context of roots

In the process of being home, I am being more conscious of reclaiming my roots.  As a result, I have come across some intriguing pieces of evidence.  Driving in the car with my mom one afternoon I asked her about her side of the family.  Did we always live in Chicago?  Where did her parents come from?  It made me sad that I couldn't already answer these questions, but that was definitely my own fault: I had never asked, or if I had asked in the past, it slipped my mind.

After graduation I spent a week bopping around to the houses of three close, yet very different, girl-friends of mine.  At E's house in Nassau, I witnessed the beauty within her culturally rich house.  Over Greek food in Queens, she asked me about my roots and where I came from.  I told her basically what I knew, but was not exactly sure where my mother came from, or how long her family had been in America.  I felt so comforting to be in a place where her family embraced her roots and opened their arms to passer-bys.  From the 1970's glass coffee-drip to the natural, lemon shampoo, it was so comforting to be a visitor in this beaming home.

Sitting next to my mom in her car, I found out some interesting facts that have been very useful in my own personal research of trying to better understand where I come from.  Some things I knew already, but others were clarified or elaborated upon.  My mother's middle name is Inez, which is Spanish.  However, my mom is Irish and Polish.  How did this happen?  Apparently, Inez comes from her grandmother (who had some Native American blood) but because of her strong Irish roots, her parents pronounced Inez like "ines" with a soft 's.'  Names are great places to start.  My middle name is the last piece of my mom's roots.  In the shuffle of naming me, most of my dad rubbed off and I ended up with a very Anglo-Saxon sounding identifier.  The history of Inez struck me and it has been on my mind since.  I am still unsure of what it exactly means, but I have begun writing a story and using the name Inez for the main character.  Maybe I will write the fictional story of Inez in the present day, and the untold story of my mother.

"The Siren" by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)