Don’t Forget Where You Are From

I sat in my creaky, half broken, fully irreparable wooden desk chair on a cold, quiet winter night in Exeter, New Hampshire. My fingers ached as I pounded out word after mindless word of my 332 paper, all the while my mind wandering comfortably to a different place. Minutes went by that turned into hours and I suddenly found myself staring, mouth agape, up at the blank off-white ceiling of my dorm room. 2 a.m.?!? It didn’t matter whether it had been from my general exhaustion due to a recent all-nighter or my undiagnosed ADD; I was now behind schedule, lacking sufficient motivation and desperately, desperately hungry. (Thanks Dominoes for your consistent and constant reminders that, “no, we don’t deliver to PEA after 10 p.m.”)

Having lost all my usual late-night compatriots to their own 332 disasters, it was now time to make the infamous decision ... do I down a Red Bull, open up the jar of pre-workout and fly to the moon, or do I fall asleep and set my alarm for 4 a.m., knowing all too well the power of the snooze button. I grudgingly decided that, in fact, my 332 could not survive any more exposure to my procrastination. Walking over to my stash of late night pick-me-ups, I immediately saw what I had come to see every time I made my way to that infamous corner of my bedroom. Taped to the Red Bull 12-pack box was a note I had written to myself that plainly stated, “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” I smiled, sat back down, leaned towards my computer screen and got back to work.

Over the past two years here in “hell” (sorry Señor Jebari, had to quote you on that one), I’ve often questioned the nature of my own motivation. What keeps me going? What part of me won’t let me say, “that’s good enough, now just lay down and quit.” Who taught me to fight? Really and truly—although you can be taught how to write—taught me how to study effectively, or taught me how to have a caffeine addiction (more of a self-taught man in that regard), no one can teach you how to push yourself. That drive is in your blood.

Don’t get me wrong. I am no preacher, and at our school, you all, my fellow Exonians, are most definitely the choir. However, I know from the stories of my father and his mother that the “drive” to be better only comes as a result of a hunger to be better. That hunger has come from my roots, the sacrifices of my ancestors, near and far. That drive, for me, rests in my past.

I am Native American, but I haven’t always known it. I vividly remember one afternoon on the playground outside St. Joseph’s, the small Catholic School I attended as a child, being questioned by the other little boys, “What are you?”

I was only six years old and instantly heard my father’s voice faintly in my head. We are Taino, from the beautiful island of ... From the beautiful island of...

“Hawaii!?!” Screamed a boy to my right as my mind struggled to remember for a second too long.

“You’re from Hawaii?” they all asked, opening their eyes wide with fascination.

I stopped for a moment, stunned by their curiosity.

“Yes! Yes I am!” I responded with a grin. “I’m from Hawaii!”

Truly, the island my father spoke of was Puerto Rico, “The Land of the Valiant Lord,” Borinquen, one of many islands that spell-checker insists isn’t a real place. But to my six-year-old self, all I could remember my dad saying was that his family was from a beautiful island. He said that my blood was Taino blood. But what’s a Taino anyway?

Even though I inherited my father’s Puerto Rican blood, my own identity was much more mixed. My mother, a Southern girl with a Tennessee twang, raised me to pronounce “pin” and “pen” identically. But I never truly felt different from the other kids except when they compared me to my brother. He inherited more of my mother’s fair skin, while I was always darker. We were inevitably reminded countless times that, “You know, you two could be twins if Ethan just wasn’t so tan.”

In middle school, my history teacher tried to trace my ancestors’ “cultural extinction” from the arrival of guns and germs to enslavement and annihilation. But what about our once-thriving culture? Had we been conditioned to believe history didn’t exist before Europeans arrived to write it? Years later I would listen to Chimamanda Adichie’s famous TED talk over and over. Was anyone fighting against what she famously called “the dangers of a single story?” Was I living, or even perhaps perpetuating that single story? This, more than anything, almost convinced me I was merely an echo of a forgotten past.

Yet so much had changed over my family’s generations. My grandparents were born in Borinquen. My father was born in New York City. I was born on a beachside in comfortable Stuart, Fla. Tata, my grandmother, was abandoned by her husband for another woman and was forced to hold three jobs to give her children a chance of an education. My grandmother sacrificed her life for the slim chance that her children might escape the projects. My father beat the odds and became the first person in his family to get a degree. He graduated top of his class in high school, received a full scholarship to Harvard, and four years after that, enrolled into Harvard Medical School.

I am the tan brother, the boy who always wanted better.

People here might make fun of a kid who “name drops,” but to him, the name meant something more than what most of us can truly understand. The name meant escape from a world half of him wanted to forget.

He told me when I was a child that he thought he would have enjoyed being a professor more than being a doctor, but going to medical school was a sure way to ensure that his children didn’t struggle the way he did.

Spanish was his first language, like all of his ancestors before him. Speaking solely English to me as a child wasn’t necessarily symbolic of his desire to leave his past behind, but on a grander scale it represented his hunger for change.

Now, years later, Tata was quiet around me and expressed herself in the kitchen cooking foods whose names I struggled to remember. Was I really Taino, was I even Puerto Rican if I couldn’t tell my grandmother that I loved her in her own language before she died?

When I left home to pursue a prep school education, my father didn’t want me to go. He tried to express his grief silently, but I didn’t miss the sadness in his eyes when I left for the first time. He knew how much he had built for me: a home, a loving family and all the benefits of a life more comfortable than his own. But I also believe he came to understand my departure over the next two years because he knew his own story. He knew why I wasn’t satisfied with “good enough” because he had once felt that hunger to better himself too.

I know that no single label can express the contents of a life, but since that day on the playground, I’ve decided that uncertainty doesn’t define the mix of my blood or the difference in my upbringing. I must believe that I am as much a product of the good ol’ South as I am a Floridian, and a Taino as much as I am my father’s son.

I am the tan brother, the boy who always wanted better. I am of Borinquen, “The Land of the Valiant Lord,” and I am no single story.

But like all good stories, mine doesn’t end with Florida, with my grandmother, father or even Exeter. Who I am and my drive to be better has been a conglomeration of all the places my family has been, all the places I have been from, and all the places I am going. Exeter, after these two years, made up of brief moments of struggle highlighted by the most joyous of joys, has become a part of me too.

Two Canadian dorm mates, a few exceptional teachers, Dutch House, a winter abroad in Ecuador, a 332, one desktop computer, spring-time lacrosse, can-jam on the quad, a stack of New Yorker magazines, a silver Bach trumpet, one scratched name on a Harkness table and a college acceptance letter—big and small, these are the contents of success, repeated and realized day in and day out. These contents, this community of people driven by their own stories has left an immeasurable impact on my character.

The Fates know all that my future might hold, but I have learned one thing: people derive motivation from each other. An individual’s successes often come as the result of a community’s support.

Here at Exeter I have felt the energy of a community that will support you when you happen to fall, and will lift you up as you peek your head out from the cave to see the blinding light.

My success here at Exeter has been the sum of the efforts of my community day in and day out. Exeter is a part of me, it is where I am from, and inspires me to be better. I ask you: What have you seen, heard and felt? What rests in your past? Where are you from?

Don’t forget where you are from, Exeter, especially if it is huddled on the corner of a prep school campus nestled in a small New Hampshire town. Don’t forget.