Where are you from?
Most people can answer that question in a flash, without sputtering Hmmms and Huhs.
I am always stumped.

Citizen of the World. Home in the USA.

I was born in Peru to a Bolivian mother and a German father. Went to German schools all over South America and moved to the United States at 13. Where am I from? I still can’t answer. When I close my eyes, when I dream, I am Hispanic. My name is oh-so-German. So is my passport. And yet I’ve now lived in the United States all my life.

I look like a “Yankee” (not the baseball kind, the gringa kind). No one expects me to be fluent in Spanish, a fact with an element of surprise which has come in very very handy in Guatemalan markets, in New York neighborhoods. Most recently at a New England carnival it got me an extra free ride on the ferris wheel because the Mexican ride operator laughed hysterically when I swore in Spanish as I stubbed my toe getting into the little cage seat.

I feel the immigrant experience (and debate) wholeheartedly.
Straddling two, even three, cultures. Two, even three continents.

But America is my home now.
My family has true-blue USA July 4th traditions: a ceremonial raising of the American flag, a neighborhood parade, a Jello-flag cake.
With a deep sense of good fortune and gratitude for living in a country where my tutti-frutti background is welcome.

On the 4th of July I celebrate. I celebrate a country of immigrants, assimilated to form a whole that is so much greater than the sum of its multicultural parts. A country where choices are our own.

It’s OK to love ceviche and sauerkraut and Jello-flag cake.
(Not together!)

Are you tutti-frutti too?