Can I tell you something I’m not proud of?
As a kid, I was mad at my dad all the time for being so “Greek.” So old-fashioned. I wanted him to be American and “normal,” like everybody else’s dad.
Growing up with an immigrant dad meant living by rules my friends didn’t have. My dad didn’t get American ways. Yes, he was strict. But it was more than that. In his world, girls were supposed to be home helping in the kitchen. Not going out on dates. Not spending the night at people’s houses.
Sleepovers? Not a thing he understood. At all.
I didn’t understand his past, and he didn’t share many details. So as a young girl, all I knew was that he wasn’t like the other dads.
He was different about food, too. In his village in Greece, you ate whatever was put in front of you. He grew up in poverty, and he didn’t get a choice about dinner. In fact, he didn’t always get dinner at all. So in America, he never complained about a single meal, and he always cleaned his plate.
My mom loved to tell the story about when he first came to Detroit and tried to shoot a pigeon with a slingshot… so he could eat it. I had no idea at the time that, to him, there might not be another meal. So he had to get scrappy!
In that same vein, I also remember him talking about eating a garter snake. That one still creeps me out.
Then there were all the American traditions he had no concept of. Homecoming? Prom? No idea.
In 1989, my senior year, I was on the homecoming court. That meant my dad had to walk me out onto the football field before the big game. He had no idea what any of this was about. I’m pretty sure he had never been on a football field in his life. All he knew was that I was spending a lot of money on dresses.
As we stood on the field waiting for them to announce us, I looked over at him and realized he was nervous. He gets goofy when he’s nervous. He was starting to sweat and flapping his arms around, I’m guessing to air out his pits. That moment stuck with me because it was one of the first times I really saw him vulnerable. He never showed us he could be weak, but I realized he did not love being down there in the spotlight.
What Growing Up With an Immigrant Dad Taught Me
What I didn’t think about back then was the why behind all of the things he did. When American kids his age were going to football games and homecoming dances, my dad was a twelve-year-old runaway from Crete, and then a young man crossing oceans on a Merchant Marine ship. Nobody ever walked him onto a field. Nobody ever explained what a homecoming court was.
It took growing up, and finally talking to him as a person instead of just as my dad, to see what I’d missed. The rules, the food, the nerves on that football field… none of it was him trying to be difficult. He was living in a world he never got to grow up in. And he built a whole life in it from nothing.
Now I can’t imagine any of those “normal” dads being half as courageous as my dad was.
Since Hope Is My Anchor came out, I’ve heard the same thing from so many of you: “That was my dad, too.” Or my mom. Or my grandparents. If you grew up with an immigrant parent, you know exactly what I mean.
There are countless stories like ours, but not as many get written down. So I put together this reading guide of novels and memoirs about immigrant parents and the kids trying to understand them.
Looking back now, I was so incredibly blessed to have the dad I had. He may not have been like the other dads in our subdivision, but he taught me to be strong, to never whine, and to always find a way. Thank you, Dad, for not being “normal.” I wouldn’t trade you for anything.
Meet the Scrappy Kid Manny Used to Be
Long before that nervous walk across the football field, he was a boy who ran away from home on Crete at twelve and crossed oceans. In Hope Is My Anchor, my novel inspired by his true story, he’s Manny.
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