confession

The past year has been a little rough on me. It was the first year of my husband’s and my marriage, which while blissful, is a transition. But add on top of that another shift for me: I had decided to take the year off of teaching to focus on getting my dissertation research done. I was in the data collection phase, which required doing a lot of interviews and observations “in-the-field”, thus requiring a flexible schedule that teaching just did not allow. We’re very fortunate that my husband makes enough for us to afford me not having a salary for a year without too much financial strife.

But I did feel a heavy, heavy emotional burden. In ways I didn’t even articulate to myself, I felt I was a burden. My husband didn’t do anything to cause this per se. This was guilt I put on myself. Since leaving my parents’ home, I’ve always brought in my own salary. Through college, I weaned myself off their financial support and slowly built up my own financial independence. Money isn’t important to me, but somehow the fact that I make money for myself meant a great deal to me. It meant I was independent, strong, capable, responsible. It made me feel good about myself (or at least contributed to my sense of self-worth).

But this year of not only not making money, but also incurring student loan debt on top of that as I finish my degree, made me feel like an incredible financial burden. And in ways I didn’t totally articulate in my head, I tried to “make up for it” by doing more around the house: more than my share of cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, washing dishes…to “earn my keep”. Trouble was, it’s not like I wasn’t working at all. I was still working on my research, writing, and keeping a fairly full schedule…and then doing all the household work on top of it.

My mom and my husband’s stepmom both saw something was afoot and warned me several times that in marriage you can’t think of money as “his money” or “her money”, but as “our money”. But none of this really made an impression on me. I agreed, but that did nothing to assuage my feelings of guilt that I wasn’t putting in my fair share. And because I didn’t feel I was putting in my share, I cut back on as much of my extra expenses as I could: I stopped getting haircuts, I stopped wearing more than a minimum of makeup, I stopped going to yoga, and so on. Meanwhile, my husband freely bought the things he wanted (within reason, of course). If there was something he knew I wanted, he had no problem buying it for me (so generous, I thought in my head). And so he believed his wife wanted for nothing. Except that if I had a desire for something, I had to ask him to help me buy it: in essence, I had to ask his permission. So on top of the guilt feelings, I also had a deep sense of male patriarchy and inequality in our relationship.

Even after I started teaching again, I kept up the patterns that had started to develop. And that’s when the burden really began to add up. I became grumpy, disenchanted, and positively sour. A serious expression was my default face. My husband’s stepmom even tried to offer to help out financially so I wouldn’t have to teach…because she could see I was changing. I wasn’t the same person anymore. My parents started getting concerned. Finally, over Christmas, my mom had me watch a film called “The Human Face” with John Cleese (if you have Netflix, you should really look it up – it’s fascinating, funny, and less than an hour long). This film was all about how our facial expressions have subconscious effects on our relationships. She said I always used to smile, and she wanted me to watch this because I’d lost my smile.

I didn’t think very directly about all this after watching the film, but I know something was happening underneath. I’d finally had enough of my self-imposed burden. Shortly after the new year, I talked to my husband about it. We talked it through and he simply said I cannot and should not feel guilty, that this is what marriage is about, it’s sharing, and it’s helping each other when we need help and not feeling like we owe each other like tallies on a tally sheet. I don’t know if it was what he said, or if I was just finally ready to hear it, but ever since then, I haven’t felt guilty and I haven’t felt unequal. And we’ve reasserted fair shares of the household chores back to the way we used to do it.

And I’m making greater efforts to smile, and discovering my smile comes back easily again.

I think this speaks partly to the new generation of feminism: figuring out the proper roles, since they are no longer defined for us. Before society told us what was fair and what duties belonged to whom. Now we have to negotiate that for ourselves. It gives us greater freedom, on both sides in a way, but with freedom comes the need for communication and negotiation. Part of the negotiation is with our partners in life, and part of it is with ourselves, so that we can let go the burdens we try to carry, even when they’re too much, even when they’re of our own making.

What have I learned from this?

Marriage Lesson #1: Learn to share, and that sharing means knowing how to give and to receive.

Life Lesson #3,486: Sometimes we smile because we feel happy. Sometimes we smile in order to feel happy.

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Thursday, January 21st, 2010

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today my daddy sent me this

“Invictus“

by

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903).

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

This is but one of the many reasons why I love my father.

