Culture of Self

I grew up in Ridgefield for the most part. When I was four, my mother and father got divorced; it was a terrible experience.  I remember clinging onto my father’s leg as my mother was pushing and throwing his belongings down the stairs at us. My brother was not even a year old at the time, so he has a very different perspective of the divorce than I do. For JJ, that’s just the way things were; we lived with Mommy and we saw Daddy on the weekends, summers, and some holidays. My father tried to keep things between them civil for us; he always had our best intentions in mind. My mother always took good care of us physically, but abused both my brother and I verbally. I got the brunt of it. For as long as I can remember, she has called me every name in the book and kicked me out of the house for the first time when I was four. My dad, who moved in with my grandparents (where we all still live today) got a call from my mom during the school week saying, “Come pick this f*cking b*tch up.” Needless to say, he went to get me and drove me all the way back the next morning to go to school.

We lived with my mother because she didn’t want to give up the custodial rights to my father, although she was very eager to get rid of us every weekend. I think it had something to do with finances too. We never had any money for extras and my mother NEVER paid for anything more than the necessities. The entire financial burden was placed on him. If we needed medicine, school clothes, school supplies, money to go on a class trip, application fees for college, etc the response we would get was, “Go ask your father.” Now, giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she didn’t make enough to include extras, but my dad paid child support so that should have covered all of the extra amenities for my brother and I. My dad, being a police officer, works crazy hours and even if he asked my mother to keep us until he got out of work or perhaps keep us for the weekend if my grandparents were away, she would never let us stay with her. Friday came and we were out no matter what! My dad always had to rearrange his life to fit her needs and it was never the other way around. So, my dad always got the shit end of the stick even when it came to holidays. I think we woke up with him on Christmas once as kids, when we still believed in Santa. We would tell her that we wanted to wake up with daddy but she would always “threaten” my brother and I saying, “Then go live with your father.”  And finally, after she punched me in the face, I said that’s it and I moved in with my father when I was sixteen years old. I didn’t talk to her for one year after that and my brother stayed with her because she manipulated him with guilt trips to make him stay. I don’t know why I didn’t go and live with dad sooner. Maybe because the way she expressed living with him as negative and came through as a threat. Plus, I was afraid to leave all of my friends. We worked it out that I still went to school with my friends and graduated from Ridgefield. It was so much better living with Dad, but I missed my brother.

Unfortunately, my mother is sick now, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and we don’t talk often. She is still selfish and manipulative and has ruined our relationship and recently the relationship between her and my brother. She definitely has taught me what type of mother not to be. Her choices and judgment have proved themselves to be an embarrassment to both my brother and I.  I consider my grandmother to be more of a solid mother figure than she has ever been. My grandmother was a foster child and doesn’t know too much about her heritage. She did bring with her protestant faith that she designated as hers but did not practice regularly or put onto us.

I wasn’t brought up with strict religious implications in either household. I went to CCD, made my holy communion and have a cross hanging in my room. But, by no means does Catholicism really define me as a person. I will not get married in a church and I do believe there is a God because of fear of not to. I believe in the more scientific explanations of how the universe and we were created. My grandfather on the other hand is not religious, but is the stereotypical stubborn German. My great-grandfather, my Poppop’s father was an officer in Germany in World War I. He and my great-grandmother immigrated to America in 1922 and had twins, my Poppop and my great-uncle George. My grandfather has lost his ability to communicate in German and therefore our main language spoken at home is English.

Although I am of German and Irish heritage (my mother’s mother was German and Irish) I consider myself American. I was born here and influenced by American culture and environment. I feel that my broken family life is related to that of families in urban areas more so than the suburban community that I grew up in. I was one of the very few who did not have both parents at home. I always felt like an outsider; I was different. I didn’t have the typical life that everyone around me did. I missed out on the social interactions on the weekends and in high school being social is a big part of one’s existence. I am fortunate though to have two best friends have been there through everything, that date all the way back to kindergarten. It seemed like everyone else had it so much better than I did, the parents, the money, the stability, and etc. I feel that school was very important for me; it was my stability. I was very involved in every aspect of drumming in the music department and the creative outlets like editor-in-chief of the yearbook. There were times that I didn’t leave school until nine o’clock at night because I would much rather be involved with my friends than go home to my mother. My father was very supportive of my active high school life and even when I moved in with him, he didn’t ask me to quit any of my extracurricular activities especially since they looked good on my transcripts and college applications.

Going to college was a big deal in Dad’s home, in my community, and in school. It’s just what you did. After grammar school, you go to high school and then off to college. My mother does not have a college degree and my father went to an automotive technical school for two years out in Colorado. His brother and sister, my aunt and uncle went to Michigan State University, so when you go to college in my family, you go away. Where to go to college was a big deal coming from such a small town.

The high school that I attended was very small (ninety-eight in our graduating class) and predominantly white; I think we had two black students in the whole school. Our junior high school was located in the same building and as the high school and as I traveled through the grades, I started to see an increase in the Asian ethnicity of the students. They tended to keep to themselves and as I approached eleventh grade, there was a true segregation between the whites in Asians in our graduating class. Many times they didn’t want to socialize with us or did they try. They spoke Korean amoungst themselves in school even after learning English. What did bring us together was the competition of where we were going to school. I ended up going away to North Carolina, Catawba College and then to New York, Manhattanville College. It turns out that I was the only one in my class to go the furthest away.

I feel that my experiences, family life, community, culture, agnostic religion, and exposure to race and ethnicity (although limited) have really shaped me. I feel that I can relate to children of single parent homes and abusive parents maybe not in the extreme context that some of my students will bring to me, but a better understanding then someone who has not been through it at all. I think I have risen above my negative situation and I know that it has not been as bad as it could have been. I had positive reinforcement and support from my father and grandparents to do great things and succeed in life. I hope I can pass that onto my students, that you can rise above as long as you believe in yourself. I think that I internalized how my mother has treated my brother and I and this will help me respect other people’s feelings inside and outside of the classroom. I hope to be an insightful, creative, inspiring, active, caring, and understanding educator. Even after culture and our experiences, we are all still human.