'm blue-eyed

and nicely anglicized

and not at all religious,

with a simple name, like Black or White

that wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

And cleverly disguises

the sense of displacement

5000 years of history must surely have conferred;

abiding in the bone

the marrow

the DNA,

a non-negotiable birthright

5 letters can't obscure.

I've often found myself explaining the origin of our family name, since people naturally assume that it's English – even without that third (and unnecessary!) “e”. And I find that in so doing, I take a certain pride in the distinction it implies. This is a good example of the “narcissism of small difference” that can confer a comforting sense of identity, but just as often through human history has led to division.

But this distinction is also misleading, because my family background is Jewish, not Dutch, and Groen gives no hint of this.

I'm a fundamentalist atheist. I don't practice the religion. I don't live in anything close to a Jewish community. I feel as Canadian as they come. But I'm also very aware of this cultural/familial/historical identity, and when called upon will self-identify as “Jewish”. (Or perhaps, more accurately, “Jew-ish”; or at least as a culinary Jew, fond of brisket and bagels and blintzes and borscht!) Behind this is an acute awareness of how “my people” have a history of exclusion and persecution. And along with this comes an underlying but persisting sense that my acceptance here – or anywhere, really – will always be provisional: that one can only be so assimilated, and any kind of descent of society into illiberalism means I will not be free to define and redefine myself. This is the fallacy of the quantum of blood, and has much to do with absurd ideas of contamination and purity. It applied not only in Nazi Germany, but in the racist south of the US as well.

So this poem explores identity, and my sometimes uneasy sense of it; the narcissism of small difference; our stubborn xenophobia (I say “stubborn” because evolutionary biology makes a good argument that it's baked into our DNA); and the provisional nature of acceptance and assimilation even I sometimes feel.

My family originally immigrated through the port of Saint John. My penchant for accuracy compelled me to include that line, one I suspect a good editor would call unnecessary.. But this is an interesting name: the only city in the world in which the “Saint” is spelled out instead of expressed as “St.” And I think that deeply white-bread name – with the Christian “Saint” and blandly Biblical “John” -- gives added weight to some of the poem's themes.

I think “Green” is invariably English, but with a name like Brian Patrick Hart Green, I can easily be mistaken for someone of Irish heritage. Hence the line we were not English or Irish, but Dutch. And, of course, the colour green is so strongly associated with the Emerald Isle.

The reference to wooden shoes and frugality might seem like parody or prejudice. But the only authentic Dutchman I know – my old paddling buddy Wim Smits (yes, his nickname was “Swim Mitts”!) – was born in Holland and is very proud of his heritage: and he not only actually does possess and recalls wearing wooden shoes, he takes well-justified pride in his sober frugality.