Karen Samuelson's Blog
November 27, 2023
WEAVING A CULTURAL IDENTITY
November 2023
Ethnic/Cultural identity is one of the themes of my novel, Weaving Dreams in Oaxaca. You can’t choose your ethnicity or the history that comes with it, but culture and language are more fluid. In this blog, I share how I’ve come to create my personal cultural identity. I know this is not an unusual process. It's an opportunity that comes from the times we live in where many of us are lucky enough to have access to the best humanity has to offer with global sharing of religions, music, art, food, lifestyles, and languages.
***
As a child, one thinks their family is the standard until you get out into the world. I had a bald Norwegian grandfather, Samuel Samuelson, with beige plastic hearing aids; two missing fingers, hazards from his leather business; and a wooden leg. He’d put me on his good knee and sing Norwegian folk songs. His wife, Melvina, my grandmother, was French Canadian, from a small town in Quebec. Lean and tough with ten kids, she chewed tobacco and spit it out in a Maxwell House jar. Melvina was a bit militaristic, but who wouldn’t be with ten kids, and she was funny. Then Marie and Nicholas Ruggiero from Avellino, Italy were my other grandparents, my mom’s parents. Nicholas wore sleeveless white t-shirts and helped build the Sumner Tunnel. He was an old-school tough guy built like a fireplug but cried listening to opera. He and Marie argued in a vibrant Italian up and down their East Boston triple-decker stairs. Marie was an amazing cook. The Pope’s picture above the kitchen table blessed all her meals. Either her hands were moving as she cooked, or her mouth was moving as she said the rosary. My grandmother was illiterate, so all recipes were from memory and she measured ingredients with her hands. When they moved in with us, I was a teen and she gave me a long lethal hat pin, “to keep the fresh boys away.” That was a part of her culture. She’d sneak me crumpled one-dollar bills from her apron pocket because word was that Grandpa was cheap.
When asked about my background, my answer was “Italian Catholic” because that was the strongest influence in my home. My mother, brought up a strict Catholic, made sure we went to Sunday school and observed all holy days. Also, my mom and grandmother cooked Italian food and taught me. I still bake anise Easter cookies every year in their honor.
Growing up with immigrant grandparents with different histories, languages and accents was my normal, and it made me curious about other cultures. When I was a freshman at UMass, Amherst, I stopped going to church but sometimes chanted with the Hare Krishnas at the campus pond, and I started taking courses about Native American cultures. This led to travel fever and I left college at twenty-one in the middle of junior year to work and travel. I went to Europe with three friends and via a Eurail pass, visited my grandparents’ birthplaces in Italy and Norway and looked up their birth records.
In my early twenties, I went to Guatemala and traveled in Central and South America for four months and studied Spanish. Once home, I became an ESL teacher, earned a master’s degree at The School for International Training in Vermont, and went on to work with immigrants and refugees. Later, I returned to Guatemala for two months, taught in San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico, and adopted a son from Guatemala. Traveling, living, and teaching among many cultures helped me acknowledge differences and appreciate aspects that felt connecting enough to embrace.
At some point in my thirties, I started going to an Ashram based on Hindu Shaivism from India where I learned to meditate which became a lifelong skill and practice. I’ve also studied Buddhism, Tai Chi, and Qigong and have always been open to alternative healing, Chinese acupuncture and herbs being a major one. When taking West African dance classes, I got lost in the live drumming, totally transportive for me, as is playing simple Bach pieces. You don’t have to be Hindu to meditate in a temple, nor Catholic to pray in a church. You can learn how to cook traditional Mexican or Thai foods while listening to world music. Now when asked about my background, I’ll include Italian and lapsed Catholic but say that I’m culturally eclectic. I know I’m not unusual in this approach to life. The previous generation gave us the stability to experiment and explore. I am grateful to feel like a citizen of the world as well as of my country.