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Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

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women unbound – queen bees and wannabes

queenbeesWhat? Two posts in one day? Two Women Unbound posts in one week? What’s going on here? Actually, this post is totally impromptu – I just finished reading a book I happened to come across a reference of, had to read it asap, and was SO ENTHRALLED by it the entire time reading it, I just had to post about it immediately.  And I would say any parent with a daughter over the age of about 7 MUST READ THIS BOOK.

Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman is a parent’s guide, but it is a perfect candidate for Women Unbound because it is all about empowerment: empowering young girls to navigate the murky, dramatic, and sometimes crippling waters of adolescent life and still learn how to treat herself and others with decency and respect.

I say this book is a must read because, quite honestly, and as the book makes clear, the world of adolescents today is a different beast than even in my day and most certainly in my parent’s generation. Adolescence, as much as we might cringe to acknowledge, is starting at younger and younger ages because kids have all kinds of social and media pressures to act older – which is problematic because they’re still just learning moral guideposts, but they’re faced with more and more situations where they have to figure out for themselves what the right course of action is within the confines of the very rigid and demanding framework of rules of their social world. And nothing has had more of an impact on their world than technology. When we were kids, if rumors were spread about us, it was by word of mouth. Now, when kids spread gossip about each other, it’s across the school and on the internet in seconds. If a girl takes a picture of her breasts with her cell phone and sends it to a boy she likes, hoping it’ll make him like her, there’s little stopping him from sending it to all his friends or for any of them from emailing it to all the other kids in school, who can all then call her a slut as they pass her in hallways. These kids are on Facebook or other social media sites, often with multiple accounts knowing their parents check one, and they’re very susceptible to “trolling” and acting online in ways you never would in person.

And it’s frustrating for parents or others who are trying to be good role models for these kids because it’s an age when the kids are trying to pull away from their parents. They alternate, sometimes without any apparent rhyme or reason, between being insecure and needing your hugs and rolling their eyes at you and treating you like you’re the biggest jerk ever. Ironically, I found it actually comforting that it’s completely normal to have moments where you really just DO NOT LIKE this kid and wonder how your sweet, wonderful daughter turned into this crazy person overnight. And it’s not just your kid…it’s pretty much every kid. Because whether they’re the Queen Bee, the Torn Bystander, or the socially outcast Target, they all have some role to play in their world. They all do something that maintains or challenges the social order and their actions affect their relationships with other kids AND what they learn about intimate relationships that can have repercussions throughout their lives. Even if their daily actions don’t, they will almost inevitably face moments where they will have to make critical decisions. And they bring that baggage home with them and it affects their moods and how they deal with family and others.

We’re all familiar with this because we all lived through this before too. But I think the reason this book is so helpful is because Wiseman (who is an educator who spent over a decade compiling observations and talking to a wide range of girls and boys and having them look over her drafts to ensure accuracy) helps explain things in the framework of the logic of the girl’s world. We, as adults, usually forget how this logic works because we’ve grown up. We see things with an adult perspective and respond in kind. In a certain sense, having an adult perspective means you see some things more clearly than your daughter does – and so you wonder why she puts up with it when others treat her like crap, or when she is the one being bossy or judgmental when you certainly didn’t raise her to be that kind of person. But sometimes our knee-jerk reactions (like when we say “Just ignore it” or “They’re just jealous of you”) don’t make sense in the framework of their logic and so are ineffective strategies.

And what is extra amazing about this book is that at the end of each section, Wisemen takes a moment to have parents reflect on their own experiences as adolescents and whether those experiences are informing how parents are acting as role models. It made me really reflect on some of my more formative experiences. For example, I think one of the biggest experiences happened to me in high school – and I didn’t even really recognize how big of an impact it had on me at the time; only with hindsight do I see its effects. In my junior year, I developed a crush on a friend (we’ll call him Daniel) and I found out he liked me too. But before anything happened between us, I went to Washington, DC for a week (it’s amazing how much can happen in a week when you’re a teenager) through an extracurricular school program, and when I came back I discovered after much drama and a flurry of back-and-forth phone calls that my friend (we’ll call her Alice) had gotten jealous and decided she liked Daniel too. And Daniel liked her back. And Daniel (oh, aren’t boys so sweet?), caught in the middle, came up and told me he liked both of us and wanted to date both of us simultaneously.

…

I was like, “Fuuuuuuuck no.” (Pardon my French.) Actually, I didn’t cuss him out. I just told him that if that was how he felt, he and Alice could just have each other. I was NOT going to be involved in that. I’m glad I stood up for myself and didn’t let him use me that way. But the whole experience did have a very dramatic impact on my ability to trust girl friends after that. And it was a long time before I could really develop female friendships with other girls that were really based on equality, trust, and mutual respect.

