What are you? {Ancestry}

What are you? {Ancestry}

When I’m asked this question occasionally I play along and other times I get snarky (truly, it depends on your tone as to which you’ll get from me). What are you? A woman. What are you? A person. What are you? He who shall not be named’s biggest nightmare? What are you, what are you, what are you? And sometimes when I finally play along people are not happy with my answer and begin to question me.

Example:

What are you? American. But like what are you for real? An educated American woman. But like what are your parents? People, who are also American. Okay, maybe this is a bit snarky, again tone is everything.

When you want to know a little bit about a person’s background or ethnicity I think there is a way you can word it better. I’m trying to perfect that because I too am intrigued by people’s lineage.

People just want to know, even at Dairy Queen

I was once at a Dairy Queen and a lady stopped me as I walked in with three eager kiddos excited to get their little clammy hands on an ice cream cone. The woman was excited to hear the answer to her question that she just had to ask, “What are they?” I think I must’ve given her a puzzled look because it’s obvious to me who they are and what they are, my loves. But it hit me, my kids are going to hear the same question I did all my life, and perhaps they too would be met with bewilderment when they answered.

(My Mom and My Babies)

The lady must’ve read my face, because allegedly {sideeye)I talk with my face.  (I also suffer a serious case of RBF. :-/ ) The lady quickly started to compliment my children saying they were beautiful and exotic, and then asked if they were Hawaiian? Ummm… no. But thanks. And there I was in the middle of DQ explaining briefly what they are because I didn’t have time to go into a history lesson and the kids didn’t have time for that either. ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM!

I’m not sure

Growing up I knew I was American. I knew I loved my country. I knew my dad fought for our American freedom. My first cassette tape (do you remember those?) was Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA! I loved that tape, I played Born In The USA, which is a terribly sad song by the way, over and over in my Walkman (DO YOU REMEMBER THOSE?). When you’re younger you honestly don’t care too much about what you are or who you are. But maybe not. I just was hit with a memory.

Cue the fuzzy memory cloud…

It was a scorching Texas day, and I had played all day long in the Texas sun. I was in the tub scrubbing, scrubbing away, I was on the verge of tears trying so hard to clean myself. My mom asked, “What are you doing?” And with tear- filled eyes I said, “I’m trying to get it off and it won’t come off.”  I was working so hard to wash away the tan, I didn’t want to be this new dark tan that the sun-kissed me with, I wanted to look like her, my beautiful mom.

I imagine I put her in some sort of motherly dilemma, because a) her child seems unhappy with her skin color and b) her daughter wanted so badly to look like her. I’m sure my mom reassured me that I was beautiful just the way that I was. She must’ve because I learned to embrace the tan that the summer sun always kissed me with. I was the “light-skinned” kid, the one with freckles, green eyes, and light brown curly hair with golden highlights (Yes, that’s right, my hair was light with golden highlights, but dye ruined that.) Perhaps, it was odd to me when I was younger how I would get strikingly dark because the rest of the year I was kind of pale.

 

 

My dad is dark, my mom is light, and I was in the middle.

Most of my childhood I thought I was Mexican American, but I later learned that my mom’s side had a lot more story to unfold. We would learn bits and pieces over time. When you’re learning bits and pieces you don’t always have an answer for “what are you” because you’re unsure yourself. Sometimes people don’t want to know what you are, they’ll tell you what you are. I have been a mixed kid because people assumed I was. I have been Italian, Asian, Greek, and Puerto Rican because people assumed I was or told me I was.

Well, the Puerto Rican was because an ex-boyfriend’s family asked me to be Puerto Rican for a day because his grandma hated Mexican women after her son divorced one. 😀 His family loved me, I played along by not saying much to the Mexican-hating grandma. I played along with Italian too because I knew the lady showing us the apartment wanted me to be Italian and I knew we (my husband, my baby girl in the womb, and I) needed an apartment. Turns out I wasn’t playing along with Italian… but we’ll get there. 🙂

 

My mom has always wanted to know more about her family’s lineage

My dad never seemed as interested in his own, because as he said his family had lived in the same place for years (his family’s house was made of adobe and they kept adding to it). Years ago my husband and I tried looking into our families’ history via Ancestry.com, we found a lot of information on his dad’s side of the family, some on my mom’s side, and not too much on my dad’s or my mother-in-law’s families.

Side note: My maternal grandfather’s name changes in the census throughout the years between his Spanish name into its English translation and he’s considered caucasian. I took notes while researching in one of my 300,000 notebooks, but I lost it. My mom never forgot that I took notes and has asked me over the years if I had them, so for her birthday I decided to do something for her quest to know more about… her.

The other half of me.

For my mom’s birthday, my husband and I purchased a DNA test from Ancestry.com to further understand what my mom is.  We set up an account for her and a kit was sent. When setting up her account we did NOT fill out her family tree or answer any questions about her ancestry, so imagine how delighted we were when the results showed up and we found out that the little bit of digging we did was right! We also learned some more fun information about her, the other half of me. Would you like to see? Of course, you do, you’ve made it this far. 🙂

FIRST… let me tell you what we already knew/heard: Spanish, French, Irish and Mexican.

Here are my mom’s results:

See I wasn’t playing along with the Italian, I do technically have Italian blood. 🙂 My mom is mainly European, which we kind of figured. Honestly, having a bit of Asian in the mix was a complete surprise, but one we welcome. The 🙂 Iberian Peninsula would be where the Spanish come in but it also touches other countries. My mom is also 3% European Jewish, which is more than the Irish that we heard about, 2%. What I’ve shown here isn’t everything, I’m able to click on the tabs and further trace the regions, this gives me a better breakdown of our family’s history. For example, the 6% African is broken down like this: Africa North 3% Cameroon/Congo <1% Senegal <1% and African Southeastern Bantu <1% Cool, right?

My husband and I want to get kits of our own. I gather my what-are-you-conversations will be longer because there’s so much more to me now. 🙂 Has your family taken a DNA ancestry test? Would you like to?