Where are you from?
- Jenee & Danee
- Apr 4
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 7
It seems like such a simple question, doesn’t it? However, for my 15-year-old daughter and me, it is anything but.
Recently, on a walk from the Metro in Madrid, we were engaged in our usual impatient dodging left and right on sidewalks crowded with slow-walking tourists enjoying the journey rather than the destination—one of our biggest "New York City girl" pet peeves. As we found ourselves rapidly approaching a large group of people all sporting the same bright green lanyard that screamed "walking tour," we instinctively moved in sync though in opposite directions. Without saying a word to each other, she veered quickly left towards the street to walk in balance along the curb, while I pivoted right to squeeze myself between a tourist and a building. Once we were back in stride with the group well behind us, Daniella, with no mention of our strategic sidewalk dance said, "I hate when people ask me where I’m from. What do I say?” And being the funny girl that she is, she quickly followed with her own witty response: “Are you talking conceived, born, raised, primary, secondary, or high school? Come on, people, you’re going to have to be more specific!” As she often does, she made me laugh out loud as I said, “Oh my god, me too!”
On her side of our unconventional life, she hesitates because she was born and raised in NYC until, at 10 years of age, my breast cancer diagnosis during the COVID crisis forced a move to Arizona, where we lived for a year before deciding to take our life experiences and adventures abroad—a story that is recounted in detail in my published memoir, Even Strong Girls Cry; How My Solo War Against Cancer, Covid, and Political Corruption Saved My Life. When she was 11, we traded in our Jeep Wrangler and desert life for a beat-up golf cart and a tropical life in San Pedro, Belize. After a year of being island girls (though Manhattan is technically an island too), we moved countries again, just a bit further south to Panamá City, Panamá, and then for reasons that require a separate chapter entirely, we made the move across “the pond” to Madrid.
Meanwhile, on my side of our unconventional life, the question of, “Where are you from?” goes deeper than the cities, states, and countries that I have called my home. At 18 years old I left my first home in the suburbs of Chicago to attend university in Arizona. From there, I moved to San Francisco, to Denver, to Los Angeles, and finally to New York City when I was 34 years old and 5 months pregnant with Daniella. In those years, often I would answer "Where are you from?" simply with “Chicago.” However, more often than not, this was apparently the wrong answer because it was met with, “No, where are you from, from?” or "No, what are you?"—follow-up questions that would take on many different forms. One particularly memorable one was, “No, what are you mixed with?” to which I quickly replied, “Sugar, spice and everything nice!” In relation to my mood and the level of ignorance of the inquirer, my responses varied largely from the more playful, “I’ll bet you can’t guess and no hints!” to the very terse “Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Tongan, etc.” (all not true and all accompanied with an eyeroll that I made sure was seen). All of this would come to a head in the fall of 2009 in perhaps the most shocking version of this question that like many things in my life, had it not happened to me, I might not believe it, which is why I want to tell the story.
In October 2009, I was about 7 months pregnant when I was told I had a rare umbilical cord issue that could kill my baby in an instant. I was basically a walking time bomb and the only thing that could be done was frequent monitoring through ultrasounds performed by specialist doctors, though I was warned that this was really just “window dressing.” After one full year and over 30K dollars of fertility treatments, including 2 rounds of IVF, to hear that I could lose my baby after making it so far was absolutely devastating, though it would obviously be devastating to any mom-to-be. At one of the many ultrasound appointments, my level of anxiety, like all the ones before, was at an absolute high. And ironically, perhaps because of what happened next, I will never forget the face of the doctor that would perform the ultrasound that day.
Seeing the short, stocky doctor whose silver hair reflected his years of experience did little to keep my heart from beating out of my chest in anticipation as to whether I would hear the rapid beat of the other tiny heart inside of me. As I was lying on the table, he looked at me and I noticed his smile grow a little bigger. However, since he hadn’t yet performed the ultrasound yet, I was a bit perplexed. We looked at each other for what felt like an eternity, with his jovial demeanor in juxtaposition to the very serious nature of the appointment. He finally broke the silence with, “I was just in Asia and I am trying to guess faces. Which are you?” And there it was—the ultimate “Where are you from?” version that would go down in my history book of, “You Just Can’t Make This Sh*t Up!”
Now, as for Daniella and me…just like we move and come together in sync around slow walkers on the city sidewalks, our answers to our different struggles with “Where are you from?” would similarly unite in our Occam’s Razor solution because it´s true—the simplest explanation is always the best.
“We are from New York City…La Gran Manzana.”
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