My Definition Of The Word Heritage

Before the fourth grade, I attended a summer camp for gifted students. The theme–heritage. The task at hand–create a family tree using family members’ birthdates and occupational records. Walking into the computer room, I did not know what the word heritage meant. It sounded like something to do with gardening or dating fossils. In fact, I did not even understand what the term race meant. Whenever I had to take standardized tests in school and asked to list my race, I picked the “other” category and wrote in “human”. I knew my parents were born and raised in India, and that every night I was told that I was eating Indian food while watching Indian television. However, it was not until I was seven years old when found out my “Indian” was different from the Indian we were taught about at school–the Native American type. Thus, the concept of heritage was beyond foreign for me. …show more content…
Staring blankly at my computer screen, I attempted to work on my project. The word “family” at the time had mixed connotations. It had been a year since my mother passed away, and my father was only a shadow character in my life. My living situation had changed; I moved in with my legal guardians, my maternal aunt and uncle. Although my traditional immediate family no longer existed, I quickly found a new one, and received the same, if not more, love and support. I typed my mother’s name into the lineage database. After waiting an eternity for the page to load, I simply encountered a “no results found”