Rediscovering Our Roots

My mother is German. She moved here in 1979 with my American father. I loved having an international family growing up. I loved it that my parents were bilingual and that we traveled to Germany to visit my large extended family on a few occasions. At the same time, my family was very Americanized. I speak German very badly. I can get by, but it's a good thing that I have patient family members who can guess at what I want to say and then say it for me instead of letting me struggle for too long with my Germ-glish.

I have wondered how would I make my kids aware of their own German heritage. It doesn't easily come up in our very Vermonty/American way of life. We certainly don't speak German, not even with my mom. My own sense of connectedness to being German is more through feelings and memories rather than direct knowledge that I can pass down. I have great memories of Christmas in Germany as a 6 year old, and touring castles and caves as an 11 year old. I can name all my favorite German chocolate brands, and of course there's my Germ-glish speaking.

Happily, my aunt is here visiting for three weeks. She is authentic German. She does not speak english except for a handful of words including the phrase "I don't speak English!". She visited when my son was one, but he was way too young to comprehend that there was something different about her. But now he is three and he knows that she speaks another language and is from Germany. She speaks German, kind of like how Dora the Explorer speaks Spanish. I taught him a few German words. Easy things like: Hello (hallo). How are you? (Wie geht's). Good (gut). Good morning (Guten morgen). I love it how he will strike up a conversation with my aunt (Tante). He speaks in english of course, but it's OK--they still engage. He and my daughter both brought her item after item from the dollhouse and my aunt patiently told them what everything was in German. My son was fascinated.

Tonight he asked her to read one of our German language storybooks. The best part though, is when I overheard him tell his sister "That is gut!" or heard about how he taught his American-born grandmother all the German words he now knows. When the kids are bigger we will take them to Germany for a visit. Perhaps teaching my kids about their German roots won't be as hard as I once thought.

Reading "Puck und Seine Tiere" with his Tante

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