Is the American Dream Hot?

Hi Hotties. I am alive. I haven’t forgotten you. I haven’t forgotten the quest of being Hot. I’d like to write that I also haven’t forgotten myself—that through the last, what has it been, six months?, I’ve continued Being (Hot, Happy, Present, not French, etc.), but, unfortunately, it would be more accurate to write that I have. I keep telling myself that I am not writing because I don’t have time, but that’s just a convenient explanation to hide within. Until recently, “not enough time” was as far as I was willing to go. I have been balancing work, and friends, and sleep, and a new relationship. Something had to give, I said. Today, however, I remembered I can make different choices, choices I haven’t wanted to or felt like I could make. I hope to learn to make choices again.

A little bit of catch-up: I got my tooth! To celebrate, I threw a tooth party during which we baptised and gendered the new tooth (her name is Ruth Canal). I spent a week in Argentina in April to celebrate my uncle’s sixtieth birthday. I bought too many books, as usual. In April, I participated in a “Group Relations Conference” and, in June, in a Silent Retreat, both of which I hope to write about. They were two more experiences that, like clown, helped me explore the edges of language (or, as someone during the GRC said, the unconscious). And finally, yes, you did read “new relationship” in the previous paragraph. After being single for over five years, I have ventured out into the equally humbling and elating territory of “having a boyfriend” (yes, he’s great; no, not on the apps; yes, it’s a good story for another time). There are other updates, naturally, but I’ll leave some for the rest of this missive. Now back to our usual business.

**

In February, I bought a return ticket to the American Dream Mall at Port Authority Bus Terminal. The ticket cost $21 USD, and the bus was scheduled to depart on the hour, as it does every hour, from gate 355. To go to American Dream Mall, I packed two books, a cream cheese everything bagel, a cup of coffee, extra socks, headphones, and a phone charger. Before I left home, I looked up the travel time on Google Maps: 55 minutes. You’ll imagine my surprise when, two pages into a new chapter of Martyr!, the novel I was reading at the time, the bus driver announced that we had arrived at our destination. Outside of the window, I saw the familiar site of a shopping mall’s parking garage, and stairs that led to glass doors labelled “American Dream Mall, Exit B”. Barely fifteen minutes had passed since I boarded the bus in Manhattan, we couldn’t possibly be in New Jersey already, I thought. I pulled out my phone, tapped into Google Maps, and realized that I had made a mistake. 55 minutes was the total travel time between my apartment in Brooklyn Heights and American Dream Mall. We had, in fact, arrived. Why did I make the trip out to be so long?

I packed up my belongings and stepped off the bus to meet the day’s adventure: an indoor “snow” “mountain” called BIG SNOW where I hoped I could learn enough about how to glide down a mountain safely enough to merit joining a friend ski expedition to Vermont at the end of March. When I boarded the bus at PABT, I had never seen a pair of skis in real life, let alone been anywhere near a snow-covered mountain or a pair of ski boots. Skiing, to me, was an activity that some people were born into. Those of us who didn’t belong to Ski Families, I thought, could only aspire to read books in wintry cabins, and wait for the rest to return from the slopes. But I was wrong. Two weeks earlier, I was sitting in warm Mexico City sun on a short escape from New York’s winter when I was added to a group chat discussing logistics of a potential trip to Bolton. Two of the friend group have become such avid skiers, that, to see them between the months of November and March, you must follow them up a mountain. In the chat, I asked, can I join if I have never skied? One of the two ski fiends responded: of course. He promptly followed up in a personal message with precise instructions for how to set myself up for skiing success. The headline was: go to BIG SNOW at least three times to become proficient enough to enjoy the trip. Against my better judgment, I asked A if he might accompany me up a fake mountain and teach me the basics of skiing. In parallel, in the group chat, I wrote, Count me in.

