What is an American?

Our neighbors are not Belgian…or so the husband tells us. They were both born here in the late 40s. His parents were recently arrived from Italy, hers from Czechoslovakia. There was a lot of that then because this was a coal mining and industrial area that needed lots of labor, so people came here from all the depressed, bombed-out parts of Europe. Then the coal played out, the industry moved to China, and now everyone is unemployed--except the Italians. They all opened restaurants. Rita calls Italian the European food. There are Italian restaurants everywhere. And in Italy itself, that's all there is.

But back to our neighbor. Despite being born and raised here, he still considers himself Italian. The other night he was pouring me a wine he described as being from where he's from: "C'est un vin de chez nous." It was the Italian wine prosecco.

The first time we had them over, before we understood this refusal to just accept being Belgian, Rita was describing her Austro-Germanic roots, and Marco asked, "Then what are you?" And Rita, a bit nonplussed, said, "Well, I'm an American!" I was proud of her.

I don't know about you, but it makes me appreciate what we have. We take all comers, and all we ask is that you agree to say that you're an American and accept that you have the right to pursue happiness.

And you guys all thought we'd go over to the dark side on our Big Belgian Adventure.