Personal Narrative: My Cultural Background

My cultural background is probably one of the most important things to me. My family came to the United States from Ludwigshafen, Germany decades ago, and although I personally have never travelled out of the country, I've always cherished how in touch we are with our roots. Eating homemade Spritzgebäck every Christmas while waiting for Christkind to arrive, gathering around to hear Oma read the classic, albeit terrifying, children's stories from der Struwwelpeter, and dancing to polka music around my house are just a few of my favorite memories. My great-grandmother, who I call "Oma", is the main reason that I have such a huge interest in learning about my heritage. She has been through so much throughout her lifetime and I have immense gratitude for the opportunity to hear her stories firsthand. This past year, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, which was difficult for me to grasp. The person who has had the greatest impact in my life and an incredible memory could now possibly lose all of those …show more content…
Every year, she would bake for hours and make dozens upon dozens of cookies from scratch, and each individually frosted. Determined to keep the tradition alive, I was on a mission to find the recipe and make them with her. After hours of searching, I found her old blue cookbook, taped together to keep it from falling apart at the seams, with a paper clip holding the place of the recipe. The difficultly was not that the entire book was in German, as I could understand most of it, and most of my family members are fluent. But, Oma often tweaked her recipes to have them just like she wanted, and the card that she wrote her adjustments on was not only in German, but almost completely faded away. She couldn't remember how she made it or which ingredients she added, so I needed to do some