More summer 2021 impressions of the US

Maybe it’s because I really have been gone a long time now, but on previous trips I have never been struck as much as I am this year by the…immensity? size? romance? tragedy? history? of the American West. To see the old cabins and homesteads dwarfed by the dramatic landscape…and then pass by Indian reservations or historical markers talking about this or that incident…it’s a lot to take in. I grew up steeped in the history and lore of the Oregon Trail and maybe so many years away has let me come back and see it through fresh eyes. (It might also be because I watched News of the World on the airplane and I know that was Texas but still.)

I know I blog about this every time but you guys, the SMALL TALK here. It’s so intimate. If I had half the interaction with strangers in Finland as I do here, I would need to go home to Jeremy and basically confess to having an affair. Why are we (Americans) the way that we are.

We climbed Mt. St. Helens (Jeremy and the girls and I, plus three of my siblings and some of their kids). There were other climbing parties coming and going on the mountain and each time we passed each other it was an opportunity for small talk. There was even a kind of formula:

1. “Mind if we sneak by/Can I just get past ya” OR “You go on by/We’re going to stop here for a sec, you’re fine.”

2. [Folksy and/or self-deprecating comment about the climbing conditions/pace] “Feeling jealous of all the people who started climbing at 4am, huh!/I’m too old for this!/Are we there yet?”

3. [Encouraging exchanges between people on their way down and people on their way up] “It’s worth it!/You’re almost there!/This is the worst part!"

If we were doing the same climb in Finland, there would be zero or very close to zero pleasantries exchanged between passers by, even on a difficult mountain climb. Magdalena said she loved talking to strangers about their climbing experience. I don’t mind it - to me it feels like a muscle that doesn’t get exercised for most of two years and then, when we’re in the US, I have to remember how to use again. It’s fine and I appreciate the warmth of passer-by small talk, but I also enjoy not having to go through the motions when we’re in Finland.

It is so darn fun listening to my kids’ English get better while we’re in the US. These days, it’s mostly Sterling who makes demonstrable progress in his English skills - I’ll hear him repeating stuff that other people say (or that he hears on TV here), trying out how it sounds. And of course his English input here is so much richer than it is in Finland. It’s so good for him to be able to take a language bath in English for a few weeks.

I knew we had it relatively good in Finland during the pandemic, but talking with people here (specifically Oregon; a friend of mine in Idaho joked that that state “opted out” of the pandemic) who lived through it under different circumstances has been really sobering. In most ways, the last 18 months have been the hardest (in my darker moments, I would use the word “worst”) of my whole life…and yet here, there are people who were objectively worse off (even if their individual experience might have been better than mine, for various life circumstance reasons). Finland never restricted our outdoor movement or activities. Our kids went back to school in May 2020. Our case numbers have almost always been very low. We didn’t even wear masks as a society until October! Finland was basically one of the best places in the world to ride out the pandemic and that is increasingly evident to me as I talk to people in the US about the Inside Times, the Corona Times, Lockdown, Quarantine, Flattening the Curve, 2020, etc.

One area where the US did better, though, is in the vaccine rollout. Finland has almost caught up by now (64% of the population has received at least one dose, compared to 67% in the US), but they are very much still mid-rollout with appointments being assigned by age/risk group. Here in the US, you can just…walk in and get a shot. I know this because we did it - first in Utah (Jeremy and my second shot; the girls’ first) and then in Oregon (the girls’ second shot - technically we had an appointment but the lady on the phone was like “just walk in, it’s fine.”).

This sign is hanging in the library window by my parents’ house and I think about it a few times a day. It makes me laugh, it makes me think, it makes me remember what a strange time we are living in and it makes me wonder what on earth the process for drafting that phrase was. Say it out loud! A few times. It’s almost like a meditation.