Cultural Identity

Saturday I went to Chattanooga with my Grandpa, Dad, and Mom to visit my Grandma's gravesite. My Grandpa grew up in Chattanooga and met my Grandma there 62 years ago. It is the city where they were married and is also my father's birthplace. While we were visiting with my dad's cousin, I learned that one of my descendants fought in the Revolutionary War! I've always had an interest in my family's genealogy. I know a little about it from older family members who have taken a lot of time to research and document our family's past. I wouldn't call myself a history buff, just interested in where I come from.

This is the pension claim given to my Great, great, great, great, great Grandfather after his service in the war. Making me the 7th generation decedent, I believe.

While living in New York, many people I met would ask me if I am Russian, Polish, or Czech. I suppose I have certain physical features typical to that of someone who is Eastern European. The blonde hair didn't help. Greenpoint, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, has a very large Polish community. When I worked there, I was stopped on the street often by old Polish women asking me questions in a language I do not know. My decent is Irish and English mostly. When asked where I was from, I would say I'm American. I'm from Alabama, and then elaborate. I realize that the United States is a very young country. My family's been here for a while. A lot of people I knew in New York were from other countries or 1st or 2nd generation to be born here in the United States. I think about their strong cultural ties and the many things I learned from them regarding where their family was from and their customs. I saw the expressions of that in [their] daily life. Sometimes subtle, sometimes not. What about me? What were my daily nuances? I've posed this question to myself since I have been back in Alabama. Trying to understand 'this place' and the context of myself within it, and thinking back to my behaviors, representative of my cultural self, when I lived away from it.
I found this quote, and appreciated what is means to me to be back home especially during this miserably hot summer we are having!

"In the South, perhaps more than any other region, we go back to our home in dreams and memories, hoping it remains what it was on a lazy, still summer's day twenty years ago"
- Willie Morris