I love where I live because it is full of lovely, interesting people who come from all over the place.
And some of them are also willing to absolutely humiliate themselves in the name of fun, which is an automatic A++ in my book. Because what is life without antics?
For my latest parody video, I was joined by my old friend Jennifer, another Jennifer (because it’s not a Gen X gathering without at least 2 Jennifers), a very brave male friend named Jon (I promised him a more retiring role, and I think he crushed it), and a new friend, Diane, whom I don’t even know well, and yet when I texted her asking on short notice if she wanted to be in a Taylor Swift parody video, she was like, What time do you want me there. So Diane and I are going to get along just fine.
Oh and of course, Kevin, who does most anything I ask him to do, and that is why we have been married for over 20 years.
Enjoy.
The husband of Jennifer #2 (she’s the blonde), who would probably have been in the video but was spared by a trip out of town, is Prithvi. Prithvi also happens to be the lead neighbor on our Welcome Connect team sponsoring a Ukrainian family to come to the US. I wrote a post about this a week or so ago, but you can read more about it and donate to our effort here. A big thank you to those who have donated!
I’ve always felt a strong pull toward refugees based on my own (privileged-American-girl) transition back to the US after growing up in Kenya. I didn’t flee anything, and I didn’t experience war or violence or loss on that magnitude. But I did experience loss, and I did grieve, and I did feel disoriented and overwhelmed at the speed, frenzy, and overabundance of American life. America is just so MUCH. And I can’t imagine refugees don’t also feel all of this a hundred fold.
It’s the grief—beyond the losses accrued from conflict or disaster—that I think most Americans don’t recognize in the refugee or the immigrant story, because they assume these newcomers are just so grateful to be here. And they almost always are. Americans assume the US is an objectively better, safer, nicer place to be, and often it is, and therefore there should be no sadness in being here. But people usually have an emotional connection to the places and people and cultures from whence they came, no matter the circumstances. Leaving the familiar, the place you feel belonging, the place you fit—it’s filled with grief.
Over the years, I’ve contributed to refugee causes periodically and looked, although not doggedly, for avenues through which to connect. So when Prithvi sent out an email to a bunch of us to see if we wanted to join his team through Welcome Connect to sponsor families immigrating to the US on Temporary Protected Status visas, I didn’t hesitate for a minute. I jumped at the chance.
Prithvi has worked very hard to learn about the program, connect with other sponsors, and organize our group of 5 to divvy up tasks to prepare for the arrival of Tatiana and Sergei in a few weeks. They will need everything—housing, jobs, healthcare, transport…the list goes on. But, I’m thinking mostly they might need friends, and I’m hopeful they will want to be ours for more than a few months. Selfishly, I hope this is a chance to make some new friends who have come from a different place and who have had experiences unlike mine—and like mine—and from whom I can learn and to whom I can connect. I hope they will feel welcome and comfortable in our presence. I feel like that’s the highest compliment you can get from another person.
This experience also got me thinking about Prithvi himself. I’ve known him and Jennifer for several years—their son used to hang out a lot with my daughter—but I realized I had never really heard his full story. I wondered what his particular draw to the refugee experience was, why he was clearly so motivated to take on this heavy lift in order to welcome others to America.
So I asked Prithvi if I could interview him. And, just a quick plug for interviewing others—It sounds like it might be awkward to ask someone if you can interview them, and it is a little (this blog is a good excuse). But I find with that premise established, both for yourself and the other person, it’s actually a fantastic way to train yourself to listen better and to really focus on someone else more. It shifts your mind into an information gathering mode and changes the entire way you interact with another person. You should try it, seriously.
I knew Prithvi is himself an immigrant, a first generation American, and this probably had a lot to do with his motivation. He came with his family from India when he was 16. His parents immediately enrolled him in a military boarding school in Indiana (hey, Indiana is just India with two more letters, no big deal, right?!) So I asked him what this transition felt like.
Honestly, I came in with a lot of expectations about his experience based on my own (which, again, is not an immigrant experience exactly), and I learned that Prithvi is a rather resilient person, at least compared to me, because, though he said he experienced grief, he also quickly embraced a new identity as an American. I learned in this conversation more about Prithvi, but I also learned more about shedding your assumptions about commonalities you may share with someone else. Your journey through those similar experiences can feel radically different, because people are individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Here’s some of our conversation (edited for clarity and brevity).
Me: Wow, so you came from India at 16, older than I thought, because you barely have any accent.
Prithvi: Well, a few things account for that. One is I married an American woman, so our circle isn’t heavily Indian. But then I also really worked on getting rid of my accent, because I was the only Indian at boarding school. And as you might imagine, for high school boys, my accent was something to be made fun of.
Me: When you moved, what did you miss most about India?
Prithvi: So when I moved, I was very much going from a situation where everything was going really well. I was the popular kid at school. I was good in sports. I had a pretty strong friend group. I had a lot of extended family there. I had a girlfriend, life was just good. I was part of the in crowd. And then coming to the States and going to this boarding school, which was a military school, in Northern Indiana. So it was definitely going from, the big kid on campus to kind of being a nobody and kind of being the weird kid from the strange country. Most of my classmates had no idea about India or had never met anyone from India. So definitely there was a lot to miss back then. I was missing all the good things in my life while I acclimated to my new life in the United States.
Also, I miss the food. Food is important!
Me: When your parents told you you were moving to the US, how did you feel about that?
