Immigrants

Immigrants. We are all immigrants. I saw this little illustrated essay and was prepared to find it insufferably cute and cloying. Instead I was charmed.

I have always enjoyed such stories by recent immigrants though they are alien to my own life. There was no memory of an immigrant experience in my childhood. No one could remember when the first of our family got here, or how. I was told, vaguely, that we were Scotch-Irish but had no idea what that meant. (Only as an adult did I discover that it means I am supposed to be of hard-drinking, Bible thumping, racist stock prepared to fight at the drop of a hat. Fortunately I also learned that I am more likely English, mostly. Pick your stereotype).

I thought the most exotic thing about my family was that my grandfather's father had come from Germany and his mother was Welsh. Unfortunately I got that confused with Wellish, the family name of my uncle Richard, a Hungarian Jew whose mother had been smart enough to get him out of Vienna one step ahead of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named*. For some reason, as a child I did not realize that this made him an immigrant. Honest, I thought all New Yorkers talked that way.

Then there was my Aunt Jenny, who also had an unusual accent. I learned later, much later, that she had a cleft palate. I thought all New Yorkers talked that way.

Several years ago I discovered that my paternal family has been here longer than the United States has. The oldest one we can identify served as a musician in the Continental Army. Then he moved to Virginia and fathered 11 children, most of whom seem to have fathered or birthed 11 children or so. How the West was populated, I suppose (or at least Russell County, Virginia)

Not sure why I was thinking of this, unless it was because I stopped by our local Cuban sandwich shop for lunch today. Had a Jamon con pierna sandwich and Cafe Cubano. Talked to the owner, Willie, who is from the same town Carmen is, Santa Clara. Site of the final battle of the Cuban Revolution. (To this day low flying airplanes make Carmen a bit nervous). While I was talking to him I mentioned The Havana Village, a Cuban sandwich shop in the unnamed port city. It is owned by a Cuban of the old school, but run by my sister-in-law, who is Vietnamese (reminds me of El Gran Dragon del Oro - a Cuban-Chinese place just off of SoHo, back when it was just tacky ol' Howard Ave.)

They are all Americans now. Me too.


*You-Know-Who.

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