Personal Narrative: My American Identity

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Arriving in Mexico City, I’m excited. Weaving through suffocating traffic, I know that I’ll soon be hugging my grandparents and sharing a big family meal. This is my parents’ homeland, where both grew up in the microcosm that is the Mexican-Jewish community, only 0.03 percent of the country’s population, yet its sub-culture runs so deep in me that it coexists with my American identity. A culture that may seem odd to outsiders: With its Veracruz-style gefilte fish, kosher tacos, and matzo-meal handmade tortillas during Passover.
I am a first generation American, and I share that common bond with my grandparents, who themselves are first-generation Mexicans whose parents escaped from poverty and anti-Semitism-ridden Eastern Europe in the 1920s …show more content…
However, this trip is different. I’m not here to only visit family, I came to intern at Kadima, a center to support the rehabilitation and stimulation of people with physical and mental disabilities of all ages. I don’t know what to expect. Unlike many of my peers, who’ve been aligning their lives with their career interests for some time, I don’t have it all figured out.
My weeks at Kadima flew by me with busy days learning about the patients’ conditions, helping oversee their routines, trying to calm their stiff bodies, celebrating their small victories and soothing their frustrations knowing that what causes them will never change. Never had I given it a second thought to how long it takes to brush my teeth, or how difficult it is to move one’s limbs to get in and out of a restroom, or whether I’d be able to do anything I set my mind to. Tasks that take abled-bodied people a couple of minutes can stretch a good portion of the morning for patients at Kadima. Communication is also a big issue with these patients; it takes them supreme efforts to get coherent messages across, and this is something that broke my heart more than once. Or, how limited the outlook for these patients is. How could I conceive remaining dependent on my parents for the rest of my life?
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