The scent fills the room as I take in the one of a kind worldly spices that add to the richness of my pie filling.  Each ingredient has its own peculiar flavor that when mixed together makes for a very enjoyable eye-popping experience.

I come from a family of good cooks but more importantly I come from a family built on a gene pool of multi-cultural diversity.  When I got my pie chart from ancestry.com I was amazed at the many different cultures that made me who and what I am – Great Britain, Eastern European, Irish, Scandinavian, and bits of Finland and Western Europe.

With a varying degree of difference, all five of my siblings have different percentages from the various cultures which is so interesting as we realized – this explains how very different we are in looks and personalities. We can now laugh at our differences knowing that love runs deep and, yes, some of us can bend more than others.

Just as curious for me is my husband’s family is 100% German with a little Scandinavian thrown into the mix.  It is very interesting when I am around his seven brothers and sisters.  They look alike, think alike, and actually have the same walk.  Amazing too is there is no derision in this family as they have each other’s back, strong in family values.

In the last few months I helped a young woman find out who her father was.  After rounding up the DNA and having it analyzed, I found out she was my half-sister twenty years younger than me. Both of us may have the same father but we were raised in totally different environments.  We are blown away by our similarities that seem to cross this great multifaceted cultural divide.

My sister always felt a void.  She was nothing like anyone in her family especially when it came to being a neat freak and overachiever.  I gasped as I explained you could eat off of our father’s garage floor and how he worked hard to reach the pinnacle of success in business.  She smiles as she takes in all the stories of our father told by each of her brothers and sisters.

Each time we get together it confirms our linkage as we chatter over a good glass of cabernet.  I laugh when I recall telling her there is a part of my personality that I do not like – the screaming meanie that every once in a while, shows up.  My sister’s eyes got huge as her fiancé acknowledged yep I know what you are talking about and then I saw the look on her son’s face as he was nodding his head up and down.  Even as she can see where she came from with certainty, I see how much richer my life is as she weaves her way into our family circle with open arms.

Our ancestry built on many different cultures are part of each piece of our pie.  They dwell deep within our brains as they pass on their knowledge hidden in each cell of our being.  I just never realized I was missing an integral piece of the pie that has added spice to my life and warmth and beauty to our family.

 

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