My Family Culture

            Following a major catastrophe from which my immediately family survived we cling to each other and express extreme gratitude that we are able to be together.  We are sympathetic for the tremendous loss and seek ways to comfort each other and others less fortunate.   We follow our customary tradition by praying together and jointly deciding the items we value most to take to a new country.  We decide first to select pictures depicting our lives and place them in a small photo album.  We select everyone’s baby picture and baptismal picture to remind us of our religious upbringing and how influential religion is in our everyday lives.  Sports played a major role in three of my four children’s upbringing, so we chose one picture a piece as mementos of their favorite sport and of my other daughter and me attending their games as a show of support and encouragement. Education and training are highly valued in our family, so we chose everyone’s graduation pictures, including mine and my son’s graduation from basic military training.  Maintaining close ties with extended family and carrying on traditions of our heritage is of great value to us, so we included a family reunion picture and pictures of my parents and siblings, and of my children’s father and his parents, their stepmother and step family.  Some of our best memories are of playing and having fun together, so we included pictures of our family vacations and birthday parties. 

          Our second treasured possession we decide to take is our family cookbook.  We have recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation as well as new favorites.  Sharing meals by sitting around the kitchen or dining room table was of particular importance to us.  One of the most frequent calls I receive from my daughters is, “Mom, how do I make this, what ingredients do I need to buy”?  My son was a great helper in the kitchen.  Our visits now center on me making everyone’s favorite meal. 

          Third, we decide to take my son’s notebook.  He has many games, music, and movies that we would be able play and watch.  As a family we enjoy listening to music.  We love playing games together as well as watching movies.  We have always enjoyed these are activities and feel that if we incorporate activities that are familiar we’ll adjust more easily and readily to our new country’s culture (Derman-Sparks, 2010) (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).

          Upon arrival in our new country we are told we can have only take one item with us.  I explain to my children that I have many recipes memorized and we are all creative chiefs.  One of my daughters is a Consumer Science teacher and also has many recipes memorized.  We give up the cookbook and plan to enter as many recipes as we can remember into my son’s notebook as soon as we get settled.  My son already has an array of pictures saved in his notebook and we ask if we can upload the pictures from our photo album before relinquishing it.  I realize how devastating it will be not to have a picture of my parents or siblings and for my children not to have pictures of their father and his family.  After much debate, we agree that we could write our recipes on paper.  We could learn to enjoy the music of our new country.  We are all very creative and could make familiar games from various items or make up and/or purchase new games.  However, we would never have the opportunity to take pictures of our loves ones that did not survive.  Our decision would be based on whether or not we are given permission to upload our pictures.

          The insight I gained from this exercise is that it is very difficult to pinpoint items that are more important than being with my immediate family.  Our family culture will bind us together and help us integrate into a new culture.  We will have each other.  I taught my children to be resilient and the dominant culture (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010) in our lives taught us as a family to be resilient because we are a single parent family.  We will have each other for support and learn from each other how to become integrated into a new way of life.  I foresee that we will become dependent upon each other in new ways and will need to draw upon each other’s strengths to adapt and change. 

References

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). P. 5.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010). Family Cultures: Dynamic Interactions [Video webcast]. Retrieved from http://www.courseurl.com