My Heritage

My parents in 1966 shortly after they met in Spain and decided to hitch their wagons. This was a going-away party my mom's family threw before they left the Netherlands to make their lives together in the US.

My family on my dad's side comes from tiny, high-desert towns in Durango, Mexico. He was born in the Great Depression and raised in Visalia, a small farming town in California’s San Joaquín Valley. As a child, he rode the back of trucks with his family and other farm workers to harvest cotton, grapes, peaches, citrus -- the vertebrae of California’s agricultural economy. When he was in high school, his family put indoor plumbing in their home.

Back: my aunts Aurelia and Genevieve. Front: my aunt Irene, dad, grandma, and uncles Richard and Lawrence.

Some people considered it their righteous duty to squash any pride and dignity he mustered. A trip beyond his side of town, even a moment of happiness in view of the wrong person, was enough to attract racist wrath.

When his family had time for luxuries, they came together with the cousins, aunts, and uncles on the compound where the extended family's small, self-built, wooden homes clustered. Celebration, self-taught music, and dance were more than a respite from back-breaking toil; they were a shield from the naked hatred and personal attacks they earned for the transgression of not being white. Joy was an act of courage and defiance -- a courageous affirmation of their dignity. Today, well into his 80’s my dad still feels the sting of the white world’s effort to assert his inferiority as a child. And he still finds ways to create joy for himself and the lucky people around him.

My tante (aunt) Hanneke, my oma (grandmother), my tante Marianne, and my mom. This was about five years after the war and shortly before my oom (uncle) Gerard joined the family.

My mom was born in a working-class family in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation of World War II. Her earliest memories are of air raids. At night neighbors patrolled the streets to ensure no light escaped from the homes’ windows, making the neighborhood a target for the bombers above. In another early memory, she recalls her dad, my opa, dressing in women’s clothing to evade the attention of Nazi soldiers as he bicycled off to meetings of the resistance. (At least that’s where he said he was going in his dress and headscarf.) 

The inhuman horrors of the Holocaust and the unconscionable, racist crimes she learned of her country’s colonial history made her choose a side as a child: she embraced and sought to learn from those who’d been harmed by racism, greed, ignorance, and other human failures. Her instinctive reaction to anything new, different, or foreign was respect, awe, and genuine interest.

Throughout my childhood, I saw my mom treat each cross-cultural encounter as an opportunity to enrich her appreciation for the collective beauty of humanity. If she had a religion, it was pluralism. This wasn't a theory she studied; it’s simply who she is and how she has always lived.

These experiences shaped my parents' lives and mine.

__________