Today at the Library, we bumped into one of M’s kindergarten classmates (T). While I was looking for books for L, after their initial greeting and catching up, this is the conversation I overheard:
T: Hey, look! Here we are, two Chinese girls!
(I should mention that T is also half Chinese half white. She looks about as Asian as M looks, which is not that much to the casual observer, but obvious to people who know.)
M: Well, yeah! I’m Chinese. Are YOU Chinese?
T: Yeah! I’m Chinese because my MOM is Chinese.
M: Yeah, my DAD is Chinese. So we are the same Chinese!
T: Well, my DAD isn’t Chinese.
M: Yeah, my MOM isn’t Chinese. Can your dad speak Chinese?
T: Nooooo. He can’t even say Goong Goong right
(I am assuming she is meaning Grandfather. In our family, we say Gong Gong, but M seemed to know what she meant.)
M: Yeah, he isn’t Chinese then.
T: My mom speaks Chinese though. She calls her dad BA.
M (thoughtful): Ba? Like Baba. Oh yeah, because BABA is Father in Chinese. *I* speak Chinese. Well… I am *learning* to speak it.
T: Yeah, I don’t speak Chinese, but I *AM* Chinese.
M: Yeah, me too!
T: Cool.
Then the walked away holding hands.
So far, so good, I think.
This weekend, Mr. A and I went to a wierd thing called the Parade of Homes. It is where a number of local builders each build one house in a brand spanking new suburban subdivision to showcase their skills. At least that is what I THINK they were supposed to be doing. We decided to go because a) we were kid-free that day and b) I wanted to see if there were any new trends in houses I would want to encorporate into our house someday. (Someday WAY in the future when we finally buy the Forever House).
The houses ranged from 3,500 to over 5,500 square feet. Most of them had additional finished basement space also. Seriously, I have never seen such McMansion insanity.
Mom and Dad no longer just have a Master Bedroom, now they get a Master SUITE. In most houses, not only was the the master bath was bigger than the kids’ rooms, but the master closet (or CLOSETS!) were also usually bigger than normal bedrooms. One house had not one, not two, but THREE master closets. Why? How many clothes to people have now days?
In most of the homes, each and every bedroom had a bathroom. No longer will your children be inconvenienced by walking into the hallway OR by sharing a shower and toilet with a sibling. God forbid the should have to SHARE.
It also seemed as though these houses were designed so the people living in them would never, ever need to bump into each other accidentally. One house had a finished basement with a TV room, a bar/entertaining room with a TV and movie room, all in a row. Now, I love TV as much as the next person, but do you really need three TV viewing rooms all right next to each other? Another house had 7 bathrooms. SEVEN.
While I did see a few things that were interesting (my beloved dream of a soapstone island, outdoor space ideas, etc.), Mr. A and I generally walked away horrified by the waste and excess. I have never been so happy to come home to my little 1,800 square foot cottage. Not to mention how happy I am that I have only 2 bathrooms to clean.
Not that many posts ago, I wrote about Matt’s (my 14 years dead boyfriend) sister (who we will call D) contacting me on Facebook. That was in May. We wrote back and forth a little bit and last weekend I stopped and visited with her for the first time since the day after Matt killed himself.
In the week leading up to the visit, I spent a lot of my spare time reading through the letters Matt and I wrote to each other while he was in the army. I read all the notes he wrote when we were in high school. I found ticket he saved for the first movie we ever saw together. He wrote “First date with Amber, how could I forget?” I also found a ticket dated two days earlier. On the back he had written “Two days later, found amore”. He was a sweet guy.
After Mr. A went to bed last week, I spent a lot of time crying over that box of letters and pictures. In those moments, I felt like I was reliving the first days after Matt died. The best way I can describe it was like those Dementors from Harry Potter. It felt like there was a black hole sucking away all the happiness in my life and leaving only a hollow filled with sadness and grief.
Each night, I took out my box of letters and let myself hang over that hole for a while. I would cry and for the first time I can remember, I let myself be angry with Matt for doing this to me. Then, I would box up the letters and compartmentalize those feelings and go back to my normal life.
I was worried that seeing D would make it hard to be able to put those feelings away, but I felt like I needed to do it. I felt that she needed it too. Most of all, I think Matt would have wanted us to be friends again.
So I spent a couple hours with D, crying and remembering. As hard as it was to see D, it was the first time since Matt died that I have talked about him with someone who loved him as much as I did. It was also one of the first times I felt like someone gave me permission to say out loud how much Matt’s death affected my life. When I have told people about it in the past, I get a distinct feeling they think that our teenage love wasn’t worthy of so much grief. When D told me “Dude, Matt would have married you, if you would have had him,” it was like someone finally acknowledged that he was more than just a teenage fling. (Don’t get me wrong, that statement was quite the mindfuck as I spent the rest of the day imagining that alternate life. Eventually I had to acknowledge there is no way to know what might have happened and I have to be present in the life I have now instead.)
I also found out where his remains are (at D’s house) and the fucked up thing his dad wants to do with them. I told D I would keep them if she needs/wants me to. And now I know that if she (or we) decide where his final resting place should be, I can be there when his ashes are buried or released or whatever.
It isn’t over. Visiting with D didn’t make all my grief disappear. I am still sad and I still miss Matt a lot, maybe even more than before. There is relief in knowing I can talk to a real person about Matt now, rather than just acknowledging him with a random blog post to strangers on the internet on the anniversary of his death each year. It sounds like a small thing, but after all these years, it is huge. Maybe it isn’t closure, but it is a start.
