December 5, By , singer Patti Smith and her companion photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, once scrappy, struggling artists who lived near my school, were well on their way to becoming American cultural icons. Brought up to despise communism, the Soviet Union, and Russian imperialism, for me Latvia was an imprint, a blurry image in my brain, a map I had memorized at Latvian school, the pathos of a patriotic poem, the mood of a sad orphan or war song.
I knew quite a lot but, in truth, very little. Latvia was an abstraction. In the years leading up to my first trip abroad, New York had become my cultural mecca. The twin towers of the World Trade Center twinkled at night over lower Manhattan; I loved seeing them from various viewpoints in the city and from my home in New Jersey.
To me they were like two sentries flanking Lady Liberty at the mouth of the Hudson River, protecting our democracy and freedom, which at the time I nearly took for granted. Their multitudes included Latvian refugees who had fled the advance of the Red Army into Latvia at the end of World War II and were now seeking a home away from home.
Many Latvians, including my family, settled in the New York area. The Latvian community in exile believed that one day the USSR would collapse and everyone would go home.
My youth in the Jersey suburbs was happy and secure, but eventually I outgrew the comfortable cocoon. After a year of pen-palling with the son of a famous writer in Soviet-occupied Latvia, I bought a ticket to my ancestral country. I chose the latter, because Moscow scared me.
