I was born and raised in Los Angeles. When I was one year old, we moved from the city to the San Fernando Valley. I am a true Valley Girl. Even though I am a native Angelino, I never felt like I belonged here.
My parents moved to L.A. from Israel in the late 60s, before either my sister or I were born. Growing up in a house with immigrant parents played a big part in why I did not feel rooted here. After all, we did not have any family history here. Our family history was in Jerusalem; it was in Poland and Russia. It was not here in L.A. I am a big history buff. I love old things: antique furniture, archaeological artifacts (I wanted to be an archaeologist as a kid), buildings and houses with a history, people with stories to tell. I have always been attracted to the sense of being part of something larger than myself; of somehow being connected to other people whom I have never met. Perhaps this slight obsession with all things historical came about precisely because I had no sense of familial history here or perhaps this obsession is what caused me to be so aware of how unattached I was to Los Angeles in particular and the United States as a whole.
My father came from an old Jerusalem family. They date themselves in Jerusalem to roughly around the time of the Spanish Inquisition (1492), when the Jews were forced to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. His ancestors moved to Jerusalem, just prior to the era of the Ottoman rule there. I grew up hearing stories of my father's youth, of his father and grandfather who lived in the Old City, of what it was like to be part of an ever-growing nation, of the more well-to-do Jewish families who lived in his neighborhood of Rechavia, where you could always here a violin or piano being played as you walked down the street. These stories filled my mind with romantic ideas of truly belonging somewhere, of truly being part of a people and of a land.
My mother's story is the polar opposite. She was born to two Polish parents who fled Poland during the Nazi terror. They ended up in a Russian labor camp, where she was born, and where they remained until after the war. After six years and numerous countries, they finally made their way to the new country of Israel in 1949. My mother always felt that she had the stigma of new immigrant stamped on her. In Israel at the time (and possibly still today to an extent), there was a certain automatic nobility associated with having been born there; and the more generations back your family could go, the higher your status.
Even though so many of my schoolmates had parents from other countries (after all, America is also a country of immigrants), I still felt different somehow. In fact, even though I very obviously had perfect English, other kids in school often thought I was from France (not sure why France, but I liked it). And when I attended university in Israel, my fellow students often though I was Canadian: because I was "too nice to be from L.A." ;-). This just reinforced my sense of not belonging here.
In my search for roots, I moved to Israel after high school. I immediately fell in love. I lived in Jerusalem, I walked the streets my father had walked as a boy. His sister still lives in the same apartment building she and my father were born in, which their father had built. I would go on weekends to visit my maternal grandmother, aunt and cousins in the city where my mother grew up, Acco. Even without all this, I felt an intense sense of being part of history by just being in Israel. I'm not quite sure how any Jewish person can be there and not feel it. As detached as one might be from Judaism, all Jews are still part of the Jewish people's over 5000 years of history! Jerusalem is over 3000 years old, Acco is over 4000. Here in Los Angeles, I get excited by a house that was built in the 1920s or 1930s and still has its original charm, so you can imagine how something that is thousands of years old makes me feel.
I ended up moving back to L.A. The place I never felt I belonged in and vowed I would not raise children in, the country to which it was difficult for me to feel connected. The reason for my return here is in my previous posting, To My Dad, so I won't go into it now.
I lived 18 years here, moved away for a while and returned almost 10 years ago. That's a total of 28 years living here. I now am married with three amazing children. My mother and sister are here. My husband's family is here. And yet, it is still a little difficult for me to call it 'home'.
Recently, though, I experienced something I had never experienced before. I was at my father's house with my youngest, who is 19 months old. My little Adam was ambling around the house, exploring the rooms, running down the hallway. I was following him when it hit me: I was just a few months younger than he is now when my parents bought the house. That was me toddling around the house 37 years ago! That exact same house, those exact same floors (my father never remodeled - which is a whole other entry in itself). All of a sudden, I felt rooted. I had a history. My children are second generation Americans; they are second generation Angelinos!
So while my family does not go generations back in the United States, and our history here is relatively short, I still have a connection and a story of my own. I was born here, my children were born here, my father died and is buried here. Like the majority of American's, I will always have an attachment to another place, but I am also attached here. I also belong here.
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