I realized the other day we are raising Mini Monkey without a real sense of ethnic heritage: I also can't help but wonder how we would even embrace and promote a culture as we are pretty much all American with no ties to the old world. This isn't just an issue for MiniMonkey. I didn't grow up embracing any heritage or ethnicity either.
Even with maternal grandparents who were first generation Americans we never embraced any of the cultural festivals. I don't have memories of the house smelling of delicacies, or pulling on leiderhose, or listening to the ompapa music. We didn't even really talk about where our family was from and what traditions they had before coming to America or what traditions became incorporated into day to day life.
My paternal grandparents are even more vague, my father's side of the family didn't play any real part in my growing up. As I have grown older we have established relationships but not traditions and it's hard because there is that void. We don't all gather for the holidays, or birthdays. Thanks to the wonder's of technology in a good month we all will at least text back and forth, maybe a call or two. Not exactly the foundation for a strong cultural identity.
I admit knowing my ethnic history hasn't lead me to embrace a group as an adult either. Most weeks we eat food from a variety of cultures. I am as likely to shop at ethnic market as I am to shop at big box store. I can speak a handful of phrases in a variety of languages non of which I am solidly literate in.
True this does give the ability to pick and chose what I want my son to know and grow up experiencing but it also leaves an emptiness. I will never be able to say we do x because your grandma or grandpa did and their parents before them, so on and so forth and that has left me with a void that I don't know how to fill or really explain.
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