Zeke, my first non-human mammal friend. (Photo: Duncan R. Munro)

There was a time when I wondered whether something was wrong with me. I was often uncomfortable being called “Latvian,” for one. “C’mon,” I countered, having spent most of my formative years in the Midwest, “I was little more than one month old when I was bundled off to Austria.” “Quite so,” anyone who heard that could respond. “But you don’t identify much with Austrians or Americans, either.”

Truth be told, I have tried to wriggle out of any show of group commitment more fervent than a perfunctory reciting of the “Pledge of Allegiance.” Such as all that stuff that I had to say as a self-conscious 16-year-old at the far-too-public rite of Lutheran confirmation. Or all that stuff that I had to scream in support of high school and college athletic organizations. My lack of zeal for my undergraduate football team was particularly perplexing since it was a Big Ten powerhouse. That this occurred in the Sixties, when the U of M was the “Hotbed of Liberalism,” did not help, either. I shrank from affirmations at SDS meetings. While markedly different, they seemed similarly coercive.

I came to claim that the best I could do was accept membership in the human race or, more accurately, the Homo sapiens species. But even that rubbed me the wrong way once it struck me how disturbingly the Bible, which forms the basis of my Judeo-Christian culture, starts out:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. [Italics mine.]

Honestly, I did not want my name associated with any group that advocated that degree of exceptionalism and imperialism. So I settled for seeing myself as a mere speck in a vast Universe, both the known and the unknown one. That worked when considering major issues such as Life and Death but did little for me on a day-to-day basis.

I saw no viable solution until I reached middle age, which is when I was grown up enough to acknowledge that I was once and probably always will be a displaced person. I started writing about that, then volunteered my services to the Baltimore branch of the International Rescue Committee, which helps resettle a range of refugees in my area. And, once the refugee situation reached crisis proportions comparable only to what my family and I experienced after World War II,  I wrote about my debt to today’s refugees, which was viewed by thousands and, hopefully, spurred some to action. I even sided with displaced plants and took on both those nativists who wage war on non-native vegetation and those who do so on non-native people.

Still, it seemed sad to only be able to identify with people and plants that do not belong. Which got me thinking about Zeke. Never was a sentient being more confident of his place in the world. And more capable of committing to those beyond his own species, Canis lupus. He gave us Homo sapiens licks and wags and cheerfully tolerated all those strange training regimens that we foisted on him. His exceptions, embarrassingly, revolved around the darker-skinned members of my then husband’s British football team. But Zeke made it clear that this was only his anomaly detector at work by also barking furiously whenever the right-side-up version of me turned upside-down during yoga poses. And then showed regret to certain Jamaican gentlemen by returning their broad smiles as soon as he understood that they meant him no harm. Something that some humans cannot do.

He also, interestingly, eschewed the gender stereotypes that so many humans get hung up on. While being the manliest of males—60 pounds of pure muscle and much-admired by the ladies—he felt free to show his feminine side. Even as a raucous adolescent, he became maternal when visiting the two-year-old next door. Even obeying his orders. Even when there were hot dogs involved. All little Michael had to do was say, “Sit,” then, “No, Zeke, no.” He was similarly sensitive to me. While always showing how much he missed me when I returned from work, he then sat back and assessed the situation. And altered his behavior substantially depending on whether I was seriously stressed by the impossible search for a parking space near our Back Bay apartment, preoccupied with the report that I had to complete by the morning or relieved that it was Friday and ready for fun.

Memory of this was his way of reaffirming for me from wherever he is now that we are both mammals. And saying if I accepted that, I could not only become a part something more sympatico than how my own species sometimes seems but also escape its sexist connotations. Instead of identifying as a HOMO sapien or a huMAN or a member of MANkind, I could proudly proclaim that I belonged to a clade characterized by mammary glands. Which, incidentally, both males and females possess. As Randy Laist well knew when he wrote “Why I Identify as Mammal” for The New York Times. Of course, that puts Laist and me in a clade with rodents, sloths and sheep. But since we are in the silly season known as the presidential election in the States, I am sure that we are no worse off than if we had simply stuck to humans.

Now, know that this might not work for you. Wesley J. Smith, after all,  wrote a spirited rebuttal, pointing out that Laist—”of course!“—was an English professor, and published it in—of course!—the National Review. But then try to enlarge your view in some other way. If you see yourself as a Millennial, try seeing yourself as a mortal so as not to insulate yourself from people who are closer to Death’s door. If you see yourself as a Republican, try seeing yourself as a US citizen so as not to be in a position to have to vote for someone who is repugnant to you come November. And, my dear native Latvians, try seeing yourselves as members of the United Nations, not just as NATO members, which is currently more convenient. And If you see yourself as a Christian, try seeing yourself as simply spiritual. Or a principled person. So as not to set yourself against Islam, the fastest growing religion in the world. Or agnostics, another rapidly growing group.

And if you have done all that and more, give identifying as mammal another go. Not so that you feel compelled to stop the slaughter of your fellow mammals to fill your stomach, which makes some good come of our inevitable demise, but so as to limit the torture that has become pervasive on factory farms. And then, when you are really ready, expand your identity further so that you become part of the planet, then the Universe. Because that, ultimately, is what you are.