I published an article in the On Parenting section of the The Washington Post today. The article, The family stories we share, and what they mean to our children, speaks to oral histories and their importance in developing our sense of self and place within the world.
When I was a little girl, I spent summer evenings in my maternal grandmother’s bed holding Tilín, a little hand-sewn rag doll clown. She had given him to me when I left Puerto Rico for the mainland United States, something to clutch when I missed her. He was green and, at a few years old, soft and worn. I missed my grandmother a lot in those first years away, when the air of the Northeast felt unspeakably cold and I could not yet understand the language coming from people’s lips.
In the summers, Tilín would travel back to my grandparents’ home with me, and when we were there, the world seemed right again. We had a routine: My grandmother, Mima, would make me a hot chocolate and turn on the air conditioner. As the room cooled and the lights dimmed, I would wrap myself around Mima and listen. Every night she told a different story, but each one gave me a different piece of her life, a sense of who she was and had been…