I Wish I Could Speak Spanish

NOVEMBER 7th, 2019

Let me be clear. I don't feel the incessant need to learn Spanish. If I wanted to become fluent, I would just download Duolingo on my phone and get to work. Rather, I wish my biological father had taught me Spanish when I was a kid (I say biological because I consider my step-father to be my dad and my biological father to be the man that gave me 50% his DNA structure and 100% of my daddy issues). My "bio-dad", as we'll call him, grew up speaking Spanish AND English when he was a little boy in the Bronx. He was fluent in both and had a deep pride for his Puerto Rican heritage. Plus, my mother wanted us to be as multicultural and smart as possible! This made for the perfect recipe for bilingual children! Except for the key missing ingredient, that being the willingness to actually teach my sister and I when we were in the peak developmental stages of learning additional languages. As you may have gathered, my desire to speak Spanish is more rooted in confusion than the desire for better communication with others. Why did my bio-dad never teach us Spanish? Was he ashamed of his culture? Did someone warn him against it when we were young? Was he simply lazy and didn't want to take the little free time he had at the end of the day to speak multiple languages to multiple people? I'll never know. For me, speaking Spanish may be something I learn how to do, but it will always be a reminder of the nagging questions that lie in the back of my head; Why didn't he teach me? Was I not worth his time?