I wish I know more about my culture so that i do not feel like I fail at life. - author note.
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I wish somewhere along these words that it was written in my mother tongue so that I feel less guilty that I never learn when my mother asks me if I want to learn.
Every time I write or read words that are familiar to my heart yet foreign to my hand, it seems like I undo the thread that connects me to my culture when it should have been retie as it once was.
I claim that English is my second language, but would that be a true claim? I have lost the sound of the t and the rolling of my r.
My aunties whisper that I have been too westernizing. I want to say they are wrong, but I do not know the words for salt.
I want to trace my hand along the faded words on my mother's spice bottles and know what they said.
I was told to be like the other children so I would not lose much in my education, but now, looking back, I realize that I have paid the price with each word I mispronounce and stutter over.
I have an accent when I talk to my friends, but now I listen to how my grandma goes on and on about my American accent. I could not fully understand what she was saying.
I tried to put up my ancestor's shrine, but I do not know the people that are staring back at me. I cannot point out who my grand aunt, grandpa, or whatnot is. For that, the shine lay half complete, and my ancestors is left wandering the earth hungry.
I live far away from my family cemetery, so when I die, I will die far away from the soil of the rest of my family.
I want to dress in my culture, but the jade bracelet lay broken in a box, the earring was lost in the mail, and the dress that is hung in the back of my closet could only be worn by a child. I am not that child.
I can only put my hair down for I never learned how to put it up.
I have lost the step of my culture as I tried more to fit into another. I cannot fit into either.
It is best for me to leave my attempt at learning my culture at the door, for no matter my effort, I could not chip away the part of me that is western, nor could I put out the whisper of my aunties as they complain that I am a rude child.
It is funny for the part of culture I want to shake off clings to me and drags me under the water, while the part of culture I want to pass on slips through my hand into a puddle under my feet.
