It seems that a big emotional factor in wanting one’s children to engage in (sometimes outdated) traditions is the sacrifices family elders have made in order to preserve them. In my own family, the mass of ancestors who were slaughtered standing up for their right to practice Catholicism has been enough to give the church a metric ton of leeway when crazy stuff starts to happen. It seems pretty disrespectful to look at the eight trillion religions that might better reflect our modernized values and switch to another imperfect one, right?
At the same time, I think of those ancestors and the fighting spirit they passed down, so evident in my closest relatives, and I can’t help but believe that if they were alive today, they would look at a lot of things going on with the Church and say “oh hell no!”
That’s just an example. This post isn’t about my family, and it’s not about religion. It’s about making peace with one’s culture, because it’s something that has been on my mind. Most people I know have some degree of conflict between who their loved ones want them to be and who they would be if the loved ones weren’t around, excusing, of course, the fact that without those loved ones we would have all grown up to be radically different individuals. The whole phenomenon is upsetting to me.
This is a little college essayish but if you’ll allow it, I went to Ellis Island with my cousins and my aunt before my first year of college, and it was the first time that I had really given thought to where I fit in to my family when you extend it further than the people I see at reunions. We found the immigration records for our Aunt Bella, an abstract character from family anecdotes who I always pictured in her starring role as an old lady who made my grandmother eat peas even though she detested them. Of all the characters in family lore who I might have felt a personal connection to, she was pretty far down the list.
But there was her name on the ship log, written by someone who didn’t know or care about her, probably not realizing how meaningful his records would be to future generations. She was our age at the time. We were experiencing the range of trepidations surrounding the idea of moving to different parts of the country for college, and she was alone on a boat coming to the United States on her own. She had brown hair and blue eyes. We pretty much all do. I wished I could take 18 year old Aunt Bella for coffee. I think we would have had a lot to talk about.
Every person is, of course, faced with situations where s/he has to choose what’s important. It doesn’t do a lot for me when people hurl safe, generic labels like “family” my way. What does that mean? Who is your family? What conditions are put on your closeness with this family that something has to be sacrificed for it? Are these choices going to have consequences for your future children, your future family? They’re complicated problems, and unless it is your full-time job to think about someone else’s problems (the parent clause), I think it’s really irresponsible to judge a person for how s/he builds a home.
If it’s about children, nobody has them alone (even when they do) or under the same circumstances. In every serious relationship I’ve had, I’ve had a dramatically different view of the culture my children might have, but I don’t think any of the scenarios would be an inherently superior environment for a child. Culture isn’t static; it will change no matter what you do. Being super Irish-American today would be a different experience than being super Irish-American two generations ago. And there’s the rub. If you have a strong sense of culture, you probably have a history you’re very proud of. But when you come from a long line of revolutionaries, you aren’t totally honoring your past by recreating it.
The way I see it, it’s hard to fail—you honor your heritage by keeping traditions or by creating your own. Most likely, it’s some combination of the two. At the same time, no matter what you do, somebody’s going to think you’ve got it wrong. But it’s ok, your whole family before you made unpopular decisions and now you’re here, and they’ve bought you the right to do the same. And that’s my rant on cultural pressures. God I could use a potato.