British, Irish, Immigrant, and Gay

On a stifling late-June morning, Ruth Watterson sat frustrated in front of her television, its sole channel playing on repeat the footage of Patriots player Aaron Hernandez’s arrest for first-degree murder. She took out her laptop, opened up Internet tabs for multiple news sites, and “refreshed, refreshed, refreshed.” After her umpteenth click of the reload button, a new item finally appeared at the top of the page: the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Windsor to strike down part of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Upon reading through the article, Ruth let out a literal sigh of relief before calling Kristin, her partner of four years, to share the news.

For Ruth, the decision was monumental. A few months ago, on Valentine’s Day, she had proposed to Kristin. The Court’s verdict opened a door to American citizenship, one that had been firmly closed before: she and her fiancée could now start a family in the States.

“I’ve never had a law affect my life so much,” she notes. “When it fell, I thought I would be overjoyed, but I was really more relieved than anything—to know that my family could stay together.”

That fall, when the couple went to meet Ruth’s immigration lawyer after their marriage, they learned that the extension of federal benefits to same-sex marriages would transform Ruth’s case from a near impossibility to a fairly standard bureaucratic formality. After providing the attorney with a more than 3-inch-thick binder of photos and documentation attesting to the authenticity of their marriage (“the most she had ever seen”), a green card arrived in their Quincy mailbox by springtime—a first step, Ruth hopes, to naturalization.

A decade earlier and before she met Kristin, though, Ruth had a very different vision of her future. Born in Northern Ireland to working-class parents, she was the first (and so far only) person in her family to attend college. At the University of St Andrews, where she pursued degrees in English, Medieval History, and Modern History, Ruth thought that she would teach secondary school students after graduating. But upon the advice of her Harvard-educated professor for a class entitled “Good Wives, Base Seducers, and Colonial Cross-Dressers,” she decided to turn her attention towards graduate studies in American history.

Now a ninth-year candidate in Harvard’s history PhD program, Ruth recalls the difficulties she encountered when first adjusting to life in America. Passing through customs on her first visit to the country was, in her sleep-deprived state, an anxiety-provoking experience. Filing visa paperwork, answering the immigration officer’s grilling questions, and even tipping her taxi driver upon arrival at Harvard Square all proved discomforting experiences.

“It was all very ‘grown up’ at a time when I still felt like a kid. Even when I went to pay my driver, I worried that I wasn’t tipping high enough and so handed out all of my American bills for him to pick out what he felt he was owed.”

At Harvard, she found herself among many internationals, but did not find a community of British peers to join.  Given the close cultural ties between America and the United Kingdom—shared music, literature, and language—Ruth found herself assimilating quickly, even losing some of her already-slight Irish accent.

During her first year in the States, she threw a St. Patrick’s Day party, hoping to share some of her upbringing with her friends (though she had never celebrated the holiday back home). Having prepared an entire spread of traditional Irish foods, she was surprised to discover that her friends had a much different expectation for the holiday fare: green Guinness and green mashed potatoes. “The next year, I just got green cupcakes and green beer, and dyed everything green—it was so much easier,” she jokes.

But a certain fear lurked beneath the kitsch. Because Ruth has assimilated so well and been accepted so fully as an American, she worries about losing her cultural heritage. Some of her friends still express disbelief at her Northern Irish background, and she sometimes wishes that she had a stronger accent to assert her identity. When she and Kristin have children in the years ahead, she wants them to know both halves of their culture, to be proud of their heritage and to know that they are part British: “I want to sing Irish lullabies to them and take them back to see where I come from.”

Despite her concerns about the pitfalls of assimilation, Ruth is excited to begin the naturalization process once the three-year waiting period for people who have acquired a green card through marriage ends. She and Kristin will soon look for work at universities located in states that recognize same-sex unions, to ensure their spousal and parental rights.

“Obviously, there are a lot of challenges in coming to the U.S. and being a foreigner. But I’m really lucky. I came here because I love American history, but I’ve grown to love American culture too—I find it really weird to go back. Everything’s been worth it. I’ve got a great education and, now, I’ve got a family.”

Matthew M. Beck ’14 is a history and literature concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.