When I try to pin my “race” down it makes me feel rootless.Even if I’m categorized as “Hawaiian and Spanish” on my mother’s side, and “Irish and German” on my father’s side, I’m still part of a “typical white family” in my head.

I can’t put my finger on it, but the idea of culture and race seems so foreign (for lack of a better word) to me. It almost seems magical; a magical place that I am not allowed access because it’s the wrong thing to do, or I will seem offending.

I have a Baptist grandfather who never really embraced other races. I embraced it in the outside world but I always felt like I was walking on eggshells whenever I saw a person from another culture. My grandfather’s offending nature might come out in me and I’ll be offensive without even seeing it. As a white girl with all these categories surrounding her, I always felt a little rootless.

When I was a child, my family would go to car shows, or they would eat at my grandmother’s house during birthdays and parties. There was never a real reason, but it happened frequently. I don’t remember if that’s what our culture was — store bought cakes and cookies, the tortillas Grandma had in that beige container that stayed hot and the red rice I never ate. My family isn’t Mexican.

There was also the occasional blackberry cobbler that my grandmother made herself. I remember sitting around and playing and hearing all the talking. But what I remember the most was bickering and fighting. But I always just listened and soaked it in.

I never really understood how we went from having all those dinners with family to nothing but empty chairs, but after growing up, the arguments made sense, yet no sense at all.

I was also raised to not rely on men. I had a hard-working single mother who raised four kids on her own. It even got to a point where we were homeless for a while, but that’s not something that would make my mother look less of a mom. She’s a strong woman and because of that, I learned not to really rely on others, or so in theory. Well, Mom taught us to mostly only rely on her; she’s got our back, and no one else does anything for us. Nothing too wrong with that; in my head it keeps me safe and more aware of things. Does that count for culture? I’m not really sure.

Now I feel so isolated. There is nothing outside of my mother and my siblings. Is the fate of the white family to be culturally lost? A store bought cake sitting next to hot tortillas can get a girl confused. I honestly think about what direction my small family of five is headed on a daily basis. I don’t know what I am at all.