My First Flight, Part II

I wrote recently whether I would get on that Delta flight again as I did in 1978 to come to America, knowing what I know today. And my answer shocked many.

Unless you have left everything behind that you loved and knew, it would be hard for most people to understand the fundamental transformation that a person has to undergo in order to survive well in this country and become an American citizen.

The immigrants to America in those times were legal and had to undergo rigorous scrutiny by American authorities and by medical authorities in order to be allowed into the country. The immigrant had to prove that he/she had the means to support themselves or be supported by a spouse. The government did not want to support any immigrants with welfare.

As the plane from JFK landed in the middle of pastures, at a nowhere southern airport in the dark, and as we drove from that tiny airport another 45 minutes with nothing but fields, cows, and the occasional deer on both sides of the deserted country roads, I felt a sinking feeling of despair and grave loss. What have I done?

I started questioning immediately the sanity of my decision to leave my country which is what most human beings would do. I was hungry, thirsty, and I had a pit in my stomach the size of a rock. I just wanted to get back on that plane and fly back to my hometown, to my parents, to my friends, to everything I knew well.

I spoke British English which I learned in school, and the southern accent and idiomatic expressions I did not know threw me for a loop constantly until I learned the meanings of southern American English.

People ate strange and different foods, and got angry with me if I declined to consume their meals. Many were shocked and insulted when I refused abruptly certain generous offers as the cultural differences and values came into play. Nobody understood my culture, where I came from, what I spoke, where my country was on the map, and I did not understand their values and southern culture. Nobody was willing to allow me plenty of time to learn and adjust.

The fact that Europeans are blunt in their answers did not go well with the very diplomatic southerners who often hide their true meanings and feelings with sugar-coated phrases. Like the Germans say, if you are not prepared to hear the honest answer, do not ask Germans how they feel.

Trying to be American in a country where I was a foreigner at best to the locals and a permanent resident alien to the government, was very hard. And I was homesick every day, crying in a room away from prying eyes and ears.

I was told by in-laws that my marriage to their son in the Orthodox Church did not count, I needed to marry again in the Baptist Church otherwise our children would be bastards.

My dad had spent thousands to dollars on our very lavish wedding after the official marriage in St. John’s Cathedral in my hometown, marriage performed by four priests, and my new ‘relatives’ thought it necessary that we re-marry here. The in-laws contributed nothing to the wedding and it took my daddy years to save the kind of money he spent on our wedding.

The adjustment to being stuck in the country, ten miles away from a tiny town, population 3,000, no means of transportation, no public transportation, no ability to drive on my part, no money, no job, further exacerbated my adaptation misery and struggle. I would have gone back, had I had the money and the means to do so.

The ranch house was about a tenth of a mile from the gate and the road and from there the closest store was about a mile on a gravel road at the intersection with a paved highway. This store carried necessities such as milk, bananas, ice cream, flour, sugar, etc. But I had no money.

My parents never called because international calls were very expensive for them and I could not call either because I did not have money and I lived in my in-laws’ house.

International calls in 1978 were about $10 for three minutes after 7 p.m. and, after placing an order for the call with the operator, I had to wait 24 hours to be connected. When the operator did connect, she would call me and tell me that she has my Romanian party on the line and I could talk. The calls often sounded garbled as if they were coming from the bottom of the ocean. Little did I know that the telephone cables back then did run at the bottom of the Atlantic.

So most of my connecting with my parents was through letters which took weeks to arrive. Did I tell them the truth of my situation? Of course not, I was too proud to admit that I was in an awful situation by my own making, everything my father had brought into question about my future husband and the rich in-laws had turned out miserably true.

A couple of ladies who befriended me at church drove me a few times into the small town nearby and one of them gave me a gift I will never forget, a $20 pair of Wrangler jeans. I never forgot Gayle’s generosity. I had no money so $20 was a fortune to me. The minimum wage then was $3.10 an hour.

I eventually earned my driver’s license and was able to drive to town to a minimum wage job. I was the most educated in that office and the lowest paid. I did not mind because my monthly salary was so much bigger than anything that I could have earned in Romania. And I was completely broke without this job.

Four years later I became an American citizen, but, to do so, I had to give up my Romanian documents, I was not allowed to have double citizenship.

To say that I have lost my roots over the years, would be an understatement. I have longed and still do for the wonderful places and customs I grew up with.

I hated communism, and escaping it, and the sacrifices I made to be here, was the freedom which I gifted to my children. Do they appreciate that? I don’t think so because they have never set foot in Romania as adults. If they had done so, they would not have been able to understand what I escaped from because the communist dictatorship had been long gone, following the 1989 Revolution.

Through me, my mom was able to get freedom as well and she escaped communism two years later. Unfortunately, they did not allow my dad to leave and he died under the communist boot and regular beatings.

One of my adult children told me recently that I benefited all my life of “white privilege,” repeating the leftist construct she had been indoctrinated with. If she had only seen what I had experienced in order to become an American citizen by choice, and what parts of my soul and mind I had to give up in order to survive in a foreign land, surrounded by foreign people, foreign customs, foreign food, foreign religions, no friends, and hostile in-laws, she might have understood. Telling someone about pain and suffering endured is not the same as experiencing it.

As the years passed, the country where I found relative freedom, pursued higher education, had children, bought a home, started changing more and more in the direction of Marxism. A large number of American citizens started praising socialism and communism and pursued the destruction of capitalism, the very capitalism which gave them a good life, better than any other country in the world.

In light of political developments in the last fifteen years, the rest of my life in America will be spent under a combination of global Marxism and corporate fascism, not a good prospect for anybody.

Would I get on that Delta flight again to come to the U.S.A. for freedom, to escape communism? Had I known that I would have to spend my golden years under Marxist/corporatist tyranny in America, my answer would be no. However, I would have missed the love of my life to whom I am still married today.