When my father was a little boy he grew up very poor on his parent’s farm in Oostende, Belgium. Everyday he would have to help his parents care for the animals by giving them food, mucking up, and at the end of some very terrible days, hold them still while his father slaughtered them. Around this time in his life his parents bought him a magpie which he named Rick. At the age of five he would go over and put his head in the open cage so Rick could clean his eyelashes and comb his hair. The bird, however loved by my father, was not so loved by my grandmother, Oma. Oma hated this bird because every so often when it was released from its cage someone would leave a window open and Rick would fly out of the house, into neighbors’ houses, and steal their shiny gold jewelry, returning them to my father back home. When my father grew up he became a nautical engineer but after realizing his job would not be spending all his days loving the ocean and fixing old machinery but instead decoding morse messages in the crammed hull of a ship, never getting to see the ocean, he traveled to America where he became an English Prof and met my Mom. I love this picture of my father because it places a feeling of reality to the almost Grimm-esc stories I’ve heard of his childhood. They are stories of heart, whimsy, cunning, and cruelty, and they are all a part of my inherited past.

– JG

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant