Today, my mom picked me up from a Writing Club meeting. I climbed in and placed my backpack on my lap. Car rides have always been where we have our deepest conversations and I knew she was going to ask me whether the aftermath of the election had led to taunts or harassment in the hallways.
I told her that it hadn’t. Today, as surreal as it feels, had been strangely normal. It was rainy. I mastered “Danny Boy” on the piano, struggled through an hour and a half of AP Economics, and ate a stale sandwich during lunch. That was all.
My mom had looked relieved. Five minutes later, she mentioned offhandedly, her voice still wavering, “I guess this means this isn’t completely our country.”
I retorted, “Of course it is! It’s always been our country.”
Hours later, I still keep thinking about what she said. In a way, I think we both had been right. This country isn’t completely ours, because it doesn’t completely belong to just us. It belongs to a myriad of different ethnicities, religions, and races. No one has claim to all of the United States.
And yet, I was right, too.
English isn’t my first language, but it flows smoother in my mouth than Punjabi. I immigrated to the United States when I was five, but this country’s history resonates with me in a way I can’t articulate. I’m American. This is my home.
I wasn’t sure how to put this to my mother, but here it is—
Mama, you’re American, too. There are going to be hardships, of course, and maybe we will suffer from a rise in Islamophobia. But a lost election doesn’t make this country any less of a home.
Mama, the United States has gone through terrible, twisted times before: slavery, segregation and Jim crow laws, the internment camps, the post 9/11 rise in hate crime. But it still made it through and it made it out better.
I can’t predict the future, Mama, and I can’t tell you everything will fall into place, but I think—I know—we will make it through. We will make it through every step of the way, because we belong here, despite what a political pundit says and despite the sneers a bigoted neighbor will throw our way.
We have always belonged here, Mama.
And we are always, always going to.