What Do You Want Your Family to Be Known For?
By Kristen Oliveri
During a recent conversation with a family office friend, the concept of family identity came up. We talked about it for a while, but when I hung up the phone, I couldn’t stop thinking about a much more personal question: What do I want my own family identity to be?
Are we a philanthropic family? A travel family? A food and wine family? A family that loves to host and bring people together?
When people think of the Sicuros, what do I hope comes to mind?
My husband and I have always shared a few great loves: food, wine, travel, gatherings and the arts. They were some of the things that drew us to each other in the first place, and over time, almost without realizing it, they’ve become part of the culture we’re creating within our own family.
When we were dating, we loved finding new restaurants and returning to old favorites, discovering new wines, catching the latest Broadway show or going to the opera. When work took us somewhere interesting, we found a way to stay. We spent long weekends in London, explored Switzerland from Vevey and Montreux to Gstaad, and planned trips around food festivals and even pig pickins’ in Hilton Head.
When it came time to get married, we chose Italy. Yes, because we’re Italophiles, but also because it allowed us to host the people we loved for three full days for a fraction of what one evening in New York would have cost us. What I remember most about that wedding isn’t any one detail. It’s the intimacy of it and the amount of time we had with our guests. I hugged every person there, and I meant it.
Then we had children, and rather than putting that part of our lives on hold, we brought them into it.
We take road trips that inevitably become culinary scouting trips. We brought them back to Tuscany, to the place where we were married, with both sets of their grandparents. We visit friends and family at their homes and on their vacations when they throw out the invitation. We try to say yes to time with people we care about and to destinations that might teach all of us something.
Our children have tasted foods from different cultures, heard different languages and met people whose lives may look different from their own. And while travel certainly requires resources, I don't think the larger lesson is about how far you go or how much you spend. It's about curiosity, openness and a willingness to enter someone else's world.
Maybe that is what family identity really is.
It isn't necessarily a mission statement or a set of values written down somewhere. It's what you do repeatedly. It's what your children grow up believing is simply "what our family does." It's the invitations you accept, the table you set and the people you make room for along the way.
For us, maybe it will be that slightly chaotic, beautiful combination of travel, relationships, food and gathering. Maybe our children will take pieces of it and make it entirely their own. I hope they do.
But more than anything, I hope that when people hear our family name, they smile. I hope they remember a meal, a trip, a bottle of wine we opened together or a seat we made for them at our table. I hope they think of us as people who were curious about the world, who showed up for the people we loved and who welcomed others in.
That feels like a family identity worth building.