I don’t know if anything can prepare a person for the absurdity of the experience of BIG SNOW. Entire families line up at the ski lift for the single, BIG slope. I stuck to the bunny slope, where I embarked on the unnatural act of making my legs move to the rhythm of “pizza” and “french fries”, while also working hard to avoid fallen toddlers. After ascertaining that I was proficient enough to practice something, A ventured up to the BIG slope. On the lift, he overheard a pair of teenagers explaining that this was their fifth time at BIG SNOW, but no, they had never been to a real mountain. At least here you don’t have to worry about all the stuff that skiing requires of you, I thought hearing A’s report, as I wrenched my foot out of a ski boot that was half a size too small. After our hour and a half of skiing was over and inhaling a pair of burgers to make up for all the exercise we did, A and I wandered over to the bus stop to catch the bus back to Manhattan. It was an unceremonious departure point just outside of the parking lot, and, as the sun came down, the temperatures plummeted. In between reviews of our BIG SNOW experience, A pointed to a large, slanted shipping container erupting from the ceiling of the shopping mall. That had been our mountain.

**

Two weeks before my trip to the American Dream Mall, I sent an immigration lawyer my paperwork to apply for citizenship in the United States of America. I have been a Green Card holder in the United States since 2005, but I had never added up the five years of continuous residence required to formally take the oath, until now. It will be five years since I returned to the U.S. after COVID in August. Six months before that fifth anniversary, one is allowed to file.

I remember planning for the moment when I could finally file for citizenship since I was in university, but I'm certain that this rite of passage was on my mind much earlier than that. For years, I added up months and weeks spent in the United States, and grimaced at how far they were, added up, from the desired total of five years. Later, I agonized over the weeks over six months that I spent outside of the U.S. during COVID, weeks that reset my clock back to zero. But I wasn’t only after the American citizenship. Frankly, I lusted after any “strong passport”: I wanted to live in Europe, without limitations, and bounce around the world. I’m not sure why. The Mexican passport is probably among the strongest of the greens. I don’t need a visa to enter Schengen, and, outside of the U.S., the worst reaction I receive when I cross a border is a big smile and a joke about TEQUILA! Nevertheless, I teased my friends with desirable passports about marriage, with the hope that one of my proposals would be taken seriously. Sadly, no one took the bait.

**

The most unnerving thing about BIG SNOW is that it is hardly the most “awesome”, in the purest form of the word, feature of The American Dream Mall. In fact, this outrageous frozen artificial shipping container mountain was nestled in what I found to be the most unassuming part of the mall. For those of you unfamiliar with American Dream Mall’s full offerrings, the property, along with 200 of shops of the likes that one would expect in any mall, contains: a full amusement part with rollercoasters, a water park, an H-Mart, a full-sized ferris wheel overlooking both the state of New Jersey and Manhattan, an aquarium, an ice rink, a legoland experience, a bubble room (?), an escape room, and an arcade.

Before setting foot in The American Dream Mall, I thought that the “mega mall” was a gross, international over-exaggeration of the sparkling, yet familiar, American suburban mall of my childhood. When I first visited the Dubai Mall during my interview weekend for university, I thought, in horror, about how this abomination failed to understand the charm of places like Dadeland and Sunset Malls, two malls we frequented when I lived in Miami. What’s the point, I thought, if you couldn’t even aspire to try every restaurant in the food court? It was the familiarity, I thought, that made the convenience of the mall tolerable.

**

About a month and a half ago, I received a letter in the mail with the date for an appointment with USCIS. I had an interview. I was told, when my paperwork was filed, that it could take up to eight months to process my application. I was prepared not to hear anything until October, and yet, here it was. In the letter, I was given a date (in June), a time, and an office. My lawyer followed up shortly with a list of 100 questions to study. I printed the questions and handed them to my colleagues and A. I asked both parties to help me study. Quiz me, I said. I don’t want to do this alone.

**

One day, when I was about six or seven, I became separated from my parents in a frenzied shopping weekend in Dadeland Mall. I ran up and down commercial corridors, crying, desperate to find my family. A friendly stranger stopped me and asked, does your mother have a cellphone? Of course, I cried, but everyone does! How could you tell her apart from anyone else using a cell phone! They asked me if I knew her number. We can call her, they said. I realize, in hindsight, that this could have gone a lot worse. I was reunited with my parents in front of the only sneaker store.

