In Which I Ponder Why I Love America

America Fever never runs quite so high as it does during the Olympics, I think. For a couple of weeks we're all cheering for the same team--Team USA--and the things that divide us the rest of the time seem to fall away just a little bit.

One of my favorite things about Team USA, though, is that sometimes you can't tell by the names (the last names, anyway) that they're American, because there's really no such thing as an "American" name in the sense that there are German names or Japanese names or Russian names. In figure skating alone, we've seen names like Yamaguchi, Lipinski, Boitano, and this year Shnapir and Castelli in the pairs competition.

Here are some of the reasons I love America:

I love that Simon Shnapir's father, a Russian Jew who with his wife immigrated to the U.S. when Simon was a toddler, has been making himself a very visible fan of Team USA in his big Uncle Sam hat.

I love the Coke ad with America the Beautiful in different languages, and I can't understand being offended by people from a variety of cultures thinking that America is beautiful. Shouldn't that make us proud, that people from all over the world want to make America their home?

I love that one of the men involved in the rescue of art plundered by the Nazis was German-born Harry Ettlinger, and in English that's still German-accented after all these years, he speaks of himself as an American, with obvious pride and undeniable patriotism.

I love that going out to dinner with my husband's cousins Anna and Beth and their families is like a League of Nations. Anna and her Venezuelan-born husband Jorge have four adopted daughters from Ethiopia, and Beth, whose husband Sam is from Japan, has two children (well, a teenager and a young adult) who are a perfect combination of Myers and Yamamuro, and bilingual to boot.

I love that Brandon Stanton, of Humans of New York, regularly captures moving stories of New Yorkers from all over the world who have come here for a better life--but certainly a favorite was Gac Filipaj, a refugee from the former Yugoslavia who worked as a janitor at Columbia University and went to school on his off hours for 12 years to earn a degree from the university that employed him.

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A few years ago, my son and I spent a wonderful afternoon at the Ellis Island Museum, and we couldn't help but be struck by the courage and optimism of the people who got on boats with a dream of a better life--many times with little money and a pretty tenuous grasp on the English language. In fact, my son's great-grandfather came through Ellis Island with his brother and his mother, who had been abandoned by the boys' father just before the ship set sail. 

America was not always kind to the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free--but the fabric of our country is woven through with the stories of religious pilgrims, slaves, refugees, and immigrants from all over the world, in addition to the Native Americans who were already here. 

I heard someone say once that America isn't really like a melting pot, which implies that everything melts together to become the same thing, but it's more like a big salad with lots of different ingredients that are separate and together are delicious. Where that analogy breaks down--or maybe where it's more honest than I'm entirely comfortable with--is when you think about the fact that there really are ingredients that some people put in a salad that you don't care much for.

My sister-in-law makes this wonderful spinach salad with candied walnuts and oranges and craisins (dried cranberries)--and I'll admit I pick around the craisins because I don't really like them. If one ends up on my fork, I'll eat it, but I would prefer not to. Same with that big salad that comes with your meal at Olive Garden--if an olive ends up on my plate, I will generally give it to my husband, because olives are one thing I just don't eat if I can help it.

But the thing is, there's a difference between not really liking craisins or olives and complaining that they shouldn't be there. Even as I'm picking them out, I realize that the issue is with me, not the salad or the individual ingredients.

I love this big salad that is America. With all its faults, it really is a wonderful country, with beautiful and amazingly diverse people.

"America, America, God shed his grace on thee

and crown thy good

with brotherhood

from sea to shining sea."