By Charles C. W. Cooke
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Of late, a question has been rattling around in the
vacant corners of my mind: When, precisely, in the course of transmutation,
does a person who was not born in America truly become an American?
Having been through the process of leaving my country of
birth, establishing myself as a legal permanent resident in the United States,
and then receiving American citizenship, I can conceive of several useful
answers to this inquiry. At present, though, my preferred conclusion is rather
eccentric: From what I can tell, it happens 14 years after one emigrates, at
the bar of the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant at JFK’s Terminal 4.
In one sense, I have always felt somewhat “American.”
Since I can remember, I have wanted to live in the United States — and not as a
disinterested outsider or as a peripatetic expat or as a bloodless academic,
but as a fully vested member of the club. At the age of three, after my first
vacation across the Atlantic, I announced as much to my parents, who,
understandably, assumed that I was simply conflating my newfound affection for
Disney World and a desire to reside in the country that houses it. But I wasn’t.
Somehow, even then, I just knew: America, that Shining City on a Hill,
was where I wanted to be.
At 26, I finally made the move. Relative to many
immigrants, I was fluent in American from the moment I landed. I knew a good
amount about the country’s history, ideas, and Constitution; I understood most
of its alternative English words; and, having made more than 20 trips there
prior to relocating, I had traveled to a respectable number of its states.
Nevertheless, I was an alien. Had I been granted citizenship immediately upon
entry, I would not have been a nuisance to the body politic, but I would certainly
have been identifiable as a stranger. I did not know the rules of baseball or
football or hockey. I could not have passed an American driving test or have
explained to a newcomer how to pay at a gas station. I did not reflexively add
tax to every item I saw for sale. I had little experience of the nation’s
holiday traditions. And, above all else, I was still self-conscious of being in
an uncanny valley in which things seemed familiar and out of focus at the same
time.
By 2018, all that had changed: my spellings, vocabulary,
knowledge, and cultural and political assumptions were all American. I had
begun to look, think, and present myself more like an American. And, to tie me
to the soil, I had an American wife, two American children, and an American
mortgage to boot. At the first chance I got, I applied for U.S. citizenship,
and, after my ceremony was complete, I officially became an American — with a
certificate and a little flag on a stick to prove it.
And yet — how can I put this comprehensibly? And yet,
at some ineffable level, I remained acutely aware that I had moved from
somewhere else.
Perhaps that sounds rather silly. After all, I did
move from somewhere else. I will always have moved from somewhere else.
Like the raising of the Rocky Mountains, that is an immutable, unalterable,
irreversible fact.
Back then, though, it was a fact that was still very much
at the front of my mind. Back then, I still conceived of myself as an
Englishman who had become an American. This is not to say that I still felt
predominantly English. Nor is it to imply that I had any regrets whatsoever
about becoming an American. Rather, it is to say that I was still consciously
aware of the change — as one is when one wears a new pair of jeans or sports a
new hairstyle or drives a recently purchased car. I was, in my mind’s eye, Charles
the Immigrant American, rather than simply Charles the American. When,
occasionally, I went back to England to see family, I was able to slot right
back in as if I’d never left.
Seven years later, this is no longer the case. Now, when
I visit England, I see it from the outside — from an American perspective. Now,
it is America that feels familiar, and everywhere else that feels foreign. Now,
American is my default posture, and there are no others available to me. Now —
and I understand that this may sound peculiar — I habitually forget that I
haven’t been an American all along.
I don’t mean to imply by this that I have become
delusional, that I have developed amnesia, or that, in some iconoclastic or
Gatsby-esque sense, I have seen fit to rewrite my past. I was born in England.
I spent the first quarter century of my life there. Heck, I still have an
English accent! But, in my mind’s eye, it is now America, not England, that is
where I am “from.” Twenty years ago, “Kentucky” seemed exotic, exciting,
remote; now, it’s just Kentucky — a part of my country. Once, dollars seemed like
monopoly money; now, for purposes exciting and alarming, they are my currency.
As a newcomer, “fourth grade” was a blank abstraction that could have meant
anything; now, I know which of my kids’ friends are in that class, and I’m
starting to forget what system the British use. I was not, if I may adapt
Shakespeare, to this manner born. But I am to this manner accustomed, and it
was, of all places, when sitting in the aforementioned Buffalo Wild Wings that
it became clear to me just how strongly accustomed I have now become.
