If I was asked twenty-five years ago,
“What is the most difficult thing you have needed to adjust to in the U.S.?” I would’ve answered,
“The weather.” The first place I lived in the U.S. was Arizona. Arizona’s dry weather was powerful enough to turn pine needles into hazardous objects that could puncture and deflate bicycle tires. I sensed that my skin would harden like an alligator’s. I never knew that climate affected me so much. I wasn’t alone; I heard rumors like “A Singaporean who went to college in Chicago lost all his hair and went back to his home country.” You never know how your body will react to a new environment.
Most native English speakers that I met in the U.S. thought that English would be the biggest challenge for me. Maybe it was, but I wasn’t concerned about it as much as I should’ve been. We, the foreigners in the U.S., certainly experience some inconveniences due to language barriers, however, it isn’t essential to sustain our lives. Even when I didn’t speak very much English, it wasn’t difficult to survive; I could buy things as long as I had money or a credit card. I would occasionally go to a sushi restaurant, drink sake. I read Japanese books while eating Japanese snacks. Life was good enough without much English.
Sure, there were many mishaps due to my poor English. When I discussed my “career”, my American colleagues thought I was talking about “carrier” and were confused. Once at the supermarket, I asked for salmon, and was given sirloin steak. At a restaurant, I asked for coffee and was served coke. But I laughed, shook off any embarrassment and moved on. After all, America was a foreign country to me, and such things should be expected to happen to a non-native speaker of English.
If you had asked me the same question fifteen years ago, I would’ve answered,
“Intellectual deprivation.” I was so busy with work and my kids that I didn’t have time to read anything. I felt as if a part of my brain went dormant, and also felt that I’d lost part of who I was. When I read anything, it calmed down my mind, and I felt that I’d regained a balance in my head. In a way, reading became my meditation.
About that time, I also became concerned about how I was perceived by others. As a mother, I wanted to represent my daughter and be an advocate for her. As a result, I had to admit, although reluctantly, that a better command of English would definitely help in that regard. I wanted to be recognized as a decent person and gain the respect of others. So, I started learning English with a new purpose: not just to survive or make money, but to gain power in the American society.
Trying to kill two birds with one stone, I stopped reading books in Japanese, and started reading exclusively in English; to learn new things and make my brain happy, and to learn English at the same time.
You realize what you don’t have as soon as you start learning something new. If you start playing tennis for the first time, you realize that you don’t know how to grab a racket, for example. I didn’t know many things about English, but the most striking gap was nouns; I didn’t recognize proper names. If someone asked me,
“Do you know Van Gogh?” My initial answer was “No.” Then, later in the conversation I realized that I did know the famous impressionist painter. I didn’t recognize it at first, because in Japanese, we call him “Ban Gohho” and I couldn’t imagine that Van Gogh and Ban Gohho are the same person. This goes for music pieces, plant names, any names, actually. So, I started paying attention to how names were pronounced in English.
And then verbs. Why do they have to change forms like from “take” to “took” to “taken”? Why isn’t the present perfect tense the same as the past tense? What’s the difference between “I have had an apple.” and “I had an apple.”? The fact is the same either way: the apple is now in my stomach!
I’ve read an article a week for the last ten years. I know more names, but still struggle with the finer points in English grammar, especially in conversation where I don’t have time to check and correct in advance what I’m going to say. But it’s fine, knowing tennis doesn’t make you a great tennis player. Language is the same.
Maybe this is to be expected, but the longer I live in the U.S., the more American my issues have become. Health insurance was a big and expensive issue when we didn’t have a corporate employee in the house. The financial crisis and the mortgage crisis. Although I’m still technically Japanese, I feel pretty much part of America.
Our longstanding challenge in recent years has been saving money for our children’s college. I understand that college education comes at a cost. However, I know that educating America’s children will be good for America’s future. So, why do they make it so expensive? When the pursuit of happiness is written into the U.S. constitution, why do they make it so hard to access college education? And who are they?
Of course, I’m part of them. As a parent, I want a good and safe learning environment for my kids, ideally with a cafeteria that serves healthy food. However, it is not fair that some young and promising kids need to forgo their college education due to the expense of it.
When America becomes the homeland where your family lives, then your challenge becomes not just yours but your next generation’s. When I came to the U.S. twenty-five years ago, I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to provide a college education to my children.
American or non-American, legal or illegal immigrants, this is a challenge that most parents face in the U.S. I feel strangely American and sad when I say this,
“Providing our kids with college education is an American dream. And hard work alone may not get us there.”