Ties

I guess I've got a pretty weird viewpoint. Growing up, people would ask us what ethnic background we were, and they inevitably meant, "You're not exactly white. What's up?" It was South Georgia, and this was before the huge influx of immigrant workers made general Hispanic/Latino sightings more common. So as kids we would point to my Grandmother, indicating that all non-white abnormalities could and should be pinned to her genetic influence. Truth is, I kind of liked being different. And when people would ask what my Father's background was, I would scratch my head. What am I supposed to say? White? Because of the close proximity of something real and traceable, i.e. Nanny's mishmash accent, we never counted anything else. Who cares if my great-great grandmother was German, or of German stock? It didn't affect me, I never knew her, we don't speak German or didn't grow up with weinerschnitzel and apfelstrudel. But I did feel that way about my Puerto Rican side; I grew up feeling more different than anything else, made to recognize my half-breed otherness by overly inquisitive full-blood Caucasians on the playground. "What are you?" was lobbed at me often enough to keep it on the backburner of my mind, slowly boiling some kind of racial identity soup with scary fish heads in it (don't ask me, it's some kind of Puerto Rican recipe).

Cut to fifteen years later, and I'm still trying to figure all of that out. Ethnically speaking, that is. What does it mean to be Puerto Rican or Southern, American or Spanish? How do you define those things? Is it where you grew up, your DNA, where your heart lies? It's a small non-joke that I always say that I feel more Spanish sometimes than American. Maybe it's that same desire to be the different kid, he who does not fit in. Shrug. Live on foreign soil long enough and you begin to actively critique certain things that always seemed standard. One of the worst moments in my life came from returning from Spain for the first time ever and immediately attending a Fourth of July celebration. In the midst of all those upturned faces staring at the exploding night sky, I was amazed. Where did all my patriotism go? I could feel the fingers pointing up at me and that anxious question come back: "What are you?"

So it's kinda funny that I'm going to the Macy's fireworks tonight, huh? But I ain't waving no flag.