Back to Family Story outcomes, S22
by Ken Guadagnino
Family is difficult. No matter where one is from there’s always someone related to them, and this creates issues. People change, or are often incompatible despite blood ties. Fights break, and feelings are hurt. The problem with family is that one cannot simply leave these people behind. Their connections are through blood, and will therefore always be there. And what of the idea of leaving behind those who have raised you? Stories like these are ones that often end in detachment due to disdain, a situation so unsolvable that the only mutual agreement made is one of separation. It’s nearly unthinkable to see a situation where one leaves something so precious behind on neutral terms. Who would do such a thing? Well, me, to a degree. And my dad. And my mom.
My mother and I are connected through our status as immigrants. She was born in Vienna, Austria and moved to America for the purpose of studying, attending Penn State as a foreign exchange student before marrying my father and choosing to stay. Her Austrian family I was adopted by them merely three months after my birth, which although means that I hardly knew my birth parents, I know they weighed their options and that it wasn’t an easy decision to watch me go. Where this gets interesting is through my father. Unlike my mother and I, he didn’t travel as far.
My dad is a Bronx, New York, man, with a traditionally close-knit European-American family. From the stories I’ve been told, they would gather in damp basements for thirty-person dinner gatherings. They were the type of family to know everything about everyone. So it must’ve been quite the shock for them to hear that my dad was leaving. He chose to study at Penn State for his master’s degree, then to Seattle following his marriage. His family cut him off shortly after leaving for Washington. He would never again return to the Bronx.
Much of my genealogical research was centered around my father’s family, as his split from them harbored many negative opinions. I uncovered relatives such as Alexandre Vibert, whose family moved to New York in the mid-1800s from France. Notably, French migration to America during this time was not one of poverty, like the stories of many immigration waves. French immigrants were often literate, with capital in the back pockets to invest in their new beginnings[1]. Considering Alexandre’s family was able to live and get married in Manhattan rather than seeking new land, this is likely the case for him, too.
Another notable relative was Adam Milewski. The Milewski line was one relatively unknown within my family. It was known that my grandmother had Polish roots, but it was unclear when her ancestors immigrated. This was solved during my research. Adam Milewski was born in Poland in 1889, immigrating to America in 1910. At the time, Poland was under the occupation of the Russian Empire, and it was likely he immigrated to escape the worsening conditions due to this second-class status.[2] He decided to stay in New York, and started a family that would eventually merge with Alexandre’s through the marriage of Alexandre’s grandson and Adam’s daughter.
So why tell this story? I believe immigration is an incredibly important aspect of my father’s background. I believe that showing how these two lines come together will add some context to my argument: that my father’s family is hypocritical. It’s understandable to criticize one’s disconnection from family due to their shared past, especially for a group so close. But what they fail to realize is that he is simply following in the footsteps of those who came before. Like Alexandre, he saw a new beginning in his education through Penn State, and like Adam, he wished to start a family somewhere new. In a way, his decision to move was more alike those of his ancestors than anyone else in his immediate family.
It’s almost poetic that he would marry an immigrant, too. Although my father didn’t span continents in search of a new home, refusing to return despite no particular issue with his folks was still a punch in the gut for those back in New York. In contrast, my mother’s family saw her immigration as saddening, but an opportunity at a better life. They wished her the best and kept in touch however they could. When she broke the news that she was staying, her relatives cheered at her finding a home in this foreign land. In a way, my father must have seen his ideal story in her, one that repeated the bright prospects seen in Adam and Alexandre’s legacies. Perhaps it was his family’s bitterness that caused him to never return, to accept their mutual disagreement and not attempt to rekindle it. Instead, he would seek to forge his own stories through others, my mother and I, so that we may follow in the good of his story, rather than the tragedy.
[1] https://heritage.bnf.fr/france-ameriques/en/french-immigration-usa-article
[2] https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/polish-russian/the-nation-of-polonia/