For my Family Oral History Project, I interviewed my father about his life and then interviewed my father and uncle about where our family came from. Below you will find a brief summary of my history and my thoughts going into the project.
This is a question I have struggled with my entire life. I once asked a five-year old what is family, and he said, “family is the people you live with that love you.” The dictionary defines family as “a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children. Considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not” (family 2017). As a child, I would have agreed with these definitions, but as an adult, I find myself endeavoring to discover where I come from.
I was born in Sealy, Texas on July 5th, 1985 to parents Tammy and Robert Ring. My parents divorced not long after I was born. My father married someone new, and my mother married my father’s brother, Rodney. I stayed with my mother and her new husband. We moved to Massachusetts where my little brother was born in 1987. From there we moved to Germany where my little sister was born in 1990. That same year we moved back to the U.S. and settled in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We lived there for several years. My mother moved with my siblings and I to Detroit during my fourth grade, but we moved back before the start of my fifth-grade year. We moved away for good at the end of my fifth-grade year. At that time, my mother took my siblings and I to live in Fort Collins, Colorado and she divorced Rodney. A few years after the move my mother was having a difficult time supporting all of us, so she sent my younger siblings to live with their father. When I asked if I was going to have to go live somewhere else, my mother told me that my father did not want me. My mother married her next husband, Chris, and we lived together for a time. At the age of 14 I was put into the foster care system. I bounced around the system and lived in several towns and went to several different schools. At the age of 17, the state decided that I was old enough to take care of myself while living with my mother, so they sent me home. I lived with my mother and her husband for about 7 months, before they kicked me out. That was two months shy of my 18th birthday, and I have made my own way ever since.
As a child, the only consistent family in my life was my mother. As an adult, my father has come back into my life. This was a slow process at first. A few hours here, a dinner there. Now, my father has moved to New Mexico to be closer to me. We are working on building the relationship that we did not have the chance to have when I was younger.
family. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved from Dictionary.com website http://www.dictionary.com/browse/family