So it helps to think through what our own emotional baggage might be, to see how that might color the kind of guidance we give as role models.

And the key, fundamental guidepost behind the strategies Wiseman offers (that have been checked and approved by adolescents themselves as being helpful) is a core commitment to decency and respect – and giving kids the tools they need to act with that commitment in mind in a way that makes sense to them.

Does this meet any of your experiences? For those of you with adolescent daughters, have you had times where you were just at your wits’ end about how to guide her? Have you found her or her friends doing mean things over text message or the internet? Or has she been a target of such meanness? Do you have grade school experiences that have shaped you?

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Thursday, January 7th, 2010

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guns, planes, trains, and automobiles – and maybe a cookie or two

This is not your ordinary holiday post. Or at least, it’s not my ordinary holiday post. My holiday didn’t even involve a Christmas tree this year – unless you count the orchid my mom put our gifts under. (Which was fiiiiine by me. I’m just saying: not conventional.)

Oh yes, we had lots of rest and relaxation. We had a Christmas turkey (deep fried). We had gifts galore, eggnog, family stories, and cheer.

But then I did this:
shooting2I popped a cap in my firearm cherry – and in that dude’s neck, I might add (On purpose too! Let no one say I can’t hit my mark).

We visited my husband’s family and friends in South Carolina. This trip was long overdue and I soaked up every minute of it. I reveled in familial history, dabbled in Southern cooking, and took advantage of the opportunity to get to know as much as possible about this new extension to my family. But to get there, we had to take one of these:
planes

plane_wing

It was a direct flight, so no connector-flight madness…but a service dog exploded out its hind-end midway through the flight and we were a mere few feet away from the source of the most gawd-awful smell you ever could imagine. Put a damper on things, you might say.

Then, the night before we left, we were driving to dinner when we narrowly escaped this:
automobiles

We witnessed the accident in action. My husband pulled over quickly and ran to the car, hoping to help whoever was inside. When I caught up, he and another witness were helping a lady out of the car. She was clearly in shock, crying in fright and probably pain. I lent her my jacket to help keep her head safe where she lay on the ground as I riffled through her purse for her phone to call her husband. Toby’s sister meanwhile was on the phone with 9-1-1. An army medic who happened to be there also helped keep her focused and talked her through the trauma. Paramedics arrived within minutes, and when we could see she was taken care of, we hightailed for the biggest sigh of relief in a bucket of alcohol we could find.

Nothing like a narrow escape to make you really appreciate every breath you’ve got. Especially this holiday, when my husband and I came face-to-face with both of our mothers’ bodily health failing on them. We worry about them and it’s frustrating being on the other side, being powerless to help.

That all sounds like a lot of doom and gloom, but really, for the most part our holiday was bright and warm, with happy spots of brightness and cheery light.
lights

trains

And full of all the things that matter most: love and family.

And cookies. Lots and lots of cookies.
cookies

Hope everyone else had a lovely holiday!

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Friday, January 1st, 2010

7Comments

you capture – holiday decor

My hubby and I are frantically tying up loose ends before heading on a flight to see his mother, who we haven’t seen since all-too-briefly at our wedding a year and a half ago. Since we won’t be in town for the holidays, the festive decor is on the minimalist side in our apartment this year. But that doesn’t mean we’re not in the holiday spirit!

I’ve been baking up a storm because I got the fabulous idea (see here for what I really mean by “fabulous”) to give a large portion of my extended family fresh home-baked goods for Christmas, in cute re-usable baskets and tins, thus being eco-friendly and cost-conscious…because, well, a grad student’s budget doesn’t extend across 24 people as well as one might like. And since we’re heading on a flight shortly, I had to get these babies all baked up and wrapped asap.

And really, Christmas goodies and gift wrapping are among my favorite holiday decor anyway!

I made single-serving pies that you can keep in the freezer, then pop in the oven whenever you want a little sumpin’-sumpin’.
This one’s apple.
youcapture_decorpie
When they come out baked, they look like this blackberry pie.
youcapture_decorblackberry
Then I topped them with these cute little tags by Lolly (seriously, you should check out her stuff…SO CUTE) and plunked them in a gift basket with homemade moose crunch.
youcapture_decorbasket
MOOSE CRUNCH!!!
youcapture_decormooseWith pecans! And brown sugar! And butter! And did I mention pecans?

Ahem.

