Homeward Bound through our Cultural Beginnings & Customs

[AtLast]

Homeward Bound through our Cultural Beginnings & Customs

How many times have we heard..You can never go home? As I was walking my dog yesterday at a neighborhood park yesterday, I was struck by all the languages and ethnic dress around me. Kids and parents in the playground, some in just T’s and jeans, others in veils and saris, skull caps and hoodies. All laughing and enjoying a fine day. Some practicing for their soccer or baseball/softball teams.

I realized that I picked this neighborhood with so much more than affordability and closeness to services such as rapid transit in mind. When I walked into my little 1940’s bungalow 6 years ago during an open-house, I sear I heard it say.. This is where you live. It is similar to my early childhood home not far across the Bay, fifty some years ago. My neighbors are just as then, a myriad of races and ethnicities in a working-class town. We talk to each other over fences and exchange vegetables and fruit from our gardens. My Spanish is getting better and the Turkish family nearby is getting less and less afraid of dogs. And I know I will never learn Turkish!

I was reminded of how I was raised in an extended family speaking Italian and English with neighbors from Mexico speaking Spanish. Some Russian and Chinese were mixed in as well as Jews, and Japanese, Chinese, African and Americans. Mixed-race couples that could not legally marry were also in the mix. Then, there was my maternal Grandfather born in Chile that spoke 5 languages and played several instruments by ear at the neighborhood gatherings where friends and family danced their old country dances. Even the Jewish families that I always thought had such sad eyes and hid the numbers tattoed on their wrists. And we kids tried to figure out how come we all had different faiths. There was one God, right? Or, in the case of the Native family a couple of blocks over, many Gods & Goddesses that loved us all.

When I work in my front yard garden, I see all the flavors of my childhood neighborhood pass by and I know I am home. For so long, I had to go where the work was and looked around me at something foreign to me- everyone speaking English, with white skin and degrees from schools I certainly never would have graduated from. It always felt wrong, and even frightening. I always wanted to go home.

I am home again. No, my family of origin is all gone except for one older sister and newer generations that I have to struggle with to pass our history on to (but, some are coming around). But, I smell the old recipes of my childhood neighbors as I walk here. And simmer my Grandmother's recipes to add my cultural taste. They buy ingredients from the many small stores that have cropped-up catering to their ethnicity just as my mother and grandparents did when going to North Beach (SF) stores in the 40’s & 50’s. They send money to relatives back home like my Grandfather did. Always knowing family comes first. No matter where they might be.

I would really like to know other members coming home stories in terms of their cultural background… so, join in! Many of us that are first or second generation from other countries have different childhood memories of home. Let’s share them!

I put this in the Fluff/Humor/Chat area in hopes of it being a more light-hearted conversation. Just sharing our background and how we have been able to re-connect with home in personal ways.

[Soft*Silver]

When I found this home, I fell in love with its gardens. It had the feel of how my parents kept their land. Grape pergolas, unfancy but well structured fences made of a patchwork of ancient fence and leftover grills and posts and slabs of metal from various projects over the years. I could tear it down and replace it with a pretty new fence but why? You make do with what you have, is how I was brought up...

inside, nothing has changed since the 1950s and 60s. The wall paper is incredibly "buba" era. The kitchen is so sweet with its tall cupboards and metal sink with metal countertops. The light fixtures are priceless. I couldnt afford to replace them if I tried to buy these antiques. Walking inside that first time, I felt the house claim me. It wanted me as much as I wanted it...

and the neighborhood is so like that of my family and relatives. Old ethnic families from the old country...slavic and polish, italian and irish, now mixed in with POC. They walk their dogs or their children and they stop by as I set on my porch stoop and pleasantly share small talk in a friendly way. My old dog is loved and feared..lol. Children fear her size. Even tho she wags her tail and smiles at them, some just wont budge to go pet her. But many have overcome their fears. Now they look for her when they walk by...

I am so comfortable here in this neighborhood. It feels like home, minus the ponies of course! LOL. I am trying to figure out how to keep a duck or two..maybe a couple hens...

I have young couples, old women, one in a bubushka even in this heat (head covering). They watch me putz in my yard out front. The postal worker smiles and says how pretty my plants are and how quickly they are maturing...

I have lived a few other places where I could not find a single person who looked like me or had a name like mine. I felt foreign. Here I feel at home.

I am glad you created this thread, ALH...made me appreciate what I have all the more today!

[Passionaria]

My ancestors come from the lands of the midnight sun. Where Viking adventurers whisper my name, and the Sami who are last tribal White people on earth still wander as nomads. There are lush forests where magic is a foot, gypsies intermingle, coffee is worshiped, and Tango, is the most popular dance. We are people of Fire and Ice. I come from a very traditional Scandinavian family, Swedish and Finnish. My Mother grew up speaking Finnish at home and in her community. We heard it but didn't speak it.

We Scandinavians don't consider ourselves to be European, we are a people unto ourselves, with our own customs, beliefs, and ways of life. The Vikings of long ago, who are a fierce people, stole beautiful woman from across Europe, and other lands and brought them home, and got them pregnant, and made them their own. Breading beauty into their DNA. We have some of the most progressive humanistic politics on the planet, and are generally peaceful people, unless provoked.

My family moved to the Bay Area when I was very young, and I was raised in neighborhoods of Latino people, which evoked a deep love of those people and cultures. A place I still feel most at home in.......

More later,
Pashi

[Kätzchen]

I am fifth generation Cherokee (via my mother's side - Blue Ridge Mtn area of Tennessee) and my father's ancestral lineage is of German-French roots.


