I was born to two relatively homogenous backgrounds of Eastern Europe. While neither my mother nor my father were so directly moved by these associated traditions or found it necessary to explore anything with such historical curiosity, it is their value of familial relationships that is the impetus for me finding such interest in this study.
This value, I believe, is of the highest priority in motive due to its immense impact otherwise not seen in an academic study of personal genealogy. The fact that such strong value in attaining familial relationship existed in my life, I have found that there has been such innumerable joy in being close with my extended family. I had a wonderful relationship with my great grandmother and got to know her and her interests. I spend hundreds of hours with my grandparent’s absorbing stories of their life. These life events will not be had nor compared adequately in a straightforward study of genealogy, and they are unfortunately reserved for those whose families found such a value to be worth pursuing.
Such joy throughout my life has more recently spurned a more fine-toothed interest into our past. I am of the opinion that genealogy in any microcosm is a less consequential pursuit in and of itself than say that of my professional background in mathematics, or other applicable scientific studies. However, in this interest, I have further been motivated to continue working at my close relationships with my extended family (although not to say that this is a definitive prerequisite). Without the preliminary results of my study into genealogy, selfishly, I may have otherwise neglected to call my aging Godmother, have a conversation with my aunt, or failed to appreciate my great uncle’s wartime bravery. These fruits must be the biggest benefits to the study of genealogy. One may ask, “What about those who do not have good families?” All men and women have the duality of being a reflection and/or a response to their upbringings. A reflection to the things that ought to be preserved, or at times a response: one that internalizes what has been done and responds in an appropriate manner different from what they have experienced. Fortunately for myself, much of what I have needed to do is be a reflection, but it is worth mentioning my families’ acts of response as well as they come up.
A tale from my life
When I was a child, I grew up knowing my ethnic origins. I knew what “percentage” Slovak and Polish I was. I knew the names of my grandparents and great-grandparents. I ate pierogies and stuffed cabbage at the family Christmas eve dinner. This was all a passive culturally related experience until I was around 11 or 12 years old. I took my great grandmother’s Slovak-English dictionary she had when she came from Slovakia that had been passed down to me and started taking Slovak lessons at a local church. My sixth-grade teacher was also Slovak, and even made me Slovak flash cards. In high school my brother and I had a close friend whose family was Serbian. His father was the priest at a Serbian Orthodox church, and we frequently met many Serbian, Romanian, Czech, and other Eastern European people. We heard them speak in their native languages. We sang songs in Croatian. I write my name in the original Slovak spelling and pronounce it that way as well.
At a young age, I felt the need to identify as a Slovak person, whatever that meant as someone born in America who could not speak the language fluently. Maybe this was tempting for a young boy discovering his personality and seeing his heritage as an outlier amongst a population with no clear ethnic tradition. I do not resent this formal desire, but I do not subscribe to it as an adult. I am an American. I am glad however I had these experiences; they nonetheless prompted me to ask my family members for years about their lives, their descendants, and their histories. My grandmother Catherine and I even once had this conversation: that people once identified by their heritage, but now place less emphasis on this as the massive age of immigration that has spangled American textbooks as a ‘melting pot’ has long been passed. Perhaps I was caught in between somewhere in my mind. Nevertheless, I am closer to my family because of this desire to understand and react to my ethnic origins. This includes both sides of my family, despite my father’s family having a simpler demography. The nomenclature of personal identifiers such as ‘Slovak man or woman’ surely has shifted over time.
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