I was on my way back from London to Jacksonville. There
was a good while left to wait before my connecting flight, and so, in search of
a burger and a beer and a place to hang out for a couple of hours, I wandered
in and sat down at the bar. As is common, there were TVs everywhere — each one
tuned to a sporting event or sports-themed talk show — and, as the sounds from
those TVs came wafting over me, I had the most extraordinary feeling: I was
Home. Do not misunderstand me: There was nothing particularly eloquent or
captivating being said on the screens. Nobody was reciting the Gettysburg
Address or translating À la recherche du temps perdu or announcing that,
after several decades of study, they had invented perpetual motion. It was just
the usual noise: “In New York, Rodón is perfect through seven.” “Here are the
five keys for the Knicks tonight.” “How will the Jaguars’ decision to trade up
for Travis Hunter affect their need for a stronger offensive line?” But here’s
the thing: It was my noise. I knew what all those words meant. I cared
as much about them as the people saying them. And — crucially — so did everyone
else at the bar.
Around me, American accents of different sorts chattered
happily away. Some discussed their destinations — Denver, Los Angeles, Atlanta,
Coeur d’Alene. Others asked for the “check” or wanted to know what was on
“draft.” Across the bar, a couple disagreed about where they should go for
dinner when they got back to Spokane that night. Whatever. The details didn’t
matter. What mattered was that all this babble was in the correct key. It was
recognizable, common, comfortable, secure.
From time to time, my children have asked me what I would
do if there were a war between the United States and Britain. In answering, my
first instinct has been to insist that this will never happen — which is true,
but which is also a dodge. Once pushed, I have had to admit to them — and to
myself — that, absent some extraordinary circumstances that I cannot imagine, I
would fight on the American side. Partly, this is because I take my oath of
citizenship seriously. Partly, this is because my wife and children and home
and work and friends are here. But it is also because, if I force myself to
imagine such a thing, I imagine that, nowadays, I would feel like a stranger in
a British trench. My life — practically, culturally, ideologically,
experientially — simply is not like those of the British people I grew up with.
Their habits are not my habits. Their conceits are not my conceits. Their
worries are not my worries. Their countrymen are not my countrymen. And their
government is not my government. Bluntly put: Britain is a foreign country to
me, America is not, and, in a war, my first instinct would be to fight for my
own nation. I will readily confess that, in this particular context, I find my
shift in thinking pretty harrowing to consider. To be placed in this position
would be to be dropped into an ersatz civil war, in which child was pitted
against parent and sibling was cast against sibling. But it is what it is.
I ought not to overstate my case, for, as complete as my
Americanization has been, there do remain a couple of complications that do not
fit neatly into my account.
The first is musical. Like many English-born people, I
have a deep-seated attachment to pieces such as Nimrod (from Elgar’s Enigma
Variations) and the hymn “Jerusalem” (based on a poem by William Blake) —
both of which I associate specifically with the heroic British resistance in
World War II, and, more generally, with Britain’s many virtuous contributions
to the world. Even now, if you were to put on either piece of music, I would be
instantly transported somewhere that lies beyond my rational mind. It is
possible — probable, in fact — that this instinct is hard-coded into me at such
a depth that it will never go away.
The second is sporting. Despite having been in America
for 14 years, I remain a devoted fan of the English soccer team — yes, even
when that team plays the United States. Intellectually, I resent this. It
makes me feel treacherous or unassimilated or ungrateful. In every other
aspect, I have embraced my new home. Why can’t I shift my affections in this
one? This failure is made even worse by the fact that, when I lived in Britain,
I wholeheartedly agreed with those politicians who insisted that immigrants
from the Commonwealth ought to stop supporting the cricket teams of the nations
from which they had moved and transfer their sympathies to England’s national
side. Once, this seemed self-evident to me. Today, having been in that position
myself, I think it’s a pipe dream.
Still, if those are my main sins against the American
creed, then I suppose I haven’t done too badly. For every breach of custom, I
have effected a hundred observances, such that, over time, and in the same way
that the Merychippus evolved into the horse, I have become in practice
what I am on paper, and made as good as I can on those two little words that
all Americans thrill to hear when they clear the right side of the border:
“Welcome home.”
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