1865.

To confirm the actual date of the end of the Civil War, I consulted a history timeline. While the war officially ended in May of 1865, a series of events led up to the important day on which, in theory, a divided nation was reunited. This morning I came to an important realization: I am from nowhere. The date is February 16, 2010; the location is Boston, MA; the battleground is the train. Like the Civil War timeline, my own important date (today) is preceded by a list of previous events and circumstances that, while I didn't know it at the time, prepared and shaped me for the moment on the train. I call this moment my Civil Observation, which in turn led to the Realization that I am, in fact, from nowhere.


I grew up in South Florida in a true melting pot that included many different groups of people: Jewish, Indian, Asian, and Latin American (I didn't have a crush on a white, American, Protestant boy until I got to college). My parents are from New England, like so many Floridians, as if Florida used to be connected to Maine and, like so many New Englanders, sailed south one winter and never returned.

Though my company was mixed, I never thought growing up in Florida would be cause for an identity crisis - I spent weeks of the summer in Boston, which seemed the same as Florida except that my grandparents' house had a basement, my cousins said "wicked," and it got cold at night. I got teased for being chilly, and was asked in amazement what Christmas was like without any snow, but for the most part I fit in just fine.

When I moved to North Carolina for college and told people I was from Florida, they wanted to know where. I specified, "South Florida." Though we all know this means I grew up as geographically far south as you can grow up unless you swim over to Cuba from the Florida Keyes, I was not accepted as a Southerner. I was called a Yankee (definition: someone who lives in the North); a transplant (definition: someone who is from the North but moved to the South); and a halfback (definition: someone who is from the North, moves all the way down to Florida, then comes halfway back up the coast to the Carolinas). I was asked if my accent was from Chicago or New York. I was asked if we had ketchup in Florida. I didn't know what a pig pickin' was (I pronounced it "pig picking" - with a "g" - which was the first offense; the second was scrunching up my face in horror when I at last saw the pig on the grill, people pulling pieces off of it with plastic forks); I didn't know what shag dancing was (I'm still not entirely sure, but I believe it's like swing dancing to something called "beach music," which I don't entirely understand either, since when you grow up near the beach, everything is beach music); I spoke of barbeque as an event where people stand around a grill with chicken, shrimp, hamburgers, and hot dogs cooking (in the South, it is a cuisine. "Barbeque" varies by region, by sauce, with coleslaw or without, on a bun or on a platter, etc.); I only wear my string of pearls on very special occasions (most of the girls I knew would wear pearls every day to class, with a t-shirt, denim skirt, and flip-flops). I didn't quite fit in with my non-accent and lack of understanding of basic Southern traditions, but I was educated, cared for, and accepted, and when I hear "Carolina in My Mind" by James Taylor, I go there in my mind, too.

After college I moved to Boston. Here, I was even more confusing. Born to Northerners in Florida but spent the last four years in North Carolina - they decided I was a Southerner. They were confused because I didn't have an accent (I tried to explain, "I'm not from the South-South, I'm from South Florida..."). And without fail, as soon as people learn where I'm from, they want to know why I ever moved to Boston. They want to know all about the South ("How was that, going to school in the South?" as if I had been living in a lean-to hut with the Marine Corps, instead of in a dorm on a beautiful college campus reading, writing, and watching my team win the NCAA Championship in 2005). People don't understand why I've stayed, how my skin stays brown when the sun is hibernating, nor why I still own a pitiful winter wardrobe (a friend once stayed at my apartment in January, and when I told her to borrow something from my closet, exclaimed, "Where are your winter clothes? All I see are tank tops and flip flops!"). But for all they don't understand, and for all the stereotypes of crazy drivers, crazy liberals, and crazy Red Sox fans, I have been, as I was in North Carolina, educated, cared for, and accepted.

A few weeks ago at a party, I heard a woman say that the reason people never leave New England is that they go to the South, hear someone speak, and come right back up North. I said that was neither true, nor fair (Wasn't I educated in the South? Didn't I grow up fewer than 200 miles from Cuba? Aren't there people in Boston who speak as though they never learned to read?). This weekend I went to North Carolina to visit old friends and my beautiful campus. We walked into a gift shop and I saw a dish towel printed with the words, "We don't care how you do it up North." I live up North now. But I'm from down South, but not really down South, so I didn't know which side to choose. Regardless, it bothered me.

I have always lived somewhere else, been from somewhere else, and acted, looked, or sounded like someone from somewhere else, instead of the place where I'm from - which sometimes makes me feel like I'm from nowhere. Living somewhere else, always being from somewhere else, has conditioned me to cringe when people who have never lived anywhere else decide they have the right to define the rest of the world and make judgments from the comfort of the home they've never left. The last time I checked, there were idiots in every state, jerks in every state, arrogance in every state, accents in every state, customs in every state. And the last time anyone checked, this is what we supposedly celebrate about ourselves as Americans.

Listen, world: if the issue is your stereotypical ideas of the North or the South, get on a plane, live in a new place, create a life, meet new people, establish relationships and traditions - and then decide how you feel about that place. If the issue is the Civil War, build a bridge, get over it, and join the rest of us here on the other side of 1865.

This morning on the train, a very large woman with a very thick Boston accent (which, unless you're one of the Kennedys, is almost unintelligible) pushed her way through the doors, and stopped in front of where I was sitting, quietly reading my book (the man to my left was reading Tolstoy; the woman to my right was reading over my shoulder). She began to complain about the ignorance of the two men at the door, and how un-f-ing-believable it was that they hadn't moved enough out of her way. "Move out of the way! I'd like to get on too, ya know. They're just standing there by the doors. The ignorance here. I can't stand it. What if their mother walked in? Would they move out of the way then? I can't stand ignorance." I looked up and saw two Latino men standing quietly; my best guess is they moved a little to let her pass, but her girth didn't fit without a good shove. I looked back and forth between her and the two men, aghast, and she looked down at me and said, "Sorry, but it's just rude! I can't stand it."

In that moment I didn't have a home. I wasn't from the South because I was technically from the North; I wasn't from the North because I grew up in the geographical South, and because I have "Southern" manners, like not shouting that someone is ignorant when that person is standing two feet away from you. This was my Civil Observation - that people are at war with one another over things that happened in the 1800s, that people are still happy to live by stereotypes of places without ever leaving the tiny sphere of where they grew up, went to school, and settled down, and that as a person from neither the North nor the South, a person with a great appreciation for the lives I've lived in Florida, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., Italy, and Boston, I am watching the battle from the sidelines, from nowhere.

South Florida is nowhere. The idea of being from nowhere at first seems horrible - but I'm suddenly grateful that no person seems beneath me simply because of the place I was raised, because of the places other people are raised, because of the way they pronounce "car" or "picking" or "please," if they say "please" at all. I'm grateful that my parents don't refer to all people in the South as stupid, or to all people in the North as arrogant, and I'm grateful that the only line I've ever drawn in the sand is at the place where I feel the most at home: on the beach - any beach - looking out at the sea that we sometimes forget we all have in common.