A Little Somthing About My Family.

The older generations in my family, my dad, my granddad, and great granddad, are Puerto Rican to the bone. Although my dad was raised for a good portion of his life in, you guessed it, New York City, he still has managed to hold on to his culture and celebrate what he often refers to as “The Puerto Rican way.” On a recent trip back to my father’s homeland, I got to witness the culture he grew up in and see for myself the environment in which he was raised. If you’ve never been to Puerto Rico, you probably think of it as a Caribbean paradise with beautiful beaches and tropical rainforests filled with exotic birds with colorful feathers; not to mention scantily clad maidens in bikinis. Yeah. What most people do not realize is that this island is filled with really, really old people, and none of these old people know any English. These people spent their whole day pretending that I understood what they were saying, playing billiards and drinking native beer. When they run out of beer (a rare occasion but every once in a while it does happen) they talk endlessly into the wee hours of the morning in that incomprehensible language of theirs, pretending I know what their saying. Every once in a while they’d awkwardly ask me what college I was going to just to try to get me into the conversation, but after a few seconds they’d go back to Spanish and pretend I didn’t exist. This is the culture my grandpa and my father grew up in, and this, like it or not, is the way my family lives.

My grandfather was a hard working delivery man in New York, delivering liquor (of all things) from a local bar to customers either too lazy or too rich to bother getting out of their homes to get it themselves. I guess I shouldn’t complain about that, since these peoples laziness allowed my grandfather and, by default, my dad to have a job. It may not have been the greatest job in the world, but my granddad worked very hard at it and taught my dad how to be a hard worker as well. And no, he didn’t take samples of his merchandise. My family built up quite a legacy in New York. My granddad lived in a neighborhood in which the godfather of an Italian mob lived. Being the only Hispanic person in a neighborhood dominated by Italians wasn’t easy for my grandparents, but after a while he gained the trust of the godfather (I can not get over how awesome that is) and became a trusted member of the community which became apparent when my grandmother was actually driven to the hospital by the mob so that she could give birth to my aunt.

My father joined the Air Force shortly after graduating from the University of Puerto Rico and entered the service as a 2nd LT. As an Air Force officer my father traveled around the world, from California, to England, where I was born, to Nebraska which became my home for the next seven years of my life. My father’s hard work and dedication in the armed forces eventually earned him the position of Major and a re-deployment to Eglin Air Force Base in Crestview Florida. Never heard of it? Never will, it’s small. His life path never crossed any Italian mobs or godfathers or anything like that, his was one spent in varies small towns in Nebraska and Florida, serving his country and caring for his family.

So what is the legacy that my family has given me? There really isn’t much of one to speak of. Each generation of my family is extremely different from the one that preceded it. My great, great grandparents owned sugar plantations, my distant ancestors were pirates. Each generation treads its own path, whether it be by moving to New York to live amongst the Italian mod, or joining the armed forces and traveling across the world, the legacy of my family is etched in the need for change. Although I too plan on joining this nations finest, I do not intend on making a carrier out of it. I plan to write fiction; my cousin shares my passion as well. My sister wants to be a singer, my brother’s actors, cooks, and musicians. My family has had successful business men, brave soldiers who’ve fought in wars past and present, hard workers doing their best to scratch out a living for their families, and now as the younger generation of my family grows up, artists. I can only imagine what the next generation will do.