Robert Ketter – Guatemala

Most people would never guess this, but my first language was Spanish, not English. I can thank my mom for that. She was born and raised in Guatemala and wanted me to know her native tongue from the start. I hardly heard English in the house those first few years; even my dad participated, as choppy as his Spanish was. It wasn’t until daycare that I put together that Spanish wasn’t the predominant language of southern Illinois. It came as a real shock.   

Growing up, we would visit Guatemala once or twice a year. We’d spend huge chunks of our summer vacation there, seeing all the aunts, and uncles and cousins. We’d take long road trips to see the town where my mom was from or venture to the coast where I saw black sand for the first time. The best was when we went to Tikal, and the history buff in me geeked out about the Mayan ruins. I wanted to be an archeologist for years after that.

But as my brother and I got older, it got harder to find time to visit where my mom was from. Summer vacations quickly filled with part-time jobs and internships. And hanging out with friends or girlfriends became more important than anything else. So, it went on for years, putting this piece of our heritage on the back burner because it was inconvenient.

That all changed when my grandma came down with cancer. This disease has a way of putting things into perspective. Those final years we had with her reinvigorated our desire to know this part of who we are. That drive is still with us even though she’s been gone for almost a decade. I think she would’ve been proud that my brother and sister-in-law decided to get married in Antigua, Guatemala, the same town where my parents were married, just down the road from their venue. That entire weekend felt like a homecoming and was the first opportunity we’d ever had to share this place with friends from the U.S. The way they fell in love with that city, nestled between volcanoes and coffee farms, made me feel proud of this side of me in a way I’d never felt before.

My Spanish may not be as good as it was when I was five, but it’s something I will never take for granted again.