Once in a blue moon, I feel a connection to what might feel like 'home.'

[lipstixgal]

I'm second generation Italian and Greek but converted to Judaism about 2 years ago and love it. So therefore I am a Safardic Jew!! I live in a neighborhood that is mostly white with some hispanics around but it is basically white!!

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Passionaria

My ancestors come from the lands of the midnight sun. Where Viking adventurers whisper my name, and the Sami who are last tribal White people on earth still wander as nomads. There are lush forests where magic is a foot, gypsies intermingle, coffee is worshiped, and Tango, is the most popular dance. We are people of Fire and Ice. I come from a very traditional Scandinavian family, Swedish and Finnish. My Mother grew up speaking Finnish at home and in her community. We heard it but didn't speak it.

We Scandinavians don't consider ourselves to be European, we are a people unto ourselves, with our own customs, beliefs, and ways of life. The Vikings of long ago, who are a fierce people, stole beautiful woman from across Europe, and other lands and brought them home, and got them pregnant, and made them their own. Breading beauty into their DNA. We have some of the most progressive humanistic politics on the planet, and are generally peaceful people, unless provoked.

My family moved to the Bay Area when I was very young, and I was raised in neighborhoods of Latino people, which evoked a deep love of those people and cultures. A place I still feel most at home in.......

More later,
Pashi

What I love about this is pointing out how many ethnicities view themselves that can be so different than what a society throws upon them. What I have learned in life is that many have wonderful stories that have survived generations that so often, remain, untold. So, much gets lost and interpreted elsewhere.

Just thinking that I bet there are a bunch of members further down the immigration generational line that have a lot to say about home.. and my Jungian connection certainly recognizes their achtypes... our ancestors are everywhere!!

[Hack]

My ancestors came to the States just after the US Civil War and homesteaded farms in northern Lower Michigan. I'm 4th generation, I guess. My family has always lived in Michigan. In fact, my parents still live in my hometown, which is the town that they grew up in and the town that their parents grew up in.

Home to me is a little town...4500 people...mostly people of German and Polish descent. In fact, I am half Polish and half German. Home to me is a town dominated by a Catholic Church on one end of town and a Luthern on the other. A Catholic Church that begrudgingly accepted Vatican II, for that matter. Home to me is homemade kielbasa from a tiny butcher shop in Polishtown (aka the neighborhood my mom grew up). Home to me is polka bands at every family wedding. Home to me is hard-working, and hard-drinking, loud, rowdy people. Home to me is having 33 first cousins on my mom's side because she had 10 brothers and sisters. Home to me is a bowling alley/restaurant that on Thursdays has pierogi, bigos, golabki, golonka, czernina (duck blood soup) on the buffet. All you can eat for $6, I might add.

On the German side, we were indoctrinated on my dad's side of the family...my grandparents grew up in households that spoke both English and German. I know a little German that I learned as a child. My grandparents traveled to Germany extensively after the war to find their roots. They would bring us little gifts and chocolates, I remember. At Christmas, my grandmother made the best stollen. And sauerkraut with every meal, it seemed.

The culture of both the Polish and German community is still very alive in my little hometown. There is a town festival every August that has element of both cultures.

Jake

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Hack

My ancestors came to the States just after the US Civil War and homesteaded farms in northern Lower Michigan. I'm 4th generation, I guess. My family has always lived in Michigan. In fact, my parents still live in my hometown, which is the town that they grew up in and the town that their parents grew up in.

Home to me is a little town...4500 people...mostly people of German and Polish descent. In fact, I am half Polish and half German. Home to me is a town dominated by a Catholic Church on one end of town and a Luthern on the other. A Catholic Church that begrudgingly accepted Vatican II, for that matter. Home to me is homemade kielbasa from a tiny butcher shop in Polishtown (aka the neighborhood my mom grew up). Home to me is polka bands at every family wedding. Home to me is hard-working, and hard-drinking, loud, rowdy people. Home to me is having 33 first cousins on my mom's side because she had 10 brothers and sisters. Home to me is a bowling alley/restaurant that on Thursdays has pierogi, bigos, golabki, golonka, czernina (duck blood soup) on the buffet. All you can eat for $6, I might add.

On the German side, we were indoctrinated on my dad's side of the family...my grandparents grew up in households that spoke both English and German. I know a little German that I learned as a child. My grandparents traveled to Germany extensively after the war to find their roots. They would bring us little gifts and chocolates, I remember. At Christmas, my grandmother made the best stollen. And sauerkraut with every meal, it seemed.

The culture of both the Polish and German community is still very alive in my little hometown. There is a town festival every August that has element of both cultures.

Jake

I really enjoyed reading this! I have so little knowledge about Polish and German immigrant journeys, really, so this brings me so much more about customs and traditions for each.

I do have a friend from Poland that I am learning more from as she is first generation and her parents live in NY and very connected to areas of Polish people. she brought me some Polish chocolate recently as a gift for taking care of her daughter (my friend) post surgery. And I got to hear her stories of immigration and what it was like to be from Slovic roots under oppression. Her parents were killed in the camps during WWII. I just learn so much more by having someone tell me their story face to face.

I love hearing about family traditions and customs that get passed on!I love hearing my friend speak Polish with her Mom. For some reason, I just feel more at peace when I am around people speaking different languages. Guess its that home thing going on for me! Also, with all of the opportunity I had to speak other languages, I have no talent at it at all! My Italian and Spanish is horrible!