Observations In A Medellin Colombian Cafe

As I sit at a cafe on the corner in Medellin a group of older Colombian women walk in.

The instantly start asking questions and to me appear demanding.

I envy these women.

They are not demanding nor rude. They know what the want.

In Colombia it is customary to ask a billion questions before you buy or order food.

I feel it teaches you to always get and ask for what you want.

My Russian-Jewish grandparents were this way also.

I used to be so embarrassed when they would question everything and ask too many questions.

Now I realize it is how you are raised, it is cultural. Why were most of us raised to sit and be pretty?

It’s better to be seen and not heard, is the expression I remember being told .

I was raised without my mother and father and raised by my very conservative and loving grandmother.

Yet believed the womans place was in the kitchen.

Pregnant and to serve the man. She did have 7 children.

Did this screw me up as an adult?

Should I of taken more interest in my more recently immigrated grandparents?