**

Every week since receiving the appointment letter, the question of citizenship came up in therapy. Despite my therapist’s sound advice to treat this process like familiar paperwork, I couldn’t. I didn’t have to give up my Mexican citizenship, and yet, I recoiled every time I studied the answer to the question “What is one promise you make when you become a citizen of the United States?” (Give up loyalty to other countries) I worried about what it would mean to suddenly be called an American after so many years staunchly saying I was not (while also enjoying the privileges of the Permanent Resident queue in immigration). This was something I wanted, something I knew would give me more flexibility (ironically, I most lusted after the freedom to live outside of the United States), but at the same time, becoming American? Now? Most of my American friends told me I was crazy. Why would you want that today? Some of my international friends joked about it too. In between, the headlines reminded me that no one, really, was safe.

**

The largest Mall in the United States is Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. It has 520 shops, and is neighbored by a Nickelodeon theme park, which is not included in the total area of the mall listed on Wikipedia. Mall of America is the 12th largest mall in the world, but the largest in the Americas. American Dream Mall is tied for 38th largest mall in the world with a duty free mall in Haikou China and “Future Park Rangsit”. in Thanyaburi, Thailand. Dubai Mall, with its 400 shops, is tied for 29th place with a mall in Bangkok and another in Edmonton, Canada. Only 7 of the top 50 largest malls in the world are older than I am.

**

Two weeks ago, I took an oath and became a citizen of the United States. I was curtly escorted to the oath room right after my interview, which, beside a minor hiccup, went smoothly. The twenty minutes I waited for the oath ceremony to begin was the longest I had to wait unattended during the whole process. I celebrated with a cookie at Bubby’s, and, in the evening, vegan Chinese food that made my tummy hurt. On Tuesday, I went to a post office to tuck my Naturalization Certificate away into a little envelope along with a picture of myself and a cheque to the U.S. State Department for $211.36 USD to apply for my first U.S. passport. I was told that it should arrive, by mail, in two to three weeks.

The day after my interview, I felt light-headed. I felt free, for a moment, and day-dreamed about what I might be able to do now that I didn’t have to worry about my immigration status in the United States. Unfortunately, however, rather than make use of that space for bigger and better things, I’ve let all the other worries of my life fill in the void once inhabited by twenty years’ worth of immigration questions. Frankly, I fantasized that, on the other side of this oath, I might find answers to a lot of other questions I’ve been sitting with: what do I want to do with my time? Where do I want to live? Who do I want to be? How do I want to be? So far, though, it’s felt like what my therapist warned me it might be: paperwork.

 **

So, I guess I don’t feel Hotter as a newly minted American citizen. I also didn’t feel very Hot during the whole process. I suspect that what kept me from writing all these months was fear: fear that I might say the wrong thing about the U.S. online and that might get me in trouble; fear that I didn’t know how I felt about this whole process and I wouldn’t have the words to express it; fear that, in writing, I might change my mind and learn that I didn’t want to go through with something that I have been working on for a long time. I still feel some of those things, but today, I’m choosing to begin writing through that fear. I started this newsletter (years ago??) to help me navigate the harder questions of life. I feel a little embarrassed that I haven’t turned to it during, perhaps, one of the hardest transitions I’ve faced.

But to close on a brighter note: I did feel pretty Hot while skiing in Bolton in March. We had a full twelve inches of snow overnight the first day, and (with the help of my ski fiend friends) I figured out how to slip and slide down the mountain with much more ease than I ever found in BIG SNOW. I might even venture to say that it was fun. The trip took a mildly disastrous turn into the second day, (again, a story for another time) but there was a moment where I effortlessly zig zagged down the final approach holding my poles elegantly in front of me, and I looked up to see my whole gang of friends at the bottom of the mountain thrilled to see me arrive. It was really special. Perhaps I should think about how to cheer my passport’s arrival in a similar way, and celebrate its descent into my life when it arrives in the mail surrounded by people I care about. That’s not a bad idea.