(If you’d like to share, I would love to hear your cultural identity story via email.at ksamcareers@gmail.com)
Ethnic/Cultural identity is one of the themes of my novel, Weaving Dreams in Oaxaca. You can’t choose your ethnicity or the history that comes with it, but culture and language are more fluid. In this blog, I share how I’ve come to create my personal cultural identity. I know this is not an unusual process. It's an opportunity that comes from the times we live in where many of us are lucky enough to have access to the best humanity has to offer with global sharing of religions, music, art, food, lifestyles, and languages.
***
As a child, one thinks their family is the standard until you get out into the world. I had a bald Norwegian grandfather, Samuel Samuelson, with beige plastic hearing aids; two missing fingers, hazards from his leather business; and a wooden leg. He’d put me on his good knee and sing Norwegian folk songs. His wife, Melvina, my grandmother, was French Canadian, from a small town in Quebec. Lean and tough with ten kids, she chewed tobacco and spit it out in a Maxwell House jar. Melvina was a bit militaristic, but who wouldn’t be with ten kids, and she was funny. Then Marie and Nicholas Ruggiero from Avellino, Italy were my other grandparents, my mom’s parents. Nicholas wore sleeveless white t-shirts and helped build the Sumner Tunnel. He was an old-school tough guy built like a fireplug but cried listening to opera. He and Marie argued in a vibrant Italian up and down their East Boston triple-decker stairs. Marie was an amazing cook. The Pope’s picture above the kitchen table blessed all her meals. Either her hands were moving as she cooked, or her mouth was moving as she said the rosary. My grandmother was illiterate, so all recipes were from memory and she measured ingredients with her hands. When they moved in with us, I was a teen and she gave me a long lethal hat pin, “to keep the fresh boys away.” That was a part of her culture. She’d sneak me crumpled one-dollar bills from her apron pocket because word was that Grandpa was cheap.
When asked about my background, my answer was “Italian Catholic” because that was the strongest influence in my home. My mother, brought up a strict Catholic, made sure we went to Sunday school and observed all holy days. Also, my mom and grandmother cooked Italian food and taught me. I still bake anise Easter cookies every year in their honor.
Growing up with immigrant grandparents with different histories, languages and accents was my normal, and it made me curious about other cultures. When I was a freshman at UMass, Amherst, I stopped going to church but sometimes chanted with the Hare Krishnas at the campus pond, and I started taking courses about Native American cultures. This led to travel fever and I left college at twenty-one in the middle of junior year to work and travel. I went to Europe with three friends and via a Eurail pass, visited my grandparents’ birthplaces in Italy and Norway and looked up their birth records.
In my early twenties, I went to Guatemala and traveled in Central and South America for four months and studied Spanish. Once home, I became an ESL teacher, earned a master’s degree at The School for International Training in Vermont, and went on to work with immigrants and refugees. Later, I returned to Guatemala for two months, taught in San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico, and adopted a son from Guatemala. Traveling, living, and teaching among many cultures helped me acknowledge differences and appreciate aspects that felt connecting enough to embrace.
At some point in my thirties, I started going to an Ashram based on Hindu Shaivism from India where I learned to meditate which became a lifelong skill and practice. I’ve also studied Buddhism, Tai Chi, and Qigong and have always been open to alternative healing, Chinese acupuncture and herbs being a major one. When taking West African dance classes, I got lost in the live drumming, totally transportive for me, as is playing simple Bach pieces. You don’t have to be Hindu to meditate in a temple, nor Catholic to pray in a church. You can learn how to cook traditional Mexican or Thai foods while listening to world music. Now when asked about my background, I’ll include Italian and lapsed Catholic but say that I’m culturally eclectic. I know I’m not unusual in this approach to life. The previous generation gave us the stability to experiment and explore. I am grateful to feel like a citizen of the world as well as of my country.
(If you’d like to share, I would love to hear your cultural identity story via email.at ksamcareers@gmail.com)
September 10, 2023
Riding Shotgun
This second blog related to my novel, Weaving Dreams In Oaxaca, is about the theme of coming out and how it touched my life and my family's.