(Sorry there was such a delay in posting the follow up to the last post. Summer got in the way.)
Over 4th of July, we were at my mom’s house and I saw M reading that book. The book was from a box of antique books my grandma had given my mom. I nudged Mr. A and we both rolled our eyes when we saw the cover, but we didn’t bother to stop M from reading it, since she was already more than half way through.
Once M said that her views on cheekbones came from that book, I expected the worst, but I hadn’t read the book so I didn’t know exactly what it said.* I was convinced that M was now harboring self-hatred because of the 1950s racism in that stupid book.
“Well, that book was written a long time ago.” I said as I was struggling to figure out how to handle this conversation, “Back in those days, some people thought that only white people could be attractive. They thought white people were better than people with ancestors from other places, so sometimes they might have said bad things about the way they look. But now we know that is silly, right? We know people with ancestors from anywhere can be beautiful.”
M looked thoughtful.
“Ooooh,” she said, “So that is why people think I am so pretty? Because I look so WHITE??”
Doh.
So, uh, that was not exactly the direction I was hoping our conversation was headed.
The first thing that popped into my head was ‘No, actually the reason people think you are so pretty is because our culture tends to fetishize mixed-race people.’ But that topic was a even more complicated than the one I was already mangling.
The second thing that popped into my head was ‘Well, at least she still has a positive self image, even though it is for a screwy reason. The book obviously didn’t totally ruin her self esteem.’
While I was thinking those things, M just waited for my answer.
“Uh, M, I know that you think you look white right now, but really, you look just like someone should look if they have ancestors from both Asia and Europe. I know people tell you you are pretty, but that is just because they like the way you look. I don’t know if what they think has anything to do with looking white or not. We know other people who are pretty who don’t have any European ancestors at all like _____ and ____ and ______, right? Things are very different now than they were 60 years ago when that book was published and they are still changing now.”
From there, I managed to clumsily steer the conversation to the civil rights movement, segregation, interracial marriages and race relations. It was not a coherent conversation and it was filled with dumb metaphors that M didn’t really seem to grasp. The whole time I was just wishing we could get to the Dairy Queen and get our ice cream so M would be distracted and drop the subject.
To be clear, this conversation was not well-packaged for an after school special. It was a mess.
During our conversation, I kept telling her “Well, it is complicated,” and “I am going to have to think about that question” and “Maybe we can get a book from the library so we can learn more about it.”
That’s life, you know? I wasn’t expecting that conversation. I struggled with it. I am embarrassed that I (of all people!) didn’t handle it better.
It is OK. We have talked about race in smaller, more manageable chunks in the few days since the original conversation. Now I know M is noticing and trying to figure things out. She is starting to think of herself and where she fits in the world. And even though I bungled that conversation, I will have many opportunities to do better.
We will just keep talking until we both figure it out.
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*I read the book this week and was quite relieved that it was really not too offensive, despite the weird cover. The main Bad Guy had “high cheekbones and a scar over his eye” and the description was repeated over and over, but there wasn’t much more too it. How M extrapolated that description into “ugly”, I don’t know.
It started innocently enough: As we were walking through the Chinese grocery yesterday, M said, “You and I are the only people here with brown hair! I am so embarrassed!”
Her comment came out of the blue, so I was a bit surprised. I pointed out several other people at the store with brown hair and finished up our shopping. Later, M and I went for a walk and I decided I needed to do a little more investigation into what she was feeling.
As we talked, it became clear that M identifies her own appearance as white. (Note: I think there is a dichotomy between how she views her appearance and and her knowledge of her ancestry. She knows she is half-Chinese and knows that her family is half Chinese.) I think she understands that most other people also identify her as White.
While it is true that she appears white to the casual observer, I thought we needed to talk a bit about how it works to be biracial. I said something along the lines of “Yes, it is true that most people probably overlook the parts of your appearance that come from your Asian ancestry, but they are still parts of how you look. You look exactly like someone who has ancestors from both Europe and Asia should look. You have a bit of both if you know where to look.”
We talked a little bit about her hair and her nose and how those probably figure heavily into how people categorize her racially, but then we talked about the features of her face that are more Asian in appearance. We talked about her eyes, which are shaped just like Mr. A’s, though they are big like mine.
“Are my eyes big because of my ancestors from Europe?” she asked.
I thought hard before I answered that one. “Well, your eyes are big because MY eyes are big. So are [my sister]‘s and Nana’s (my mom) and all Nana’s sisters. In our family, some people have big eyes, but it isn’t because they are European. There are lots of Europeans who have small eyes too. There are also Asians who have big eyes and some have small eyes.”
M looked thoughtful, like she wasn’t entirely sure she believed me. Then I said, “When I look at your face, I can see that your cheekbones also look a little Asian.”
At that comment, M’s eyebrows furrowed and she looked decidedly unhappy. “Oh NO!” She said, “Are you saying I have HIGH CHEEKBONES? High Cheekbones are BAD and UGLY!”
As far as I can remember, we have never once talked about cheekbones before. I was shocked that M had any reference point for cheekbones at all. “What? Where did you hear about high cheekbones?” I asked, trying to buy myself some time.
“From the Goldfish Mystery” she said.
The Goldfish Mystery is a book she read at my mom’s house. Click the link there to see why I was worried.
………………more later. We have Chinese lessons now.
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