Cultural Consciousness

Two values that my mother really hammered into me and my brother was the "treat others as you'd like to be treated" and "imagine yourself in that person's shoes." This really shaped my childhood and instilled in me a great deal of empathy. My parents felt that these values would make us more likely to treat people with respect and kindness and compassion. Keeping to these values would help us to always ensure that other people would feel valued, even if (and especially if) they were different from us.

When we grew up, we were expected to go to college. My family, since my parent's generation, have all gone to college. Education is highly valued in our family. My maternal grandfather went to college later in life, after my mom was born, and he would always tell us stories about how he'd go to school, then drive and work on the railroad and then go home and stay up all night doing homework. He always stressed the importance of education to us. When we were growing up, we were expected to contribute to family life by helping to maintain the house by doing chores, such as cleaning. Now that I'm in college, that still holds true when I'm home, although to a lesser extent. Once I graduate, I know that my family responsibilities won't be huge. I already know that I probably won't live in the same area as the majority of my family--I'll have to go where the jobs are. I know that my family will expect me to keep in touch, which I will do, of course.

My family structure was the traditional nuclear family: two parents and a younger brother. Both of my parents worked for my entire childhood (and still work). The majority of my extended family have always lived in near-by towns, so we would see them for all holidays and at random times in between. Family was always very important--during holidays, we were never allowed to "disappear" and go play. We had to spend time talking with the adults. Now that I'm older, I'm glad my parents made us do that because I got to learn a lot more about my family that way.

Our ethnicity was always very important to our family and we learned about it from the time we were little. My mother is Serbian and Croatian; my father is Italian. All of their family members taught us about our culture. We celebrate Serbian Christmas every year on January 7 and about 6 years ago also began celebrating Christmas Eve. We always do it at our house. The family comes over. On Christmas Eve we cook fish on the back porch because my mom says it smells and she doesn't want our house to smell like it. On Christmas Eve you can only eat food that comes from the ground or from the sea, so the meal is pretty limited. Christmas Day, my mom's cousin always makes a different soup. When I came home my freshman year in college, she made wedding soup for me. She normally doesn't do that because she hates rolling the meatballs. We also always have sarma, which is a traditional Serbian food that my mom, Tete (my great-aunt), and I always rolled. It's rice, onion, and meat rolled into cabbage rolls. In between the cabbage rolls, when you cook it, you put sausage. Before dinner, my grandpa lights the candle, says a prayer, and then we all do a shot of whiskey. Our Italian heritage is always important to us as well. Every year we participate in a parade honoring the patron saint of my dad's family's village, San Rocco. A lot of people from the same village immigrated to the same town in the 1920's and carried with them this tradition, which we still do today. It's really cool to be a part of the procession. The procession begins with the priests, then the band, then the statue, which is carried by decedents of the original immigrants. My father and brother are both statue carriers. They are followed by the women of the families who carry banners honoring family members who have died. My cousins and I carry family banners.

I grew up in a neighboorhood that had a lot of children. We would all play together. Also, my next door neighbor was disabled. Her name was Mrs. Foster and she had MS. She was in and electric wheelchair from the time I was fairly little. I can remember going over to pick stuff up for her when it would be beyond her reach, or when my brother and I would lock ourselves our because they had our extra key. We'd always stay after we returned the key to talk with her. My family was very similiar to the other families in our neighborhood. We live in an entirely white, heterosexual neighborhood. My neighborhood is representative of my town.