Did I mention I also had fun with the little pie cut-out decor? Look! A maple leaf in snow!
youcapture_decorleafOr…flour. ‘Cuz we don’t got no snow round here.

I also made peanut brittle (some of which I covered in chocolate because since when has chocolate and peanut ever gone wrong?)…which may have been a tad over-ambitious. But they turned out all right. And I had fun little tins to put them in.
youcapture_decortinsAtop my favorite blanket to cuddle in during cold weather – also incidentally a Christmas gift.

And the baskets are pretty, right?
youcapture_decorsilver

youcapture_decorgoldI’ve clearly had waaaay too much sugar today.

But we do have some real holiday decor. These are a gift from my aunt; a nice Norwegian tradition.
youcapture_decorredsNormally, I’d light them on Christmas Eve. But we won’t be here for that.

But my favorite, most favorite holiday decor? You’d think it’s something fancy wouldn’t you? But no. It’s just candles. Beautiful, soft, elegant, warm, cozy candles.
youcapture_decorcandlesWith sweet angels on them. I saved the best for last.

But you should check out Beth’s website, I Should Be Folding Laundry, for others’ pictures of their favorite decor. If you’re not yet in the holiday spirit, I’m sure you will be after taking a look around!

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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

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grandpappy’s damn good eggnog

eggnogThe crazy work madness is over (allowing me to settle into routine work load) so I’m celebrating with a drink! Actually, this post originated as a Facebook discussion, but this eggnog is just so good, I had to share it with the masses. You know you’re in good hands when it’s a grandpappy’s recipe. Unfortunately, it’s not my grandpappy’s recipe (Something makes me suspect neither of my grandfathers – one Thai and the other, a Christian missionary – were too much into eggnog. But you never know.), it’s someone else’s grandpappy’s recipe that I just happened to Google when my parents asked for eggnog after Thanksgiving dinner. (And by asked, I mean they suggested in wistful tones that it would be lovely to have eggnog and wasn’t it a shame we hadn’t picked some up at the store, and I volunteered to make it with what we had to save us from such despair.) This recipe, which you can find here, looked like the best of what I could find – and man, was it ever! My family is insisting this be a new tradition to include with the rest of the holiday fare.

And by holiday fare, I suspect they mean any meal and/or without a meal on special days that you need such a pick-me-up. Like on days ending in “day”.

So in such holiday spirit, I feel I should share the wealth.

In the spirit of the public good, I should also draw your attention to the fact that there is a very good reason the recipe begins and ends with a disclaimer about “drinking responsibly” and designating someone responsible (read: more sober than you would be should you drink this) to drive your drunk ass home. Or be smart like us: drink this in the comfort of your own home, where the longest, most dangerous commute is from the living room to your bed. Or couch. Or wherever you happen to land.

Because the recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of rum AND one and a half cups of bourbon. Ahem. It’s good stuff.

I made 8 servings, which basically called for:
4 fresh eggs
1/2 c. of sugar (separated into (2) 1/4 cups)
1/2 c. of rum (I used Myer’s dark rum)
1 1/2 c. of milk
1 1/2 c. of bourbon (I used Woodford reserve for about half of it and Chivas for the rest because I didn’t want to use up all the good stuff)
1 cup of heavy whipping cream
and nutmeg to serve (This part is important!)

Easy Instructions:

  1. Separate eggs into yolks and whites in separate bowls.
  2. Beat egg-yolks with 1/2 of sugar, set aside.
  3. Beat egg-whites until stiff, then mix in other 1/2 of sugar.
  4. Pour the yolks into the whites and mix together slowly.
  5. Stir in rum slowly.
  6. Stir in milk slowly.
  7. Stir in whiskey slowly.
  8. Stir in 1/2 of cream slowly
  9. Whip rest (1/2) of cream and fold in carefully.
  10. Serve at room temperature and sprinkle nutmeg on the top.

Cyril K. Collins sure knew what he was doing. This stuff is super rich and creamy (so, not the healthiest drink calorically…but who’s counting? Not me.). If you take care to blend it smoothly, it goes down super nicely. I hate when you can taste the layers of different drinks like in a poorly made Irish coffee. Bleah, no thank you. But this one? Smooth as a baby’s hind-ang.

And alcoholic enough even my hubby stopped at one. And my hubby can pack the alcohol away.

Of course, my mom had two servings in one sitting, so there you go.

But then, I don’t recall whether she did do more than sit after that.

