This is America

Thankfully, but also sadly I have nothing as interesting as a family history as Vargas. I do not have a false green card, I do not have multiple languages being spoken, but what I do have is my family and that is all I could ask for. As will be discussed soon, my heritage mostly comes from England directly or through a long line come from France. I started to learn everything from a time that I called my Father while he lived in California, and eventually an at the table discussion with my Mother.

I personally have no idea exactly when it was or what it was for but there was a class within my middle school years that would inevitably cause me to ask my father where my family was from. He would tell me the stories of how his mother or my grandmother had actually traced our English heritage for so long that she traveled to England to see graves of distant relatives. No one important to history that I know so far, but I know there is some slight Native American on my father’s side, I just do not remember where it came from. Though for it being so long ago, sadly I do not remember the bits and pieces of extra information but the reason for that will come up soon enough.

My mother and I also once had a conversation on her family heritage. Telling me how her grandparents moved from Canada before she was born and had begun life in Maine. After working for years, they would have their own families where her parents would eventually meet. My grandmother, or who I called Meme would work many hard long hour jobs to provide for her family while my grandfather or Pepe would do the same as just a lesser extent. I could not ask my grandparents themselves what they had done because they had all passed away when I was younger. Though I do know that the French culture is the biggest culture I follow because of living with my mother. She was raised bilingual but has let speaking French recede more and more as time goes on. Though do not get it wrong, there is still sometimes she drops some French words that I have no idea what they mean, I just know they can not be good unless she says them in English right after.

There are mixed feelings about my heritage. If one looked into it, there is nothing interesting or important for historical reasons or anything culturally diverse. All that I know is that it is just some people that happened to meet up at the right time and place to eventually lead to me being alive. There are hardworking traits that still come through now, such as me procrastinating and doing a lot of English work at last minute all while my work decided to increase my hours per week. Traditions are not something that is really passed down within my family, yes we spend time together but we do not have any particular activities that we take part in do to our heritage. There are a couple of foods though that have passed down from my French grandparents like crepes, meat pie, makeshift ice cream cake, and a tomato soup that has a couple of other ingredients to spice it up that I could really go for right now.

I am thankful for the little things that my family’s traditions have given me, but there is something else that amazing about it. I personally do not really care about my family history. I could be related to some king from centuries ago, but that does nothing for me. It doesn’t change my life, increases my wealth, or bring back my family members that have passed away. All it does is give me a name that clearly history has started to forget about if I’m just learning about it past 18 years old. What matters to me about my family history is that it has put me in a position where I am now. I live in America and have no negative attributes from stopping me from achieving in life. America’s cultural diversion allows it to be a perfect spot for someone like me. It is quite impressive that families from Europe over hundreds of years would eventually come together to form someone like me thousands of miles away from where they originally started. I want to pass on traditions, but what matters to me is the traditions my children want to keep going regardless of my families past. The individual’s ideas are what matters, not forcing them to do something that they may not want to be doing. Except I will definitely push to be called Pepe by grandchildren, that will definitely be enforced!

Photo by Cayusa on Foter.com / CC BY-NC