My Family and its History

      I hadn’t done much research into my family origins or what my name meant until this interview, but I’ve found that there’s a lot I hadn’t known. I was born Henry Hutter Gilson, a pretty simple sounding first, middle, and last name, but I’ve come to find that it’s not as simple as it looks. My first name was chosen by my parents, who wanted me to have a name that was easy to pronounce and understand, while still being more unique and interesting to say. My middle name is my mother’s maiden name, something I had known for a while. My last name is Luxembourgian, one side of my family immigrated to American from Luxembourg, the other side from Sweden, and we all ended up in Chicago purely by chance. 

      My family identifies as White, we don’t really celebrate and Swedish or Luxembourgian traditions, although some of them do seem pretty cool, like Bretzelsonndag, a tradition in which a man offers a woman a pretzel as a token of his love on the Sunday of Bretzelsonndag, and if she accepts, she must present him with eggs on Easter as a token of her love. I don’t quite understand it, but I love the absurdity.

      One story that my dad always love to tell about our family, my grandma in particular, is that while she was in college at Northwestern, my grandfather proposed to her as she was approaching finals week; my grandma didn’t have a wedding dress, but that didn’t stop her. During finals week of her senior year in college, she handmade a beautiful wedding dress that we still have sitting in my grandfathers possession, and it serves as a reminder of my grandmother’s legacy, and every time I hear see that dress, I’m reminded of its legacy, and my family’s legacy.