American by Day

We actually do have a lot of guns. There's a lot of hunting in Norway. But there's almost no gun violence." "Why do you think that is?" "On a fundamental level," says Sigrid, "I think it's because we don't want to shoot each other." "That could be our problem right there," says Melinda

The problem with arguing ideas with your children,” says her father, “is that you start wondering what the conversation is really about. Your child can talk about Kierkegaard but as a parent you start thinking, ‘This kid needs a hug and a nap.’ The older I get the more I suspect this is true for everyone. It is astonishing the things we think about to keep ourselves from thinking about things.

when McCain chose that reason-impaired bimbo from Alaska to be his running mate even Irv had to get off the GOP elevator

It’s hard to ignore the moose sitting on your waffle.” “What?” “That might not translate.

What we’re up against now is a conservative movement anchored in a way of seeing Americanness that says that any attention to group problems, or trying to actively support diversity through representation is actually divisive and discriminatory itself. This, by the way, is why they call liberals un-American. Any attention to group suffering or group needs is divisive in their view. People

That’s America’s paradox—your individualism is a strong cultural trait that weakens you as a community and you just can’t see it.

Do you believe that?” Melinda says, directing her wonderment at Irv. “That if someone commits suicide they go to hell?” “No.” “But many Christians do, right?” “There’s a debate, but it’s doctrine.” “But you don’t think so?” “No.” “Why not?” “For the same reason the Catholics believe in the Trinity, Melinda.” The appetizers arrive with a speed that Sigrid finds suspicious. “Which is . . . what?” “It’s how I understand Jesus’s words spoken from the cross,” says Irv, taking a calamari. “Jesus spoke seven times on the cross. In Matthew Twenty-Seven, verse forty-six and in Mark Fifteen verse thirty-four he says, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ This led to the Trinity,” Irv said, sucking cocktail sauce and grease from his thumb. “The thinking is, if Jesus was Lord, who was he speaking to? He was obviously speaking to someone or something other than himself, unless . . . ya know.” Irv makes a circular cuckoo motion by his head with a piece of squid. “So perhaps he was speaking to the Father, or to the Holy Spirit. In this act, he distinguishes himself from the eternal and embodies everything that is Man. The fear, the sadness, the tragedy. The longing. The recognition of betrayal. We see him, in that moment, only as the Son, and because of that, as ourselves. As I read it, Melinda, we are not invited in that moment to be cruel to him for his despair, or to mock him. Instead we are asked to feel his pain. When Jesus says, ‘It is finished’ I don’t read, ‘Mission accomplished.’ I see a person resigned. A person who has lost hope. A person who has taken a step away from this life. And our pity for him grows. And finally he says, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Now, I’m not going to equate Jesus letting go with suicide, but any decent and forgiving Christian person would have to admit that we are looking at a person who cannot fight anymore. We are being taught to be understanding of that state of mind and sympathetic to the suffering that might lead a person to it. It does not follow to me that if someone succumbs to that grief we are to treat them with eternal contempt. I just don’t believe it.

Marcus said, “I’ve never been a white boy before.” “What do you mean?” she asked. “I’ve never really thought of myself as white. I’ve just been me.” “That’s the essence of white privilege right there.

thought I wanted to fight crime. Now that I’m older I realize that it’s injustice that bothers me. Fighting the first one doesn’t always solve for the other,” she says.

Women, apparently, are far more likely to have mental health problems than men—which doesn’t make any sense to me because men are obviously more insane, judging by their behavior

Are we most truthful during our anger or just the most creative in finding ways to hurt people?

from that television on the dresser—come stories about life and events elsewhere. But they feel removed and abstract and safely, even inherently, far away. Sigrid does not feel cut off from the wider world so much as she feels it doesn’t really exist. Is that what it feels like to be American?

I mean . . . if cops killed a white kid everyone would be going nuts. If that white kid’s aunt ended up dead on a street corner it would be headline news. So why if they shoot a black kid, is it only the black people who are going nuts?

