"Mother Tongue" Blog

My mom’s side of the family lives about two hours away from home, so going there as a child it was like a mini vacation for my sister and I. Mom and Dad would go on their own vacation for a week and so they would drop my sister and I off at my grandparents. Their lifestyle was so much different from ours because they lived out in the country and on a farm. We were used to the city living and having no animals at all because Dad didn’t want them in the house. I was always excited to go because that meant we could stay up late and go horseback riding with my Aunt. It also meant that we would be staying in a non air conditioned house and we would have to help out a lot more. We would help clean the house, shuck corn, can vegetables, and also take food out to the pigs and cows. My sister and I would be around my Grandma Doris and my Grandpa Robert every waking second we were there.

To be able to understand what my grandparents had to say, you had to of been around them for a long time. They would use different words for people and objects that we not always normal. When I would first get to their house it would take me a while to adjust to what they would tell me. I grew up being around them, but I only got to see them on birthdays, Easter, Christmas, and in the summer when we would visit them for a week. Most people would say that my Grandpa was a grumpy old man because of the way he would communicate with others. He would mumble under his breath when he would talk to you and talk in an old fashioned tone to where everything he said would run together. I remember we would always go out to eat somewhere nice one night we would stay with them. The waiter came to take out order and my Grandpa would mutter his order quickly to him. The waiter asked for him to repeat it several times. Soon my Grandpa was starting to get very angry because he wasn’t being understood. It was the fourth time that my sister and I said the entire order together. We only understood because we were used to hearing him talk like that for years. It was like our own special communication and bond that we had together.

Talking with my Grandma Doris was also the same because we too had our own special form of communication. She was able to speak very clearly, but she would have her own names for things. When she was a little girl, the only language she knew was German. Learning English wasn’t an easy task for her and her family. She would tell us the story about when she went to school here in the United States that her and her sister would be slapped upside the head by the nuns when they couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was harsh punishment she would tell us, but she said it made her want to learn English because she didn’t want to get slapped again. After that traumatic experience for her and her sister, she learned English very well and quickly. My Grandma would still use her German accent when talking to us. She would call the kitchen sink, the “zink” and she would add her country accent along with it. If we ever wanted to get a coke to drink, she would call it a sodie and when we would go somewhere nice to eat she would get us “doggie bags” to take home. I remember a time not too long ago where I didn’t know what my Grandma was talking about. We were at her house for a get together and she told us kids that she had some trees in the fridge for us. My cousins went right to the fridge and got them out. My sister and I looked at each other in bewilderment and had to go and see for ourselves. Come to find out that the “trees” she was calling them were actually broccoli stems. We had never heard her call them that, but the rest of the family knew.

Communication is a major part of life and without it, it can be very frustrating. I know my family makes up their own form of communication sometimes, but that is what makes our conversations special. I feel closer to my family knowing that I can understand them and they can understand me. I don’t feel ashamed at all, in fact I am proud of my family.