This story begins at the dinner table:

“Mom, aren't you embarrassed by eating every crumb on your plate?”

I look up. Two pairs of brown eyes looking at me intently, and another pair looking back and forth between theirs and mine... Four pairs of brown eyes: two pairs from my adult daughters, one pair from the youngest, my 7-year-old granddaughter learning about the complexities of family, and mine, past the half-century line and fully into the work of sorting out self and others, boundaries and limitations, acceptance and moving on, acceptance and sitting with.

“No, I'm not.”

“Well, you should be.”

A glance at my plate, shrugging my shoulders, a stand-off—one of many.

Months later, relaxed at home, listening to folk music, thinking Eastern European thoughts, cleaning the last crumb off of my plate, I remember the interchange. There was something I had forgotten to remember or to explain. No need to, I'd be advised that I'm living in the present tense. But when your past tense has been intense, it doesn't let go of you so easily...

Living in a one-room house in a small town in Dunafured, Hungary, where most of my stories begin, we were poor and didn't have enough to eat. Though I was told about it later, I don't remember being particularly aware of that. But it must have been where I learned to sacrifice the lion's share and the last bite for my children as I did unquestioningly over twenty years later, as my parents had done for me.

There were the three-days-straight lobster croquettes, from the strong, dark green creatures my father allowed me to experience under his watchful eye when he brought in a cardboard box full of them, opened it and put one down on the floor for me to see, warning me to stay a safe distance. I was curious, 3-4 years old maybe. I wanted to play a little. I put a pencil into the space between a slightly open claw. Crack. Pencil broken. Wide eyes. Then I put my doll crib upside down over it. I remember my dad removing it. Not a good idea. Can't really play with anything that can break a pencil.

The third day, box empty, I could no longer eat another bite of lobster croquette, while my parents continued to enjoy them. Having not much else on the menu to eat didn't change anything for me that day. Whatever it may have been (corn meal mush?), I'm sure it was more comforting. I don't think I ever tasted a lobster again. Strangely enough, by middle school, I had a phobia about lobsters (and crabs for that matter), their insect-like appearance, pop eyes, nasty twitching antennae, and flat-out, frightening ugliness. The cracking sound of people eating those or king crab legs at another table practically ruined my own meal, sitting with my mother at The Rusty Scupper restaurant in Philadelphia over a decade later. Not phobic any more, just don't like 'em, though I'm sure I'd scream like crazy if I accidentally swam or stepped too closely to one at the beach. No worries, my hyper vigilance has kept me from that experience.

But intergenerational conflicts are another thing, and this vignette is only a small example of what all the hyper vigilance in the world has not been able to save me from: a strange sense that I have somehow failed at American Culture and Family Relations 101, a mandatory course for raising a family in this country. The total years of my life spent outside of this country are not many, approximately seven. No matter, they were my formative years and my first teen year, plus another three months traveling in Europe when I was 20. They stuck to me with an intensity not commensurate with a measure of time and brought me closer to immigrants who came here older than I, who struggled to relate to and stay close to their children because of it. I thought I would do a smoother job of child rearing than my truly immigrant father who arrived when he was 26, and I have, relative to those numerous spankings I omitted when raising my own, but how much I share in common with him relative to accommodating this culture and my inability to assimilate has surprised me.