America is an Idea

Hospitals were still surreal to Mr. and Mrs. Volkov. While it jarred them to have to pay for health services, the cleanliness and professionalism of the staff was miles above anything they saw in the old Soviet Union. Escaping to the West with the collapse of the U.S.S.R, the ideals of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity rose from an impossible dream to an awe-inspiring reality.

In this hectic environment, Mr. Volkov’s weak English could not keep track of what the doctors and nurses were saying, but the vitals monitor showed no sign of distress, and he muttered an old prayer to put himself at ease. He watched helplessly as Mrs. Volkov gave the last agonizing labor pushes in her marathon eight hours of labor to bring their first little girl into the world. He saw his little girl’s face, born an American. She would never have to deal with the stifling ideology of the old country, none of the nepotism, none of the geriatrics vying for power in their little political games. They eschewed giving her a name from the motherland, wanting her to feel at ease here and avoid being seen as foreign. They named her Kate. Here anyone could be anyone they want, regardless of race, class, or religion. This nation was different. America is a land of freedom.

America is an idea.

They moved out of their small apartment and into a suburb. They worked with a realtor who expounded about the importance of being in an area with “good schools”. It didn’t take them long to realize they were also talking about other things. They shrugged off the contradictions of the new community and told themselves that they had much worse euphemisms in their old land. What was important now was getting their little girl the best the new country had to offer. She would learn the new land’s creeds, mythologies, and values. She would learn that…

America is an idea.

The little girl grew up and her proud parents posed with her for pictures of her first day at school. Her hair was braided like a country girl while her wide smile showed a gap between her front teeth. She swung her lunchbox proudly as she waited for the school bus, lined up behind several other children, all with backpacks of superheroes, Barbies, and popular cartoons. No one had any article of clothing that was more than five years old, no accessory that was not bought at the store just this year. They were mind, body, and soul in the current day. She looked just like them, and while her slight accent gave her away a someone a little foreign, the others thought it weird for a moment, then didn’t pay it any heed afterwards. After all…

America is an idea

She passed through the elementary grades like every other child, and now in fourth grade she learned the history of the country in more detail. She learned of the fight for independence from the British, the great battles for equality, and how even the founders couldn’t make the dream fully happen. There was still slavery, women couldn’t vote, the rich oppressed the poor. As the tale of America progressed, every time there would be some improvement, but angry, ignorant people would be in the way of progress. The South was always showing its irrational and arbitrary hatred of blacks, the backwards country folk would have to be corrected by the more enlightened educated classes, and the Robber Barons would have to be brought to heel by a government that had the people’s interests at heart. She learned that, even when the nation sometimes failed to live up to its ideals…

America is an idea

As she matured with this new model of the world, she saw her own family’s traditions with new eyes. Instead of loving the incense, atmosphere, and tradition of her family’s Russian Orthodox Church, she saw the oppression the ancientinstitution allowed. It was patriarchal, not allowing women priests. It was xenophobic, worrying about only a specific ethnic group. It was insular, not worried about the causes of social justice but only about salvation of the individuals who walked into its doors. The world was full of grand causes, and they refused to think big. She grew more distant from the liturgy and her heritage. After all such things should not define who you are. Here you could be whoever you wanted to be.

America is an idea.

Her grades were excellent, excellent enough to get into Duke. Here she studied American Literature and became inundated with the new grand cause for equality: Gay Rights. She absorbed her lessons well, realizing that protest, peaceful and otherwise, was as American as apple pie. It was only through making oneself heard that real change happened in this world. She repudiated her religion, and repudiated her home country as backwards bigots as her parents shook their heads and told themselves it was just a phase. She took all the other popular causes with equal ferocity. They said she would go back to Church and settle down once she found a husband after seeing her at smother herself in blood to protest a pro-life senator. They said once she had a child, things would go back to normal when she chained herself to a tree to protest climate change. It was just a weird phase youth go through in the country as young adults find themselves and realize how….

America is an idea

Kate did find a man, Alex, a pre-law student who was handsome with great academic potential, both of them with locked the same mind of activism though his being more reserved and calculating. They moved in together after two months, and continued dating for a year before she introduced him to her family. Her parents were relieved at his stability and class, though their ideology and moral framework was as foreign to them as ever. As the mother started planning the deep and beautiful wedding in her mind, the two went to the courthouse and got married on a whim. She texted her parents on the way to their impromptu honeymoon. She shrugged off the angry calls from her father as mother lay weeping on the bed. She told herself things were different here, and anyone could live the way she saw fit without all the fuss. After all…

America is an idea.

They graduated and a pregnancy came soon afterwards, far too early for their liking. Her husband, in a strange personal transformation, insisted on keeping the baby. Kate did on the condition Alex would raise him while she finished graduate school. Having no chips to bargain with at the table, he agreed. Thus their first-born, Michael, was born. Alex stayed home dutifully, if with a little bit of embarrassment as his wife finished up her Literature doctorate. She spent countless hours poring over Sylvia Plathe as her husband fed the baby in the other room. The baby grew older, and while Alex always talked about Michael’s mom, if he could think abstract thoughts at that young age, he would wonder if she really existed. Still, Kate thought it was strange to show such deference to one’s own child when there was so much oppression in the world. Blood relations shouldn’t matter more than others because…

America is an idea

Years passed, and Alex didn’t seem to have the same charm as before, and the few hours she spent in the house became more and more suffocating. While he embraced his new role, while she deep down seethed that he brought no money to the house, and being a professor at a local community college to pay the bills while writing her debut novel made it impossible to live in the area she wanted. She dreaded the thought of returning home to the same mundane routine into old age. She pitched her Alex her idea of an open marriage. He refused. She had an affair anyways. They divorced. Kate said it was all for the best. Everyone had the right to pursue their own personal happiness, as everyone told her…

America is an idea

Years later, her debut novel was received with great press fanfare, but only 1000 copies sold. The lecture circuit soon dried up, and she continued her work at the community college. Years passed, and the slow accumulation of age made her realize her dream of travelling in elite circles was becoming unreachable. Her son was now in High School and her ex-husband, ironically, remarried and joined his new wife’s Orthodox Church. He moved to a small town and was known to everyone there as a pillar of the community, though no one anywhere else would recognize his name. She grinned at his meagre station with those low-status hicks with their outdated ideas of tradition and rootedness after he once had so much potential. Kate, even as a lowly first-generation immigrant, understood better than him that….

America is an idea

Years passed, and ovarian cancer swept through her body. The prognosis for surviving was pessimistic, but not impossible. Kate didn’t care. She wanted to go out her own way, and the possibility of living didn’t override the very real possibility of wasting away. The state recently legalized euthanasia, and even her flimsy case was promptly accepted. She messaged Alex and Michael her intentions an hour before the appointed time, and they both stormed the hospital to try and stop her, breaking past security in a mad dash. She heard the commotion as the nurse gently injected the poison into her blood, and they arrived just in time to see…

America is an idea….

And it died with her.