Thursday, December 20, 2007

Trim Up The Tree

What I really want for Xmas this year is to know, once and for all, what my ethnic background really is. When I was a kid, it was simple: Dad was German/English, Mom was Filipino. But over the years it's gotten oh so muddled.

Upon doing a family tree homework assignment in high school, I found out that moms was not just Filipino, but her father was Spanish & Chinese. And then a couple years ago, Lily did some more questioning of my mom to find out what was up with my father's side of the picture, and she found out that there was Scottish and French in there as well.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this, and being as my dad's attending the great gig in the sky and not around to answer questions, I asked his brother. He told me there wasn't any Scottish or French in our family but there was German and Welsh. I'd never heard that I was Welsh before, but I felt like I was getting someplace.

The moment of truth finally arrived this year when we had a family reunion at my uncle's house in San Diego. I was so excited to ask the question about our ancestry and get the last word on what I'm really made of. Nope. Nothing but divergent opinions and ideas on what we were. Oh, and that my grandfather had a completely separate family from the one I knew about.

And then just the other day my cousin, who didn't bother to make the trek down to San Diego to help fill in the blanks in the family tree, calls me on the telephone. I explain the whole story of the reunion and the lack of information. He then tells me that years ago one of our relatives, who's not a relative anymore because of divorce, did the research and told our family (including the people at my family reunion) that not only were we German, English, and Welsh, but IRISH too! Well if that don't beat all. I hope at some point I find out I'm Italian as well. I've always wanted to be Italian.