Prithvi: We kind of had known that it was going to happen for many years because my dad had long wanted to go back and wanted us to have the experiences he had had (he attended college in the US). So we kind of expected it, but it was always kind of this conceptual distant thing. It was exciting to think about. But then when it actually happened, and when we got the letter saying that, you know, you're you're up for your green card, you gotta show up at the embassy and take the interview and things like that. That's when it started becoming a little real. I didn't really have much of a say, it was kind of a fait accompli with doing this, but as it got closer, it was definitely, something I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it was super exciting to be able to go to America and start a new life. But on the other hand, it was also like, oh shit, what am I giving up? It wasn't a comfortable feeling for sure. And then in the months leading up to my leaving, it was sad. I mean, it was, you know, a lot of farewells. A lot of last times doing this and that and eating at this restaurant, you know?
Me: Why did your parents send you to this military boarding school? That must have been very hard.
Prithvi: They were in transition job-wise, going back and forth to India, not sure where they would end up working in the US. So they thought it better to put me in a boarding school than moving me all around. I would say it was challenging, but the flip side of this being kind of being thrown in the deep end at a boarding school where you don't have a family to come home to at the end of the day, you have to acclimate. So it helped me kind of learn American culture and just learn how my classmates think and their attitudes to life and learn the rules of football and baseball. It was just like intensive cultural immersion in a way that if you were kind of going to a day school, it would probably take you much longer to achieve. And then at the end of it, at the end of two years there, I made such close friends, some of whom I'm still in touch with, that I look back and say, that was fantastic.
Me: What was the hardest thing? You said the kids made fun of your accent.
Prithvi: I don't think the accent thing was the hardest part for me. You know, I was kind of a fighter. Like, I could give just as well as I could receive. So I think I was able to establish some boundaries and let folks know that if they screw with me, I'm going to screw back with them and make fun of their name or find something to get back at them. I would say the hardest part was just the discipline of the military system. Cause I grew up in this fairly, privileged, sheltered home where we had domestic help and I didn't have to do much for myself. And then when I was placed in this military environment, I had to do everything for myself and at a really high standard.
Me: Your family ended up settling in New Jersey. Do you feel like you are from there? India still? Do you feel like you’re an American, and what does that mean to you?
Prithvi: My identity is very much rooted in being American. My dad just loved his time here and he kind of never kind of got over that, he always kind of dreamed about this. So I feel like we were brought up with a lot of American ideals. A friend of mine here, whose family fled Iran, she’s a writer. And there's this line in one of her pieces that I really love. And she says, I feel like I was an American before I knew what an American was. That resonates with me.
Just the idea that you could kind of question authority, which I did a lot of and got in trouble for back in India at school. I think that is an example of what being American is to me is, where you're expected to kind of question authority and dissent and call BS when you see it, for sure. Also, the freedom to pursue your own path and your own dream, which is another key kind of tenet of what being American is for me. So, you know, I mean, I went into liberal arts because that's what interested me. And I married a white woman and I didn't get shit about it from my parents. And so I think the freedom to do what makes you happy is what being American is to me.
Me: Do you think America is too individualistic, that there’s not enough of a sense of community?
Prithvi: It does resonate with me and I do feel like there is such a thing as too much individualism, and it's not good. I think that there is a happy balance to be had, and I feel like sometimes, especially, you know, maybe in more recent times, I think we have become a little too hyper individualistic as a society. It really troubled me during COVID where there was just like this belief that, hey, you know, I'll do what's right for me, and to hell with what’s good for society.
But also, in India, it's almost impossible to be lonely because you live in apartment buildings, and your neighbors and your friends and your relatives will be knocking at your door several times a day, and you are expected to socialize with your friends several times a week. Visit extended family for dinner once a week. I do miss that. Now I'm lucky if I see my parents like once every three months. So, yeah, I do think that you can overdo the individualism thing.
Me: So why did you want to help settle refugees?
Prithvi: I'm more able to do this now than I was when our kids were younger and didn't have as much income or as much time or whatever. So the ability is there. And then, just more morally, it's important to me. I do feel that to those that much is good and much is expected, that's something I really believe in strongly. Then it’s not entirely selfless—I’m at a point in my life and career where I am looking for more meaning and purpose. But yes, there’s also the empathy factor, being the immigrant myself, I know how challenging it is to acclimate to the US. By no means am I comparing experience to what like folks from Ukraine are going through right now or any of these other countries where there's war. But I feel like I know what it's like to come here.
Me: For me, I’m not an immigrant, but I did experience grief in coming here. Did you experience that?
Prithvi: Yes, I did. There's this period where you stay in touch with people you’ve left and you feel like you can try to cling onto that, but then you start seeing that life goes on and they start drifting away and you can't blame them for moving on past you. And so there's definitely a sense of grief that comes with that for sure. And I think about Tatiana and Sergei, right? They've lived in the same town. They both were born there. They grew up there. They got married there. They've never left that town. So, I can't even imagine. They've been there for like 40 years of their life, so I think the grief will be much worse for them.
Me: Thank you for leading this for us, it’s very meaningful to me.
Again, thank you all so much, those of you who have already donated. We are over half way to our goal, and it looks like we may have found Tatiana and Sergei a great, affordable apartment. They arrive on April 9.
I want to live in your neighborhood!
I'm working on getting licensed to become a civil surgeon (which is a doctor licensed by the federal government to do immigration exams) and I already memorized all the stuff about Hepatitis B and Tuberculosis that I need to know and I can read vaccination records in all of the romance languages, but I just need to rack up another two years of experience to apply! This is one of the things I'm most impatient about in life because I'm like people to to immigration help NOW! Ukraine! Afghanistan! Nicaragua! The list goes on!