This blog has nothing to do with cancer. It's about who I am.
I'm watching Downton Abbey last night and there's a scene where a suitor of one of the aristocratic daughters can move to Germany, become a citizen and then he will be able to divorce his wife so he can marry her. This is 1920s England. The woman states that the Germans are the most hated people in the world.
After Christmas dinner my Aunt Karen and Uncle Alan came over and we were talking about World War 1 and 2. I was embarrassed at my lack of knowledge of the first war especially. As we were talking we went on and on about how the war went and it was quite interesting. In fact, I am just cracking open a book Karen ordered for me on Russian history. All quite fascinating. Apparently the Germans were the aggressors in both wars.
Then for the last few days I've been watching The Sopranos on HBO. The whole show is mobster Italian television and I am very interested in their extreme New Jersey/Italian ways. They exude Italian. My friend Mary Sutera and her whole family exuded Italian culture. Their mother cooked huge dinners of authentic Italian food. They all "look" Italian. Brown eyes. Dark complexion. They should. Their parents immigrated here from Sicily.
My brother and his family are embracing his Native American heritage. Learning some of the language. Meeting lots of family and friends. Learning the ways of the Lakota.
I'm a person who really doesn't seem very ethnic to myself. If someone would ask I would say I am of European descent. I have English and Irish and German in me. So I ask you. If the Germans were the most hated people in the world back between the first and second World Wars, could that have robed me of some of my ethnicity? Were German Americans afraid to admit they were from Germany because people may have looked down on them because of it?? My husband has Danish heritage and they embrace it with traditional recipes and dancing around the Christmas tree.
We don't really have any German things we do. Or English. Or Irish. My Channell family has been doing a lot of ancestry searches and we find a lot of English. My dad's mom's maiden name was Popplewell and everywhere we look we see English, English, English. I relate to that. I embraced London when I visited. I felt "home." But Germany?? I just don't know much about it and I'm sad that the Third Reich and the axis were such aggressive people and did so many heinous things that I haven't been able to embrace that part of myself.
My grandmother was a Schultz. German. My daughters have German on the other side as well. Von Rhein. Maybe a fact finding trip to Germany is in order. Maybe I'll try to make some schnitzel and some warm German potato salad……Just a thought.
