An Unexpected Journey into My Roots
I found myself standing at the airport gate in Berlin, my son strapped to my chest, our life condensed into two suitcases. Behind us lay the apartment we’d called home since his birth, the cobblestone streets we’d walked together, and somewhere in the Black Forest, the father he wouldn’t see again for months. Ahead lay Massachusetts, my grandfather, and the promise I’d made to my grandmother as she slipped away from us just over a year ago.
“Watch over Jay,” she’d whispered, her hand cool in mine as I held them for the last time. “He’ll need you when I’m gone.”
I nodded then, but it took months before I would honor her request. I was determined to make it work in Germany first—to prove to my partner’s family that I could adapt, that I belonged in their world. I learned phrases in German, mastered the recycling system, figured out which bakery had the best Brötchen. But the culture shock came in waves I couldn’t anticipate: the formality that felt like distance, the directness I mistook for rudeness, the subtle social rules I continuously broke without realizing. The sensitivity in me that was replaced by a hard shell I needed to survive in a land where sensitive people are thought to under-developed.
“Americans are too dramatic,” my partner’s family would whisper behind my back, unable to understand my sensitive, feminine tears. “She should toughen up and stop being a child”.
But who was I supposed to be? A tough German Frau when I’d grown up somewhere else entirely? The mother of their grandson but not quite family? A visitor who had overstayed her welcome?
Our son arrived earlier than we’d planned—a beautiful surprise that accelerated everything before we’d built a solid foundation. We were overcome with passion for one another, but we were still learning about each other when were suddenly thrust into parenthood. The distance between my partner’s culture and mine felt manageable when it was just us two and he would visit me whilst I was living wild and free throughout Europe, but with a child, these differences magnified into questions about identity and belonging that neither of us had answers for.
It was during a particularly lonely afternoon, my son napping as I scrolled through photos of my grandmother’s garden, that clarity found me. I could see her kneeling in the soil, instructing a younger me about which plants needed shade, which needed sun. I remembered how she would say, “Roots matter. Know where you come from before you decide where you’re going.”
That night, I called my grandfather. His voice, slightly more fragile than I remembered, broke something open in me.
“The house is too quiet,” he said. “I keep making coffee for two.”
Three weeks later, we were on that plane.
Now, my son toddles through the same halls where I once played hide-and-seek. My grandfather teaches him to identify birds at the feeder, the same way he taught me. At night, I sleep across from the place where my grandmother’s embroidery loom once stood, patterns still organized in drawers, her presence everywhere.
My partner and I talk daily, negotiating this temporary separation as we each do important individual work. “We rushed into becoming a family,” we agreed before I left. “Maybe we need to become ourselves first.”
He’s learning to stand up to his family’s expectations. I’m learning what it means to step into the role of matriarch—not just caring for my grandfather, but becoming the thread that keeps our family tapestry intact. I cook my grandmother’s recipes, tend her garden, and listen to my grandfather’s stories of his time in Egypt and Lesotho with USAID—adventures I’d heard fragments of but never the full narrative.
“Your grandmother was braver than anyone knew,” he told me recently. “She made a home in places where nothing was familiar.” In his stories, I find parallels to my own journey, and perhaps, a roadmap forward.
This isn’t the romantic European life I imagined, but there’s something powerful in reconnecting with my roots. My partner and I are learning that marriage isn’t just about loving each other—it’s about understanding which parts of our histories to carry forward and which to leave behind. It’s about building a bridge between cultures that our son can walk across freely, belonging to both sides without feeling torn between them.
Sometimes, late at night with my son asleep against my chest, I step outside and look up at the same stars that shine over Germany. I wonder if my partner is looking up too, if he understands that this separation isn’t moving backward but rather gathering momentum for a stronger leap forward.
My grandmother knew something I’m only beginning to understand: sometimes you have to return to your roots before you can grow in new directions. Her shoes are indeed hard to fill—sensible, worn in all the right places from a life lived in service to those she loved. But as I move through her home, caring for what she left behind, I’m discovering that perhaps the best way to honor her is not to become her exactly, but to bring her strength into my own becoming.