My Greek Heritage
I just had a great time at St. George’s Greek Festival in Southgate, MI, not too far from home. Great food, fun music, and beautiful grounds with an amazing play area for the kids. Even if you’re not Greek, I would highly recommend going (it’s usually held the later part of August). In the midst of all the excitement and baclava, I thought about my experience growing up Greek in a culture outside the norm of American life. The film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, really did a great job capturing the sweet, but often eccentric and xenophobic (a Greek word) community of immigrants who came to this country for the hopes of a better life. I easily identified with Toula, the protagonist who is torn by the loyalty she feels to honor her family by marrying within their culture and her new found love for Ian, a handsome vegetarian American who’s lifestyle may seem normal by American standards but is completely foreign to the Greeks. While I could laugh and empathize with Toula’s struggles to merge the life she knows and the life she wants, for me there is perhaps an even darker and more serious side to growing up in an immigrant family and trying to find yourself amongst two worlds. Well before My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I remember seeing The Godfather films. I was left haunted by Michael, the son who left his immigrant mafia family to enlist in the American military only to be pulled back by an assassination attempt on his father. Strongly identifying with Michael’s self pretense that he could abandon everything he knew and lie to himself about who he really was, I saw myself as I grew from rebelling against my heritage to ultimately trying to come to peace with it. I saw a stark parallel as I to told my soon to be wife at the time that my life was different than that of my family much like Michael assured Kate that what she saw all around her wasn’t him. Those of you who saw the films know how they turned out. My relationship with my Greek heritage is still a work in progress. Only now, I’ve come to better terms with my deeply rooted connection with the generations which have come before. Who knows, one day I’ll even run the Athens Marathon, following the same rout Philippides covered to proclaim the Greek victory.
