Tomorrow, I will be sworn in as an American Citizen. Just typing those words feels emotionally overwhelming. These are crazy times. So, I want to try and articulate why I feel this way 🇺🇸
I grew up in Liverpool, but have always loved America. I am not sure what my "urtext" was. It may have been the fact my first ever duvet cover was Scooby-Doo-themed. I cannot describe the depth of my longing to ride beside Shaggy and Daphne in the Mystery Machine. 
It may have been the close relationship I shared with my grandfather, Sam, who also adored America. As a kid, we played chess every afternoon. He would regale me with stories about his father, a kosher butcher, who left Lithuania in the 1890s to head for Chicago only to...
... disembark when the boat docked to fuel in Liverpool, thinking he was in New York, fooled no doubt, by the one tall building on the Liverpool skyline.
That family tale always made me feel deeply connected to America. A yearning reinforced by the fact I came of age in Liverpool
That family tale always made me feel deeply connected to America. A yearning reinforced by the fact I came of age in Liverpool
Liverpool remains one of the greatest cities in the world, but in 1980's "Thatcher Britain," my hometown was economically bereft. Unemployment was high, as was social unrest. The city perpetually felt on the cusp of imploding.
Though I'd never been to the United States, it became a land that filled my imagination. My life in England may have been lived in Black & White, but those depicted in “Fantasy Island,” “The Love Boat,” “Hart to Hart,” and countless other cultural juggernauts that I devoured...
on television, showed me it was possible to thrive, in glorious technicolor, in a place where everything felt possible. My childhood bedroom became a shrine to all things American. I painted three walls red, white and blue.
On the fourth I designed a giant mural of the Stars and Stripes, replete with a clumsy approximation of the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty. I collected fragments of Americana, curating them like precious gems above my bed.
Amidst my carefully constructed Coke can collection and medley of random sporting pennants, are posters of “Refrigerator” Perry, Ferris Bueller, Sergeant Bilko, Debbie Gibson, Budweiser, Gary Coleman, Beastie Boys and The Blues Brothers. Totems I strove to weave into my own DNA.
I fell asleep at night, listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Public Enemy, or Tracy Chapman and the silhouette of that shaky-hand painted Statue of Liberty would beckon me, fueling my dreams as if I was a Liverpool version of the Jazz Singer, Scarface, or Yentl.
I moved to Chicago right after college, largely out of my love for John Hughes movies. I knew no one, working 3 shifts a day as a baker, a librarian and a waiter to stay afloat. Hustle, passion, luck, and the fact America allows bald people to appear on TV allowed me to get by.
So on this day, I, a gent who grew up with the Statue of Liberty on his bedroom wall, and now lives in Manhattan (pay attention to what your kids cover their bedroom walls with, dear reader!) with a wife and four children, will head to the courthouse at Pearl Street and be sworn
in as an American. I will have a photograph of my Grandpa Sam in my pocket as I do so. A reminder that as I become American, I will complete my family's journey, even if it took us four generations longer than we expected. Doing so will be the achievement of my lifetime...
On my lounge wall is another black & white photo. A portrait of a man we believe to be my great, great, great grandfather. A thick necked, savage looking bloke. No-one can remember his name. All we remember about him in family lore is "that he was the one who fended off...
a murderous Cossack. He was "the Cossack Killer." I hope in 5 generations, my Men In Blazers head shot hangs on one of my descendants' walls. They'll point at it too. "We can't remember his name," they'll say "but we do know he's the one that first moved the family to America"