I was nineteen riding shotgun alongside my brother, Roger, on Route 89 in New Hampshire headed for Reading Farms in Vermont, fifteen minutes south of Woodstock. I had followed in his footsteps to UMass, Amherst, and it was June after my freshman year. I was giddy with all the new things the world had to offer. We were going to visit Roger's friend, Terry, who owned Reading Farms which was not really a farm, but a beautiful estate. Roger was twenty-six, lived in midtown Manhattan and owned, Mother Earth, a plant store in the West Village. Even though he had a girlfriend in college, I wondered more and more about his sexuality because his stories were mostly about men and there were many stories because we loved talking to each other.
I should say here that I idolized my older brother. He was like my guardian angel in a family of six kids. When I was nine, my older sister, Bev and her baby daughter moved back in with us while her husband was in the service. My grandparents lived with us on and off when I was in high school. I had wonderful parents but with that many people, someone was always in crisis. By seventeen, I was bursting to get out of my small town and crowded house.
Roger understood me because he had felt the same way. He flew me to NYC when I was sixteen to see Elton John at the Filmore East and brought me to my first opera. He fully appreciated my newfound college-hippie persona, whereas at home I was considered freaky. Roger was a pianist, intelligent, handsome and funny and we had intense discussions about psychology and God and mind expansion. We appreciated many of the same things, including male sexuality, but I didn't know that at the time.
Racing along the highway, the image of the maitre d' in New York City kept coming to mind. He kissed Roger before seating us, and it was an exuberant kiss. More images coalesced and clicked into place. I turned toward him. "Roger, are you gay?" After taking a drag of his cigarette, he beamed at me. "I was wondering when you were going to ask." He took the next exit to call Terry, his boyfriend of course. His secret bound us even more. He decided to come out to the family as each person was ready, so when my sister Lisa asked me I told her she needed to ask Roger. After I told him, he asked her out to lunch and that's how it went with his older sister and two brothers, but not my parents.
Fast forward five years, during which time Roger moved to Miami to live with Terry and they shared Reading Farms. The whole family was invited up each summer, but nothing was said about the nature of their relationship as my parents were riding the denial train.
One afternoon at the "farm", Roger, my two sisters, my mother and I were chatting in one of the upstairs bedrooms and Roger casually mentioned something about his lifestyle. My mother sat bolt upright. "What do you mean by your lifestyle? What are you saying?" She was haughty but fearful at the same time. "Mom, I'm gay." She began crying. "It's probably my fault. They say it can be the mother's fault." I tried to assure her it was a no-fault situation. "It doesn't matter," she said, "the world's not kind to gay people." She took one of Roger's hands. "This makes me so worried, and now you'll never have children." "I'm careful mom, and I've never wanted kids. They're too annoying." "You're telling me," she said and we all laughed. She told Roger she had often thought he was gay, but didn't have the courage to ask.
We conspired not to tell our dad. "I don't think he could handle it" was the consensus. It was arrogant and ill-founded, but we stuck with it for almost a year until the day my mom found out we had kept a secret from her. We all knew our father was sneaking cigarettes after his stroke. He hid them on top of the car tires as my mom never learned how to drive. I think my sister finally caved in from guilt, and my mother felt horribly betrayed. "How could you not tell me about your father!" She looked at him. "Okay, no more family secrets. Harold, you need to know that your son, Roger, is gay." That shut everyone up and was clearly not the smoothest way to out Roger, but that was my mom. My dad took it in quietly, said he wasn't surprised and immediately picked up the phone. He told Roger he loved him dearly and nothing would ever change that. He was upset that none of us had told him the truth, and we all felt bad for not having given him enough credit. Beware of assumptions.
My family continued to visit Reading Farms every summer and embraced Terry as another brother and son. Those were halcyon days. In 1990, AIDS took my guardian angel tragically along with countless others. He was a month shy of forty-three. Terry passed away ten years later.
As I watched my brother come out to each person in my family, I witnessed love defeating ignorance and fear, and forty years later, I'm still grateful to be a part of what's left of this noisy and unruly tribe.
