No Big Deal

A while back, I read this post over at Mighty Maggie.  It was like a little flashback to how I felt when M was a tiny baby.  As soon as she was born the importance of her half-Chinese/Taiwaneseness was the cause of much angst and handwringing for me.   How could it have never occured to me that this would matter?

At the beginning, it was a struggle for this white girl to figure it out.  Somedays I wanted us to all move to China or Taiwan so M could really be fluent in Chinese, even if she didn’t look so Asian.  Other days, I was convinced it just wouldn’t matter to her at all.  Poor Mr. A, he would occasionally speak up and try to settle me down, but for the most part he patiently let me weeble and wobble my way along.  Oh, I still blush when I think of some of the awkward moments of finding my footing and figuring out where our family belongs.

Four years later, I don’t feel like we are zigzagging along our course at all.  I feel like together, Mr. A and I have decided what our priorities are.  I think in the beginning we had to talk a lot about these things because we were new to our city and didn’t have any real community to speak of anyway.  What was the community that we wanted for our kids?  How much effort should we put into finding places that fit our priorities?  What were we willing to compromise on?

Last week, we went to a picnic for the local Chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA).  We walked in and right away we saw some acquaintances.  M struck up a friendship with a little girl who happens to be adopted from China with a Chinese American dad and a white mom.  L ran around like a maniac and little old ladies pinched her cheeks and spoke to her in Chinese.  M said hello in Chinese and the older folks told her how smart she was when she read a poster hanging on the wall.  We ate almond pudding and purple sweet potatoes.  The old man at the barbeque kept trying to force us to eat more.

The thing about it is, it was a lovely day at a picnic that just happened to be thrown by a Chinese organization.  Four years ago, I would have felt horribly self-conscious.  Now, it was no big deal. 

We also went to the Chinese School Moon Festival celebration last Sunday.  It was chaotic, but it was still a very fun event.  We ate rice and chicken and mooncakes and pizza.  We sat with friends whose wife is from China and the husband is Chinese American, another friend from China, and a friend with two daughters adopted from China.  As I watched L running around like she owned the place, I was so grateful that going to Chinese stuff is just par for the course.  It is just one of the things that our family does.  We are just another face in the crowd. 

I know that there are people who read this blog who think that Mr. A and I (or more likely you probably think it is all me, though I can assure it is not) focus on the Chinese stuff too much.  Maybe it would be too much for other families, but right now it is working for us.  More importantly, I think it is working for our girls.

As I said in Maggie’s comments, M is  beginning to form her own understanding of what it means to be Chinese, Chinese American, and Asian American –the best part about it is she is forming that opinion based on personal experiences, not popular culture and stereotypes.  She isn’t learning it in a vacuum either.  She is figuring it out in a preschool class where lots of kids are mixed race or Asian.  She is figuring it by spending time with the aunt and uncle she adores, at Chinese school, with her Chinese tutor and by spending time with family friends whose families are like ours in some way or another (be it families of adoption, mixed race families, families with ties to China or Taiwan).  Maybe there will be a day when M says it is too much, but right now we can tell she is thriving even when there are areas where she struggles like Chinese school.

For the most part, L is oblivious to all of this.  In her daily life, she sees many Asian faces.  I would also guess that about of the people she is familiar with (i.e. recognizes them) are Asian.  I hope that this will mean there is never a day when L looks in the mirror and is surprised to see an Asian face in the mirror.  I am so grateful that this is just a fact of the lives we are living and we didn’t have to begin finding our comfort zone with a newly adopted baby.  L’s transition home was hard enough, at least in this one area we could feel like we were on solid footing. 

Even more important than the faces she sees, I feel so fortunate that we have three friends from China, all of whom have taken a special interest in L.  These friends are all very kind and patient with M too, but they fawn over L and shower her with extra affection.  (These same friends have also been invaluable in helping us figure out the best ways to collect more information for L, offering to call, email, and translate whenever we need it.)  The nice thing though, is that these individuals are just friends….who happen to have originally lived in China.  We hang out with them the same way we hang out with our other friends, we have playdates, cookouts, and take our kids to the zoo. 

Back when we first moved to this midwestern city, I was afraid we had moved M to a place where she would never see faces like hers or where mixed race families like ours were few and far between.  The way it has all played out, that couldn’t be further from our reality.  It is all just no big deal at all.

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I could have sworn that there was a question in the open questions thread related to this, but for the life of me, I can’t find it.  If that was your question, I must have accidentally deleted it.  If this didn’t answer it, repost the question and I will try again.