So tell us your story, Marcus. And be reborn in the way that God meant it most—not by finding Christ, but by recovering your spirit and your place among us; not there in heaven but here in the dirt of upstate New York, where everything that was once in motion finally comes to rest.

Where was I before I was born?” she said. “That’s what they all ask.” “Who?” “Children. Adults. All of us. Where was I? Before there was a where. Before there was an I. It is inconceivable,” she’d said, “for there to be no self and no place to put it. That’s what it will be like. Like falling backwards into a pocket of space that constricts and then pops out of existence.

It did not startle Sigrid, as a little girl, to learn that her mother died as much as it baffled her that her mother would continue to be dead each morning and repeatedly not return.

You know what the secret to death is? ...You stop staring into the void. There's nothing to see. You need to turn around. Watch life. Watch it like a rabbit about to come out of a hat. Keep your eye on it the whole time until - like that - the seeing is no more. That's the trick.

They do not "catch up" the way Americans do. They are present with one another again.

God wants for us by commanding us to keep the Sabbath Day holy. To stop. To rest. To pause from acts of creation and actually admire it and revel in the joy of the thing for one-seventh of a week.

Sigrid does not feel cut off from the wider world so much as she feels it doesn’t really exist. Is that what it feels like to be American?

As much as I lost Marcus,” he continues, “I gained Sigrid—I gained her in ways I didn’t deserve. I feel as though I didn’t earn her affections; I simply lost or sent away everything else she loved. We are so close now, and it means so much to me, that I feel guilty. I think our bond is too tight. I hold her too close. We closed up the space where other people might belong. She has no husband.

Tell me the secret to death,” she answered, mocking him. “You have to back into it,” he’d told her. “What does that mean?” “You stop staring ahead into the void. There’s nothing to see. You need to turn around. Watch life. Watch it like a rabbit about to come out of a hat. Keep your eye on it the whole time until—like that—the seeing is no more. That’s the trick.

The patrons are male and the wait staff not. The men sit on stools all wearing beige or blue trousers. Thick belts peek out from shirttails floating above bulging waists. They hunch over food that is making them sicker and older but tastes familiar and comforting and reminds them of happier times when they were not here.

If you’re treating me as an interviewee here, and you want me to reveal information, you’re going to have to try harder. I won’t blame you for doing it, but you’re going to need to raise your game if you want to win. OK?” “I don’t remember this coming up in the police academy.” “They were probably teaching you to shoot instead.

And quiet. Do you have Asperger’s or something?” “No.” “You’re a quiet one,” he says quietly. “I think Americans can’t abide silence.” “You only got here yesterday.” “The pattern is robust.

He places her second Bloody Mary on a square napkin in front of her as one might provide mush to a moron at an asylum. In watching his gesture it dawns on Sigrid that she might never—not metaphorically but for real—ever have sex again. The thought makes her both terrified and strangely relieved. “If there’s anything else you need,” he says, “just ask.” Sigrid smiles at him gently, knowing that he is, at that moment, her primary caregiver.

When traveling south into Roman Europe on vacation, Sigrid feels antiquity. But as she journeys north into Norway’s forests, what she feels is ancientness.

Keep an eye on Pinkerton. Don’t shoot any civilians. Or any women you happen to see. Women who might already be there, for example. Women who might also be civilians. And friends of mine. I guess what I’m saying, Ricky, is this: If things get bad, you just shoot Pinkerton. OK?” “Yes, sir.” “We’ll just carve out the slugs, chuck him in the lake, and shrug in boyish wonder when we’re questioned later.

I am personally going to make it my job to ensure that we send the right souls to heaven and not the wrong ones. How about that for a day’s work?” “How about we just solve the case with the facts and let justice have its day?” “Isn’t that what I just said?” “No.” “I thought it was.

The adults are either speaking to each other, focusing on the children, or staring—defeated—toward some imagined horizon, hoping that either a new lover or else death itself will come to take them away from this shiny place.