My Loud, Crazy Family. My Quiet, Reserved Family.

I was asked to write a little something about my family for a class and I thought I’d just include it here. It’s really for my own benefit.

We have represented, in my family, the Pequot Native American tribe, French-Canadian, and Italian, as well as possibly Cuban (still trying to research that). My father is full French-Canadian- he is a direct descendant from the original settlers to Quebec and moved to the USA when he was in high school.

As far as traditions go, with my father’s side of the family, Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving have always been large family gatherings. My father has nine siblings who are all very boisterous and have great senses of humor. We usually have huge feasts on these occasions, with the women doing all the cooking (usually my Aunt Andrée) and the guys eating whatever they can here and there before it is all done. There are lots of traditional foods- meat pie, sugar pie and apple tarts with slices of cheddar cheese, to name a few. There is also homemade maple syrup from my uncle’s farm in Quebec. It’s amazing!

After eating the main meal, everyone lingers around for hours to talk about anything that will cause a laugh. As the night wears on, the conversation usually becomes spoken in only French, which leaves the kids pretty much out of the conversation, but we still enjoy being together. There’s always a few Quebecois jigs that happen before the evening is through- in goes a French folk CD and out come ridiculous hats and dance moves.

My mother’s side is more quiet. She is from a small family of four who grew up in Maine. Her two sisters, who she is close to, still live there (my immediate family all lives in Florida, where I was born and raised). We used to Maine quite often. Every time we came they had a huge cookout that consisted of mounds of fresh lobster, crab, fried clams, steamed clams, chowder- pretty much anything that was seafood related. There was a lot of joking around, but with much less silliness. The New Englanders are rather a harsher set of people- although still beautiful and warm-hearted in their own way.