It is easy to look around my neighborhood and spot the first and second generation Americans. Or at least I always thought it was, until yesterday.
I was in the car listening to NPR while driving and heard a story about farming. It was a story about how we seem to be going back to small farms and how all of us had family farms in our backgrounds. That got me to thinking. I don’t have any farming in my background. Why don’t I? My parents didn’t farm, my grandparents didn’t farm. Wait a minute! My grandparents weren’t from this country. That makes me only second generation American and my mom first gen.
I had never thought about it before. But if your ancestors came from many parts of Europe, you will look “American” and it won’t be obvious that you are only first or second generation. That got me to thinking about my friends and sure enough I have a friend that is my age that is first generation American. You would never know it since her parents came from Scotland where they speak English and culturally they fit in pretty easy.
Where am I going with this? I have no idea. It is just something that I guess I always knew, but never thought of in these terms. It is a funny feeling to realize that I can lump myself in with all the recent immigrants. Although since this is now 2010, I guess “recent” becomes a relative term. From what I know, I figure that my grandparents must have arrived here around 1912. That is almost 100 years ago now.
And my children? Well, their father is foreign born 😉
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