I think the biggest point of divergence between my parents' culture is the ways we interact w family. my moms (dominican) family is huge, like our family reunions are over 100 people (and those are just the people who could make it to the cookout) and I could meet like 5 new people at each family gathering that I didn't know I was related to. but with my dads (american) family, the family is a lot smaller and less warm? not sure if that's the best description but compared to my moms side, there is so much more drama on my dads side
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both of my parents are american and from berkeley, california, where i was also born and raised. my mom is black, with a little bit of native american but the cultural aspect of her native american heritage was lost over the years. also an only child. my dad is ukrainian ashkenazi jewish, 3rd generation in the US, so doesn’t speak yiddish. he has 2 sisters and a half sister.
my mom’s family has mostly passed away to this point so 90% of extended family things were with my dad‘s side, and the jewish culture is interesting insofar as everyone is pretty well read & likes to talk politics/world issues. normally like 5 conversations going on there at once especially during meals. if anything, he’s very much an overcommunicator and has a tendency for intellectual removal, partially due to white privilege partially due to who he is as a person
mom’s family, i don’t remember a ton but they mostly don’t talk much, were always nice people though, not cold just quiet. she does not communicate well at all, often assumes other people think the way she does, and doesn’t listen well either.
this leads to basically constant clash and unequal compromise over what i believe to be the core issue of being raised with completely different communication styles and the lack of will from one side to do much work to change that. it’s often a pain in the ass but really interesting to see sometimes when i’m home
Apr 20, 2024
here are 3 of my most exciting pieces of lore:
1) my dad was in the south tower on 9/11 and he made it out, but was still in the building when the plane hit. the plane went through his office window, but he was already evacuating and on around the 40th floor when the plane hit
2) my paternal grandfather (jewish) was born in austria but his family moved to milan in ‘33/34 when hitler came into power. in ‘44 when the nazis occupied northern italy, his family escaped into the mountains northeast of milan near bergamo (he was about 13 or 14 years old at this point). his family helped smuggle guns to the partisans since they could speak german with an austrian accent and bypass nazi checkpoints. my grandfather had to shoot a fascist at one checkpoint going wrong, and so at 14 he joined the partisans full-on and lived with them until the war ended. i have a bunch of photos from his time with the partisans (attached some). apparently the group he was specifically with was led by this kinda crazy guy who threatened the security of the whole partisan operations, so he was actually killed by other communist partisans. a few years ago i found a man who researches this exact group in bergamo, and now i have an 80 yr old italian pen-pal who published some photos of my grandfather in his book.
3) my maternal grandfather was orphaned really young in cuba and was really poor. he met my grandmother when he saw her riding her bike down the street and instantly fell in love with her (yes, just like cinema paradiso). she was really rich and her family hated him, so he would wait outside her window just to see her. eventually they get married and have my eldest uncle (because love always perseveres). this part of the story is fuzzy, but i believe he got into some gambling issues and so my grandmothers family shipped him to the US (probably with hopes of getting rid of him for good). but he began to build a life for his family there. then the revolution happened and he continued to go back and forth, but then castro put in the policy that children born in cuba had to stay, so they moved to nyc permanently. but my grandfather loved castro, as most cubans did. so my family is not part of the typical exile cuban-american demographic, which i always found fascinating.
Feb 19, 2024
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When my grandma's sister passed away around the time my mom was 10 (this was 1982), her husband decided to not really speak to my grandma's side of the family even though my mom and grandma had a really good relationship with their kids (my mom's cousins) and they didn't really communicate with each other as much, and two of their kids ended up becoming pretty well known (one is a chef and the other does stuff with MSNBC) so now I have famous relatives who I only met once when I was 5. They live far away from me and I'm pretty sure they have no idea who I am, and my grandma's sister's husband lives in my state like 30 mins away from me and runs a doctor's office but I have never seen him in my life for the reasons mentioned above. So yeah I have a whole side of my family I don't really know at all. It's also crazy how my mom just casually told me this.
Through that grandparent I'm also related to another bunch of well-known people who came from a town/city in Slovakia according to ancestry.com (back when it was called Austria-Hungary) who likely have no idea of my family's existence but that's a whole different story
Jul 7, 2024
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something abt zoning out while staring at a lake just hits different
Apr 27, 2024
no idea what sparked this but i just had a random meltdown over baseball. the next note after this one was also abt baseball so i think i was just going thru something
Apr 18, 2024
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in: reading by the lake / nature walks / bird watching like a grandpa / hanging out with my mom more because shes awesome / gardening / blasting chappell roan / running / napping / photosynthesizing / pointing my fan directly at my face while i sleep / reading before bed
out: stressing over my future / sweating / people asking why i'm wearing jeans and sweaters in the summer / sticky fingers / tequila shots
Apr 16, 2024