Reflections of a Bi-Cultural Baby

Here's the deal: I am a half-Columbian, half-white child. I know what an arepa is, I know what cocadas are, but I grew up eating bagels and eating chocolate chip cookies. Half of my extended family lives in Bogata Santa Fe, but most of the time I visit my family in Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Louisiana. I've traveled to the farm town El Socorro in Columbia once or twice, but every five years I travel down to one of the states listed above and have a family reunion. Right now, on this thanksgiving holiday, my father, my brother, his fiancee and friends are sitting in the lighted TV room, while my tia and primo are sitting in the unlighted computer room sitting around doing nothing. And I'm up in my room blogging.

My family is not like the families most of you have grown up with. I had the option of learning Spanish at a very early age, something that my father decided to pass up on. I have the opportunity to go and stay at length in Columbia if I just ask, but I don't have time. I've grown up with the mentalities of a people who came from the impovershed South American continent and the simple American "small-town" with fields and dirt roads. Both my mother and father had accents and acted differently than everybody in New Jersey ever did. They never had many friends and never acted like the families I hung around when I was a young boy. We always did our own thing and I never really thought anything about it.

In all I don't really think anything about it, but everytime I sit around another family's dinner table I can't relate. I didn't grow up hearing stories about aunts and uncles or that "one time" or "one day" when something funny happened that described ever-so-perfectly the personality of family members who I see every so often. My family didn't live close by so I never had Thanksgivings, Christmas or New Years with anyone but my immediate family. In fact I even have family who probably never celebrated Thanksgiving until one year when they came up from Columbia and experienced it. I never had grandparents to give me a few extra bucks or pieces of candy just because they "liked my face" or whatever grandparents use as excuses to do things under parents' noses. In all it's an experience to think that when I was younger I probably had spanish talked at me more than english.

Now I'm sitting upstairs in my room thinking about all of this stuff. It's hard having family with a language barrier. It's hard trying to communicate with people who you barely know. It's hard to try and relate to cousins from a distant country after meeting them for the first time. It's espeically hard when these cousins are 20 years old and have the same desires to go out and have fun that I do.

I'm a cultural mutt. I want to try and understand a culture my mom wanted me to learn about when I was younger, yet I feel as if I rooted myself too deeply into a culture my father helped me accept by buying me Super Nintendo, bicycles, 4th of July celebrations, and Baseball tickets. In all I am grateful that both of my parents tried. But it's still hard to figure out who I am when I could do so in two different languages.

Happy Holidays or Feliz Vacaciones. It's all the same to me.

PS: I hope all of you guys are doing well! I miss you all and can't wait to get the reunion together!