Wednesday, March 11, 2015

My family shapes my identity -- more and more

Catherine Rampell asks plaintively, “Why should women need to be seen as daughters before we can ever be recognized as human beings?”  I understand her point: she is a proud and independent woman, not just a decoration in some male’s life – and it almost doesn’t matter whether the male is a good guy or not.  Independent.  Got it.  But …

You have no idea who I am if you don’t understand that I’m Roy’s little brother (Special Forces medic, killed in the Tet offensive).  My sister’s Kathie’s thought and experience is woven inextricably into all my writing about nonviolence and eugenics.  Your picture of me is pretty stunted if you don’t know about my astrophysicist father and my mystical-lit-crit mom.  You can’t get at the motives that drive me if you don’t know about my relatives in the CIA, my pro-labor great-grandfather, my royal peace-making great-great-grandfather, my mayor aunt, my drunken uncle.  I am hugely proud of my second cousin, once removed, who wrote a great novel, The Book of Jonah.  If you want to know how I think, watch the quirky twists in my daughter’s blog, www.joyfulcatholicmom.blogspot.com.  (And of course, if you go back millions of generations, one of my distant ancestors was a blazing explosive star, fresh and hot from the hands of the Lord – who, by the way, is a collateral cousin through Mary as well as an adoptive Father).

My identity is tied tightly to my family, a sprawling brawling complex creation.

One significant family detail.  More and more, my identity is tied to the coming generations more than the past, my progeny more than my predecessors.  And it seems that when my grandchildren describe their ancestors, they will include me and my Irish and Swedish ancestors – but they will also lay claim to roots in El Salvador, Peru, Philippines, Africa, and the African-American south.  My roots are not Asian or Latino, but my branches are.  With each passing year, my family and my own identity become more global.

Isn’t immigration a great and wonderful thing?

(Rampell’s article was not about families; it was about cyber-bullying.)