diaspora(n.) 1825 in reference to Moravian protestants; 1869 in reference to the dispersion of the Jews; from Greek diaspora “dispersion,” from diaspeirein “to scatter about, disperse,” from dia “about, across” (see dia-) + speirein “to scatter” (see sparse). – etymoline.com

I’m told I am a crucial part of the diaspora. 
A diaspora that I’m not sure which part or which diaspora. 

Where culture, language, heritage, and family memories are passed on through evenings around the dinner table or daytime walks in the park next door. 

Nah, those didn’t happen. 

Where my brothers and sisters reflect the rainbow of all that came before us. 

Which diaspora am I part of? 

The one that I can trace through our DNA? 
My DNA. 

The seventeen regions of the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East that are encoded in my Deoxyribonucleic Acid, the genetic instructions that determine the traits and characteristics of an organism. 

Who the Hell am I? 
Where do I come from? 

Further than I ever imagined
1.	Canary Islands (Subregion of Spain) 44%
2.	Portugal 18%
3.	Indigenous Puerto Rico 8%
4.	Benin & Togo 7%
5.	Senegal 4%
6.	Ivory Coast & Ghana 3%
7.	Western Bantu Peoples 3%
8.	Yorubaland 2%
9.	Cameroon 2%
10.	Northern Africa 2%
11.	Nigeria 1%
12.	Levant 1%
13.	Indigenous Haiti & Dominican Republic 1%
14.	Indigenous Eastern South America 1%
15.	Sephardic Jews 1%
16.	Sardinia 1%
17.	Germanic Europe 1%

Which diaspora am I part of? 

The blood of indigenous people, African slaves, European colonizers and oppressors, explorers, enslavers, and passengers on ships seeking escape, new lives, and riches—who scatter their DNA like seeds upon the earth and in the wombs of women (voluntarily or not), giving birth to children who carry on the stories, language, music, and memories—some fading from the face of the earth, lost in the dead end of centuries. 

Which diaspora do I belong to? 

The Puerto Rican one. 
The Dominican one. 
The New York Puerto Rican one. 
The New York Dominican one. 
The New York/Washington, D.C./Hartford, Connecticut/Los Angeles, California/Long Beach, California/English-speaking raised in Latine/Black/Irish/Italian/Eurocentric/Mixed Race/Mixed Culture/Told I was neither one of them nor me—an identity-starved diaspora. 

The only scattering I know is moving from apartments to homes, cities, and coasts across this country, and all I gained was immersion in many cultures, foods, music, languages, and people who shared their true selves—and some who would rather not have met me at all. 

There’s no question if you don’t count—over twenty-five addresses, some more than once—so you could say twenty-eight and more. 
How many cities? 
Was it seven or eight? 

And how many people outside my immediate family have I lived with—children dreaming of becoming Catholic priests, bank robbers, suburban pill poppers, drug dealers, waitresses, stockbrokers—some of the brightest and most dangerous people in the world? 

To whom have I passed on my DNA? 
A son, Puerto Rican and Dominican. 
A second son, Black, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Japanese. 
A granddaughter, as cute as sweetness itself, is Irish, Scottish, German, Puerto Rican, and Dominican. 

And through all of them, the DNA of their mothers and fathers, my mother and father, and back through time across the centuries, through all our ancestors throughout humankind. 

I sometimes dream of that diaspora, swearing that I can envision the rocky coast of the Canary Islands, the free plains of central Africa, the cool breezes of the island of Hispaniola, the rush of so much human history, the stories that would fill libraries so many times over. 

I wish I could wrap my soul around them all, swallow them into my mind, live them vicariously in my imagination. 

I am all of them—the human diaspora.