scribblechic

It began with a sixth grade social studies assignment; innocent questions intended to create an intimate classroom discussion on culture. An exercise familiar across generations for the interpersonal research – facts shaped by stories. A heritage of self in family interviews.

Faith that infers belief, foods that speak to nationalities, traditions that honor sentiment. Easy questions tugged at difficult subjects. Not all family traditions are kind, some truths are more telling.

When I met my husband I imagined our children would inherit his family’s traditions. My childhood holidays were only consistent in their predictable inconsistencies. My mother was poor and my father was unburdened by an obligation to nurture superficial normalcies.

I was honored to accommodate my husband’s experiences; advent chocolates and Saint Nicholas day, an eccentric Easter tradition and a few family recipes. It was a more uncomfortable truth my children remember from the years before we found peace.

For my children there are only hints of heritage in holiday customs or hand-me-down stories. It was a history of substance abuse and greed that were written into the space of traditions. These are the markers that inform my children’s understanding of an entire ancestry of instability.

They are not the answers a teacher would expect and so this week I helped my daughter research a culture she never knew for a more predictable character of diversity. Learning pieces of a past that were impersonal for their irrelevance to our experiences.

Still, I am grateful for the innocent honesty of children. There is no shame to truth-telling; we are not bound to the choices of others. The geography of our experience is not a culture mapped by lines of latitude or longitude.

As a family I hope our faith is one of kindness; there is no denomination that informs the intentions behind our actions. Our food speaks less of heritage and more of health and community around the table. Our traditions are small, artifacts of a culture of playfulness and mindfulness – my favorite the intentional hugs at each goodbye.

These are the answers I hope echo in stories untold years from now when my children’s children fill in the spaces of self.

A legacy of love.