Roots

7-12-90

I've been told that I'm Yugoslav, that I have ethnic roots, which is to say that I'm not just one of those bland white cake Anglo-persons, but I'm an "ethnic" person: a safe ethnic person. After all, there are only 12 Yugoslavs in all of Ventura County. How scary could we be?

You'd think that I'd be steeped in some kind of cultural awareness, being a second generation Slav and all, - that I could do more than name drop a few Yugoslav dishes. But I can't. I feel lucky to be able to spell my last name for all the acculturation I got growing up.

But then we were barely introduced to American Culture – and it wasn't because our folks were immersed in some foreign ethnicity. They were simply not immersed in anything. Skimming along the surface of almost every life experience, they kind of left out the details in our upbringing (like how to act in mannered society, what an art museum was, just about any facts and fictions that had to be taught – things that couldn't be learned by watching TV).

Most of what I know about families, music, theater, normal life, and good grooming I learned by spying on my friends.

This is not to say that my folks were culturally comatose, that we lived on the far edge of civilized society. We were actually somewhat normal – normal with the blinds shut and the radio antennas on the ground. Kind of like the Simpson's with no sense of humor.

Tom and I sensed that we were living in a cultural vacuum very early. We took to huddling and whispering and eventually began to wonder out loud how we ended up like WE were when they were like THEY were. Why did he become an artist when mom chose our paintings because they matched the couch (rug, bar stools, and chairs)? Why did I become a classical musician when I was raised on Lawrence Welk and the Lennon sisters? Were we deposited on this planet – in Long Beach, California, with this set of parents – by MISTAKE? Did our folks know we were alien beings in their midst? (They weren't THAT out of it, were they?).

It was quickly apparent to us that we would have to escape – not to survive, but to avoid becoming THEM.

So we did. Tom hid in his bedroom for about four years and exorcized all of the Madras and button-downs from his closet. When he reemerged-emerged, he had this beautiful, intolerably long "I'm–hip-fuck-you" hair which gave the folks the perfect excuse to torture him and then be relieved when he left. Who was this stranger to common decency anyway? Certainly not the boy with a buck bag they once knew.

I left a while later, and in retrospect it seems like it was no big deal. One day I just moved out, packed up all my cares and woes and deposited them in a cute little beachy apartment in Long Beach. I remember crying, but I always do that when I cross developmental landmarks (or for any other flimsy excuse that happens along my path).

We both made it. We were both free. We'd escaped this boring landscape of our innocuous upbringing – we had good taste, classy interests, and I learned where to put the salad fork on the dinner table. Tom became a shocking artist rebel, in that 60's hip kind of way that everyone copied from everyone else. We weren't all that original – no one in our generation really is – but we though we'd at least colored our lives with a little more pizzazz than our parents had.

And that's true. But now I wonder about it all. How much credit can I really take for who I've become?

It seems to me that we bring more of ourselves into this life at birth than we realize. I somehow doubt that we are blank little blobs to be fashioned and molded by what fate puts in our way. We must emerge with a sprinkling of prenatal fairy dust that carries the rumors of generation – poignant tunes of our ancestors.

These melodies wrap around us, reminding us that Great-great-grandmother was a poet, Uncle Fred a doctor, Grandma a renegade who embraced life with grandeur. We hear the folk-tunes of Eastern Europe, Dad struggling to teach himself the guitar, Mom mumbling to herself the lines of a poem she will never write down.

We know these things because they are imprinted in our heritage, a cosmic hello from all the generation, not because we lived it.

And as time goes on, it becomes clearer how a girl from Long Beach can feel like a Yugoslav, how artists and musicians can grow in clay.





815 words