A True American

There are many things I love about America. But I think the thing I love the most about our great country is its diversity.

In a way, we are all immigrants. We may have been born here and we may be citizens but it’s such a young nation that we all have a “settlers” story. Perhaps your grandmother landed on Ellis Island or your grandfather crossed the border from Mexico. Or just maybe, your mother was wandering throughout Italy and met your dad at a bar in Rome. That’s what happened with my parents, and I love their story.

Your family’s history really defines you as a person. The food you eat, the languages you speak and the holidays you celebrate stem from your ancestry. And every family has a distinct story to tell.

My mother was born in Nicaragua. She came to the United States when she was three and grew up here in D.C. In her twenties, she went to visit her aunt who was living in Rome. She was there for months and the last week of her visit, she met my dad, a local, at a bar.They got married, moved to the States and had me.

I was raised in a trilingual home. One night we would eat pasta and prosciutto and the next we would have beans and tortillas. My mother’s family lived in D.C. and, while everyone assimilated perfectly into the American culture, we never forgot about Nicaragua and our roots. Speaking Spanish was and still is standard and we kept close ties with other Nicaraguans in the area so as to maintain the culture locally.

My father being Italian and a true immigrant to the U.S., rightfully insisted on me speaking his language and understanding his culture. With his entire family based in Italy, we would go back there every summer. I have wonderful memories of spending months with my Italian family in Umbria and really getting an opportunity to soak up the language and rich culture. Those experiences led me to want to spend some time there as an adult living and working in Rome.

Now, I find myself raising a child in the United States. Luckily, I married a man who feels as strongly as I do that culture and family history are imperative to our daughter’s upbringing. He being Cuban-American has always been very aware of his family’s history and very much integrated those beliefs into his American life.

We, too, are raising our daughter in a trilingual home. She’s not yet two and she can greet you or ask for water in Spanish, Italian and English. She knows that one of her grandmothers came from Nicaragua and the other from Cuba. She knows that her grandfather is Italian and the other, now up in heaven, had to flee Cuba and go to Rome where he studied music at the St. Cecilia conservatory, after which she was named.    

Weekly menus at our home now consist of pasta, prosciutto, beans, tortillas and plantains. She can easily go from olives to yucca and on her 21^st birthday, her first drink will be a mojito. She will grow up speaking various languages, understanding different cultures and embracing her heritage. She is a true American.