I was nineteen riding shotgun alongside my brother, Roger, on Route 89 in New Hampshire headed for Reading Farms in Vermont, fifteen minutes south of Woodstock. I had followed in his footsteps to UMass, Amherst, and it was June after my freshman year. I was giddy with all the new things the world had to offer. We were going to visit Roger's friend, Terry, who owned Reading Farms which was not really a farm, but a beautiful estate. Roger was twenty-six, lived in midtown Manhattan and owned, Mother Earth, a plant store in the West Village. Even though he had a girlfriend in college, I wondered more and more about his sexuality because his stories were mostly about men and there were many stories because we loved talking to each other.
I should say here that I idolized my older brother. He was like my guardian angel in a family of six kids. When I was nine, my older sister, Bev and her baby daughter moved back in with us while her husband was in the service. My grandparents lived with us on and off when I was in high school. I had wonderful parents but with that many people, someone was always in crisis. By seventeen, I was bursting to get out of my small town and crowded house.
Roger understood me because he had felt the same way. He flew me to NYC when I was sixteen to see Elton John at the Filmore East and brought me to my first opera. He fully appreciated my newfound college-hippie persona, whereas at home I was considered freaky. Roger was a pianist, intelligent, handsome and funny and we had intense discussions about psychology and God and mind expansion. We appreciated many of the same things, including male sexuality, but I didn't know that at the time.
Racing along the highway, the image of the maitre d' in New York City kept coming to mind. He kissed Roger before seating us, and it was an exuberant kiss. More images coalesced and clicked into place. I turned toward him. "Roger, are you gay?" After taking a drag of his cigarette, he beamed at me. "I was wondering when you were going to ask." He took the next exit to call Terry, his boyfriend of course. His secret bound us even more. He decided to come out to the family as each person was ready, so when my sister Lisa asked me I told her she needed to ask Roger. After I told him, he asked her out to lunch and that's how it went with his older sister and two brothers, but not my parents.
Fast forward five years, during which time Roger moved to Miami to live with Terry and they shared Reading Farms. The whole family was invited up each summer, but nothing was said about the nature of their relationship as my parents were riding the denial train.
One afternoon at the "farm", Roger, my two sisters, my mother and I were chatting in one of the upstairs bedrooms and Roger casually mentioned something about his lifestyle. My mother sat bolt upright. "What do you mean by your lifestyle? What are you saying?" She was haughty but fearful at the same time. "Mom, I'm gay." She began crying. "It's probably my fault. They say it can be the mother's fault." I tried to assure her it was a no-fault situation. "It doesn't matter," she said, "the world's not kind to gay people." She took one of Roger's hands. "This makes me so worried, and now you'll never have children." "I'm careful mom, and I've never wanted kids. They're too annoying." "You're telling me," she said and we all laughed. She told Roger she had often thought he was gay, but didn't have the courage to ask.
We conspired not to tell our dad. "I don't think he could handle it" was the consensus. It was arrogant and ill-founded, but we stuck with it for almost a year until the day my mom found out we had kept a secret from her. We all knew our father was sneaking cigarettes after his stroke. He hid them on top of the car tires as my mom never learned how to drive. I think my sister finally caved in from guilt, and my mother felt horribly betrayed. "How could you not tell me about your father!" She looked at him. "Okay, no more family secrets. Harold, you need to know that your son, Roger, is gay." That shut everyone up and was clearly not the smoothest way to out Roger, but that was my mom. My dad took it in quietly, said he wasn't surprised and immediately picked up the phone. He told Roger he loved him dearly and nothing would ever change that. He was upset that none of us had told him the truth, and we all felt bad for not having given him enough credit. Beware of assumptions.
My family continued to visit Reading Farms every summer and embraced Terry as another brother and son. Those were halcyon days. In 1990, AIDS took my guardian angel tragically along with countless others. He was a month shy of forty-three. Terry passed away ten years later.
As I watched my brother come out to each person in my family, I witnessed love defeating ignorance and fear, and forty years later, I'm still grateful to be a part of what's left of this noisy and unruly tribe.
