Ramblings On the Fence

Yesterday we drove 50 miles each way to see Rabbit-Proof Fence, an Australian movie based on a true story. From the 1930’s through the 1970’s the Australian government stole children of mixed blood, half white settler, half aboriginal, and trained them to be domestic servants. Those among these “half-castes,” as they were called, who were fair-skinned enough, were educated and incorporated into white society. The movie traces the story of three young girls who ran away from their de-humanizing training facility and walked 1200 miles home, along the rabbit-proof fence that stretches through Australia. At the end, the viewers see two of the three surviving women, the oldest Molly, now 85.

The blurb at the end of the film tells us this: Molly grew up, married and had two children of her own, and she and her children were re-captured. She journeyed back home again, carrying her younger child. She never saw the older one again. Her daughter wrote a book about her mother, which was then adapted for the screen by Phillip Noyce.

At its core, this is a movie about the intense longing for home and family. Though no one I know came to America under the horrific circumstances portrayed in the movie, to some degree all of us can identify with this strong drive within all of us. This need comes from wanting to be in a place where you are not the only different entity in a sea of sameness. Where we can look and sound and be the way we are, without making adjustments. That is the conundrum of the immigrant experience. How do we transcend our differences? Should we? Should we want to?

In a country that values assimilation as much as America does, especially now, this question often gets buried under mortgage and families and travels and the million things we do to live. But sometimes, the longing for home, despite reason and sanity and the best advice, rears its head.

People try and clothe this in practical terms. We can let servants do the chores in India and concentrate on living. India has the Internet and cell phones and cool people we can hang out with. Our children will get a truer sense of their heritage by living there. Indian doctors are great, with their intuitive sense and good humor.

But when you peel back the layers, the only thing that remains is: I want to go home. In our early youth, we longed for adventure and being different and chasing new horizons. Now as we settle into predictable lives with homes and spouses and children and dogs, our thoughts turn to home. Many immigrants are trapped in this twilight zone of living life in America while their hearts and souls belong in other countries.

But our lives are complicated. We do like living here. We came here for a reason, of our free will. We came here looking for something. And like Dorothy, when we found it, the only thought left was of home. We want to clack our ruby shoes together and be transported home, in an instant.

But is the place we long for home, or a memory of home and how things used to be? Is it a tribal, immigrant longing for familiarity and dignity and culture and its knowledge? Or is it just a desire to be in a place where you can truly fit in?

Because America despite its melting pot is distinctly geared toward the WASP reality. Everyone who is not that, exists to some degree, on the fringes. While we are students and starting out in our careers this divide seems surmountable. But as we settle back into real life, we see ourselves and America on opposite sides of a see-through fence.

This fence divides our world into us and them, America and home. But perhaps the two meet in the middle. On that razor-wire edge, tenuous and slender, surely there is a place where America and home converge. Perhaps that is why we stay. Looking for that elusive place that can also be called home.