There is always a “Them” or a “Those”

I am the grandson of immigrants…

As a child I learned of the world in the kitchens of my childhood friends. 

I heard languages not my own, Italian, Spanish, French-Canadian, and California from the Los Angeles guy. 

I dined on generational food from around the world, most of the plates were covered in sauce. 

I knew what soccer was before I ever saw it on TV. 

I listened to Irish poetry and Italian operas. 

I was 14 years old when I saw my first left forearm Nazi concentration camp tattoo.

I watched as Mr. Lopez stood in his living room, hand over his heart as he listened to the National Anthem on the radio before his beloved New York Yankees took to the diamond. 

I watched daily at dusk as Mr. Schmidt gently lowered and folded the American flag that always flew on his front porch. 

Jimmy Smyth taught me how to work on my Triumph Bonneville that was built in his hometown in England. 

I learned more about what America means from immigrants than I did from those born on this soil.

Being born here is one thing, and I’m grateful that I was born here, fighting to get here, the desire to live here, to stand outside and want in, to see freedom work, to see opportunity, to want to have a better life is I think the entire reason ships full of people crossed the ocean to get here.

Unless you are Native American, somewhere in your past, maybe far back in time someone you are related to came here. 

Most of American can trace their roots to somewhere else.  

I am the grandson of immigrants.

No one, not my parents, not me or anyone I knew loved America more than my Grandmother, Tess and my Grandfather, Clay.  

Meet them:

Clayton Robbins: Certificate of Citizenship #4038483 January 7th, 1937. 

Theresa Robbins: Certificate of Citizenship # 5541880 July 1, 1943. 

Grampa Clay died when I was very young, I don’t remember much of him other than he smoked smelly cigars, cared my around on his shoulders, and told me he drove a train. 

In truth he worked in a factory and poured steel.  He was a big man with big, blistered hands and an equally big heart. 

The day he became a citizen the clerk behind the desk who swore him in handed him a small piece of paper, on it was printed the Pledge of Allegiance of his new home… 

…America. 

Clay took the paper, folded it and placed it in his wallet. 

Twenty-some years later, after his funeral his wife, Tess, found it in his wallet. 

It was bent and fragile, grease smudges on the corners, words underlined, some with two lines underneath, some with three lines and an exclamation point. 

Tess took the paper and put it in the secret pocket in her favorite purse. 

When she was buried Clay’s paper Pledge of Allegiance was in her hands underneath her rosary. 

It was her wish.