Traditional cultures in southern and central Europe are strongly patrilineal - one's ethnic and family identities are traced through the father's line rather than the mother's. When a woman marries, she becomes a member of her husband's family, and their family ties and cultural practices and identities become hers.

Aneta was born and raised in Serbia, but her father was Greek and her mother, Bohemian. When Aneta came to the United States in 1929, her nationality was recorded as "Greek" rather than "Serbian." And when she became an American citizen, it was noted that her former nationality was Greek. This is somewhat atypical -- since she was married to a Serbian husband, it could have been culturally correct to say her nationality was Serbian. But by other standards, Greek was correct since her father was a Greek citizen, and Aneta also would have been. Then again, since she was born and raised in Serbia, it might seem natural to many Americans for her to have said she was Serbian. But nationality and ethnicity are often two very separate things, something many Americans don't realize.

When her children were growing up, they would have heard Aneta speaking Serbian as her native language. And they knew their mother was born and raised in Serbia. Although I don't know what my uncle and aunts knew about their mother's heritage in their teenage years, I do know what my mother told me about one of her experiences at the time.

One day Aneta and Luka were arguing about something, and my mother overheard them. At one point Aneta must have been really angry and made a comment about Luka being a Serb. My mother didn't understand that at all. To her knowledge, Aneta was Serbian. When things cooled down, my mother asked Aneta what she meant by the comment since she was Serbian too. My grandmother apparently said, in a huff, "I'm Greek -- not Serbian."

It was only then, when she was about 16 or 17, that my mother learned she was part Greek -- not just Serbian as she had always thought.

But even with this radical comment and more than 10 years in America, Aneta hadn't fully thrown off the patrilineal cultures in which she'd been raised. She didn't say she was Greek AND Bohemian.

This cultural identity stayed with Aneta all her life, even after she came to live with our family in 1975. She never fully thought of either my aunt's children or my siblings and me as her "true" grandchildren. To her mind, my "true" grandparents were my father's parents.

This was a difficult concept for me to grasp at the time. It really wasn't until I went to college and majored in Anthropology that I began to fully understand just how different my mother's upbringing had been from mine. And even though I had some idea growing up that my own background was different from that of my friends, I think it's only recently that I've recognized just how different it was.

Aneta Stamulis Peyovich (1895-1981)