Dear IF readers,

My IF mag blog has been a bit of a neglected child as of late and I apologize.  I don’t know if you do as I, but I have to put a list together and go after the top three a day.  Lately, that has been Brody, my three year old, Jax, my five year old, and my 10 year marriage. It is summer here in Hilton Head Island, and I find myself the great family coordinator.  And Brody who turns four in September is too young for many independent activities so we are quite the pair. Using my computer is not on his list of my priorities. I have tried to take him to the library to sit and read next to their wireless connections for my laptop but he has now made that our special reading time.  So, again to you my readers and my dear blog child, I am so sorry.

I want to reflect on the multi-cultural family as I know it from my experience.  I have spoken of this before, but my family of origin is quite multi-cultural.  We were five non-biologically related people coming together to be a family under the same roof.  My mother and father had Irish backgrounds.  When they went to Catholic Social Services to adopt children, this cultural profile was presented.  My brother Michael is what is called “Black Irish” and is Irish with dark features.  His biological mother found him years later as she had been a teenager when she had him and never wanted to give him up and it was not her choice.  I will have to discuss with him further what he knows of his biological, cultural background.

My sister Pamela is almost fully Swedish.  She has that gold hair and skin and even golden eyes. She went to Sweden when she was a teenager as she was fascinated with this cultural origin of hers.  Pammy liked Sweden very much, fell in love with a Swede named Christiansen, and we have all shared the stories for years of her cultural journey and the tales of modern folklore in her native country.

Of my cultural background, I don’t know much at all. I know my mother let me look at some non-identifying information once when I was a teenager but I never paid much attention to the cultural characteristics listed.  I was fascinated more that it was written that my grandmother had been a business woman and my uncle had been a professor of ancient history.  I always tease and say I am a friendly mutt, a real mix.  When I travel abroad people will ask me if I am American, or Irish so there must be those features.  I am dark-haired and green eyes with very pale skin in the winter and golden in the summer.

 But the state of my family being a cultural mix has always been relevant to my life and experiences.  I did not have such certitude as my best friend Kathleen whose family was second generation Italian and last name was Piero and her grandfather still had an accent and was the patriarch and I feared him and loved him and when it was appropriate for me to address him, I called him “Pops”. 

Sometimes that lack of certainty made me feel lost and wayward.  And sometimes it became my greatest asset to seek the world and name myself first an international citizen.

I will continue these thoughts soon, I promise, good reading, Cat Wayland  

Trackback URI | Comments RSS