New Sounds
Over Old
By Sharon K. Cook-Gordon-Spellman

When my newly-wed daughter finally returned home to the U.S., with her newly-wed husband, and set up household in Seattle, (she beginning a masters program in Ancient History at U.W. and he a PhD program in physics, also at U.W.) she seemed, to me, to be a new person; still recognizable as my daughter, but with new aspects added to her personality; new and foreign sounds and accents added to her native tongue; new table etiquette styles and manners added to her old; new cadences and tones added to her rhythm of speech; even new gestures and ways of moving. At times, to my amazed eyes and ears, it seemed as though she were an actress studying for a role in a foreign film. At first, and to some lesser degree, even now, over ten years and three grandchildren later, I occasionally felt and feel unsettled, a bit shaken and a little out of kilter in my interactions with her. She was and is still my quick-speaking, bright-eyed, freckle-faced, people, animal and nature-loving, horse-back-riding, golden-haired daughter, but she was and is now also someone new.

I’ve always enjoyed and welcomed opportunities to meet, hear and speak with people from far-away places. Unfamiliar accents, the presence, at social gatherings, of people, with living histories, places and backgrounds different from my own, have always given me a feeling of having serendipitously discovered, or come into direct contact with, another part of this wide world we were all born into. Yet, in spite of this enjoyment and appreciation of differences, the feeling of interacting with someone who, at various times, is simultaneously both my daughter and a stranger-foreigner, was, especially at first, quite an unexpected and unsettling event.

This “seemingly” new persona, “seemingly” superimposed on another persona, speaks to her husband and children in a language other than her native tongue, and, when she does so in my presence, I not only don’t know what she’s saying, but, from time to time, I almost feel as though I don’t know who she is. To “cut to the chase,” and “make a long story short,” as the old sayings go, more than feeling personally rejected or left out (though a tinge of that is also usually present) I often perceived this phenomenon, especially in the beginning, as my daughter’s active rejection of her own unique and beautiful heritage, in preference for another, which, though it also be ever so unique and beautiful, is not the same as her own.

Six years after my daughter’s August 1995 return to the U.S. and arrival in Seattle, in the Autumn of 2001 ----- Surprise! Here came Patrick! First-born, only grandchild, from my first-born only daughter! And what to my wondering mind should appear next, (after years of almost unrelenting worry and concern about my daughter’s well-being) but a gorgeous new love for a beautiful new child, (who now, at age 4 1 / 2, already speaks and is learning to read and write in both languages.) Poof! went almost all my sense of what I believed to be my daughter’s lost and/or rejected heritage. Poof! went almost all my wishes and efforts to (like an archaeologist-historian, digging for artifacts from past eras) re-awaken and rekindle my daughter’s interest and preference for her own heritage. For here was a brand new human being in our midst, a brand new love in our lives, and suddenly most of the unresolved questions, debates and arguments, about language, culture, religion, traditions and heritage, paled in comparison to those of health, love, family unity, stability, security, education and domestic tranquility. Now, in addition to Patrick, our joy and love have expanded to include Patrick’s brother, Christoph, and his sister, Marie. Now my daughter’s household contains five; each one good, beautiful, valuable, unique and worthy of attention and care.
So, at least during the here and now, of this hot summer of 2006, tales, (from my daughter’s father’s mother’s family) of sailing ships arriving through California’s Golden Gate, and tales, (from my mother’s mother’s family) of miners, farmers, pioneers and immigrants crossing the north and mid-west of this continent, will have to linger, like phantoms or angels, in the background of our lives, as the exigencies, joys, trials and tribulations of everyday, ordinary life, take precedence over, and remain the substance of, our everyday, ordinary communications and interactions.

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Sharon K. Cook-Gordon-Spellman has been a year-round resident of the western slopes of the Sierra foothills, near Nevada City, California, since 1972. Her monthly column for Multilingual Living Magazine is about the joys, trials and tribulations involved with being a grandmother of three bilingual children.

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