Where I'm From

Where I’m From #5

By Aimee Seiff Christian

Inspired by George Ella Lyon

I believed I was from nowhere.

I knew I had to be from somewhere

Yet I didn’t believe that until I had proof because

I didn’t know you could be from nowhere and somewhere at the same time

I am also of somewhere. Someone.

I am from subways and sidewalks

From the city that never sleeps.

Gritty, overcrowded, noisy

And wonderful.

I am from pigeons and sparrows

Eating from garbage cans and twittering on telephone wire.

I am from bagels and matzoh brei and my mother’s handmade menorah

From no and because I said so

And you have to learn to play by yourself.

I’m from an innate understanding that I didn’t belong

And the explicit instruction not to ask questions.

I’m from New York Jews

Who were as Jewish as The New York Times and maybe Rosh Hashanah

But not fasting on Yom Kippur or keeping kosher or actually believing in G-d.

I’m 99.9% Northern European, only 26% of which, as it turns out,

Is Ashkenazi Jew after all

Times or no Times.

But it still counts and I am still Jewish.

I am a New Yorker through and through, city born and bred

But if I admit I learned I was actually born on Long Island does it still count?

I am an only child

But if I admit I learned I have four siblings,

Though all of them are half

And none of them talks to me except for one,

Does it still count?

I am born of a teenager and immediately abandoned

Against her will

And mine,

Only to be placed six months later

In the arms of a woman twice her age, with

Nothing but blank space where her heart and her womb were supposed to be

Where a baby did not grow.

She is my mother.

(I am not from there.)

But over the years, we have become of one another

I love my mother

And I know now that she loves me too.

I am not from her

But I exist nearby her

From somewhere else

From someone else

But we are closer now

Closer than I ever thought possible.

I am from learning and growth.

Where to find Aimee:

Website: https://www.aimeechristian.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewriteaimee

Substack: https://aimeechristian.substack.com/

Where to find Alyson:

Website: https://www.alysonshelton.com

Substack: https://whereimfrom.substack.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/byalysonshelton/