Erfaan Mahmoodi CP #3

In my third conversation with Alex, we shared more of our family stories. I learned that he has an uncle in Germany, from his grandfather’s first marriage; he emigrated to the US with his wife and son. His wife hated living in the US (if I recall, they had been living in Madison, FL), divorced him and took their son back to Germany, and he would remarry in Madison, and Alex would be born from the children of this marriage. It was a fascinating story, and I wanted to know more about the personal drama, the reasonings, and the feelings within that story. I shared more stories of the Canadian side of my family, that being my dad’s, and comparing his smooth emigration story with that of my mother’s. I also got into talking more about the global reach of my family, which spans the bottom half of the East Coast, is peppered throughout California, and stretches to New Zealand, Turkey, Europe, Brazil, and Iran.

As a cultural conversation, we also discussed the Confederate flag, and particularly what Alex saw of its depiction growing up in Madison. This conversation would segue into a charter school issue where, in a town with a black majority, there was a school siphoning away students into a predominantly, if not completely, white environment. This session was an intriguing look into our histories, and into current issues and perspectives from a nearby town.