Argumentative Essay On My Father's Family

When I think back on all of my family members, one thing that ties them all together is resilience. All but one of my grandparents were directly involved in D-Day operations and all of them survived, but they carried some of their own scars onto their children, either through addictions (alcohol and cigarettes) or their more aggressive attitudes from all they had seen. As the books says, military families end up being overall more resilient to hardship, but also more prone to face problems (Knox 165-167), and mine is no exception. Besides that, they all faced tragedies together: my father’s pancreas was damaged after a sun stroke when he was five giving him diabetes, and my grandfather died when my mother was 14, leaving her to largely raise

I don’t know a lot about my grandfather, I know he drank and smoked heavily for a long time, and that those were the main contributors to his death at the age of 45. My grandmother told me that he was a very loving man, but that there was always a deep sadness that followed him since she had known him. My grandmother Jaqueline was probably one of the two strongest people I have ever known, she had survived German occupation in Normandy (and fought against it as a teenager), lived in some of the poorest countries in the world teaching rural school children, and raised 5 children after having been left a widow. While not all of my uncles would turn out well following the death of their father, she tried her hardest as a single parent to make sure they always had food and a loving family to come home to, but she faced many of the same economic and social problems that single parents still face today (Knox, 362). She also had very polarized views of types of people and wasn’t afraid to talk about it (she was racist towards Romani) and it often upset my family, as my aunt and cousins are Romani (My parents were able to turn that into a lesson about racism and how it hurts people). Her long stays with my family would often put a lot of strain on my parent’s relationship, but living in France, it was not a trip she or my family could make often. Much like Harriet’s mother in The Fifth Child, she did come stay with us for several months when I was extremely ill, in order to let my parents keep working, but this still had a toll on all of them. These interviews with my parents not only gave me an insight into the differences between them and myself, but also allowed me to remember and see the connections to the wonderful but flawed people that they came