From 30,000 Feet

Looking down through the clouds I see my island. My hand performs a little wag back and forth as I say a temporary good-bye to my little patch of the world. The passenger next to me grins and pretends not to notice my childish little flap. The jet engines begin to churn and in an instant I have left the fine detail of life: the boat with the dodgy engine moored at our dock; the dog curled up on the welcome mat outside the front door; the hung laundry that flutters in the wind; the renskav (thin slices of reindeer meat) that needs defrosting for dinner; the unsorted papers heaped in my study. Soon our view is great swathes of soft white in the midst of which I should be able to sit back and luxuriate in being served.

Yet there is something tugging at my heart strings: a process that I have been going through that started during the days leading up to my departure. I crunch on the peanuts of the first beverage service and reflect on what this might be. I was not raised to be sentimental about leaving places and moving to new homes. After a quick skim through my various passports, the passport control guard at Arlanda summarized my life succinctly: "Wow! A real cosmopolitan - you must feel right at home at the airport!"  I glance around me at all of the people hurriedly rushing around in the eternal state of transition that airports represent. Who can ever feel at home in an airport?  I point out gently that I am a newly anointed Swede and that I love this country just as I love my other home, America.

Suddenly, over the tomato juice I realize what it is that is throwing a spanner in the works of what could otherwise be eight hours of holiday. Any of you who lives between Sweden and America or two other spiritual homes will recognize it. There is that little weepy feeling of leaving people and places that you treasure behind - even if it is for a short while - which eventually culminates in the great leap that happens once you are through the security check.  Here you are in a transition zone where the place that you were in shows only traces of itself through moose and cloudberry memorabilia. Eventually that is gone too and there you are with the tomato juice asking yourself "who am I? Am I Swedish? Am I American? Which bits of me are and are not? Can I reconcile these very different pieces of myself?"

As the stewardess pops the usual "chicken or beef" question the voice of reason steps into my thoughts. Is this longing for a great inner reconciliation of cultures so important? Why? After all, I will still be here if I do not manage. It isn't a life threatening issue. Then I think back to all of the letters I have received from my kind readers who often raise different dimensions of this existential question of belonging and wonder how they can resolve it. Unless we are all of us just sentimental sops it is an issue.

Speeding high above the globe where sweeping perspectives of mankind seem more easily achieved, I realize that this type of two-country existence has only been possible during the last few decades of human existence on earth. It isn't something that we have been naturally evolved to assimilate despite the fact that we are possibly the most highly adaptable species on this planet. In other words, I am not just an old sentimental sop for thinking about this question and if you are ever struck by it, neither are you.

Each of us who belongs to more than one culture has different ways of working through the "who am I" question. The elderly Polish couple next to me chatters in the unending sentences that Polish syntax seems to offer. They take their coffee black with mounds of sugar as Polish people do. Yet when the turkey sandwiches and potato chips are served up, they enthusiastically dig into this dish of their adoptive home. When the immigration forms are passed out they smile broadly revealing their many gold fillings and hold up their American passports. They seem steadfast in their old culture and at the same time greet their newer one with gusto. It is their way of overcoming the sadness of partings and the stark transition that must happen in order to function in another place.

I take my coffee a spartan Swedish black and tune into the Obama-Clinton debate going on amongst some American passengers in the seats behind. Perhaps each of us who has experienced the wrench of moving between cultures has a special contribution to make to this world. There is a purpose in the division because it creates the drive in us to unify. In doing so, we draw the world into ourselves and it becomes one on our little inner islands of individuality. Who am I? I am the place where cultures meet and where the world is healed. So too are you.

The Immigration official at Newark stamps my American passport and hands it back to me. He looks into my eyes and sees that I have been a woman in transition. The inimitable words of US Immigration follow me as I return to my other home: "Welcome back, ma'am."