What I really want to do is make some of this again this weekend. And then take some of it and put slices of good bread in it to soak overnight and in the morning, take a fat slab of butter and maybe some cream cheese and jam and fry up the best stuffed French toast ever made on this beloved planet.

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Friday, December 4th, 2009

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you capture – food

My family owns Thai restaurants here in Southern California and since they spend all day every day cooking food they all announced I would be the lucky one to cook for all 20-some-odd of us this Thanksgiving, especially since I’m the only one who knows how to cook “American-style” food (so they claim – though I distinctly remember a great many traditional Thanksgivings and Christmases before I started cooking). (Yay me!)

So I came down to visit a day early to get a good head start on the cooking. I started with walnut pumpkin bread:
youcapture_foodbread

Then we can take a sneak peak at Pioneer Woman’s marvelous carmel pumpkin gingersnap cheesecake (Thanks Ree!):
youcapture_foodcheesecakeIt still needs to chill overnight then I can sprinkle me some pecans on this baby.

Baking and cooking also involves babysitting my 5-year-old niece while my mom, sister, aunt, and cousins all scampered off to Pechanga casino for the night. So I’m entertaining her by baking cookies together. This turned out to be more adventurous than I’d bargained for. Especially since my parents, owning a restaurant, apparently own little in the way of baking supplies. Now, I did plan ahead for this, bringing casserole dishes and springform pans galore (seriously, packing for this weekend was liking moving back home). But I neglected a rolling pin and mat. Cuz everyone has a rolling pin, right? Ahem. Here are the orange & cinnamon spice cookies we made and the wine bottle I used in lieu of a rolling pin.
youcapture_foodcookies

And finally, here are the cranberries that will become orange-cranberry sauce later tonight:
youcapture_foodcranberriesIt’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!….oh wait, no. Still Thanksgiving.

Here ends the prelude to the cook-fest that shall commence again tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
For more yummy food finds, skeedaddle on over to Beth’s place: I Should Be Folding Laundry for this week’s You Capture challenge.

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Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

26Comments

Women Unbound – The Red Tent

If you’ve been following my blog lately, you’ll know that I’ve decided to participate in the Women Unbound challenge. This challenge asks us to read both fiction and nonfiction books written by women authors as part of a group enlightenment/discussion surrounding women’s issues. As a participant in this group, I will post my reviews of these books here on Tasting Grace. But I’m not going to do a traditional book review where I give the synopsis and my thoughts, end of story. What I’d like to do is give a hint of what the book is about, but then talk more about what questions the book raised and what it made me think about. So if you’re not a participant of the challenge and/or haven’t read the book (or even if you have!), or even are not particularly chuffed about women’s issues, please stick around! What I’m hoping to do is pose some things to think about and hopefully engender a discussion here and try to get different people’s thoughts and share ideas. And hopefully learn something really fascinating in the process.

redtentThe first book I read was The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. It’s a very beautiful book that tells the tale of biblical figures from a woman’s perspective. It tells the tale of Jacob and Leah’s daughter, Dinah, from Dinah’s own perspective and weaves a story of four sisters wed to the same man and raising his children together. It tells of her marriage and “rape” and the carnage and aftermath which ensued. With a wealth of historical detail and deep emotional connection, the book opens a window for modern readers to see what life was like for the silent figures in the Bible: the women. I highly recommend it, and if you like historical fiction and books about the bonds of kin, this book might just be your cup of tea.

There are three things that struck me while I read the book. The first regards ceremony and rites. In the early parts of the book, Diamant delves a lot into what women did together. As they were not members of the public sphere, their lives involved much cooking and child-rearing, yes, but they were also very connected inter-personally and spiritually. Diamant talks at length of the community of sisters who see each other through major transitions in life and celebrate together moments like the moment when a girl sheds blood for the first time and becomes a woman: the time when women learn that blood is the price for giving life. As I read on, I realized that we have comparatively little in the way of ceremony and rites-of-passage. Part of this might be due to the way society has progressed: that with science and learning that fertility festivals do not actually increase fertility and dancing before the cloud gods does not produce rain that we have learned more about how the world works. But I wonder if maybe we haven’t lost something along the way. We have proms and marriage and religious holiday traditions (and what we do have has largely become uber-commercialized and sometimes engenders at least as much stress as joy), but most of us no longer celebrate things like when a girl becomes a woman and a boy becomes a man. Important passages go unmarked and unrecognized and there is little sense that these life transitions are indeed special and worth attention. Mothers show daughters how to use a tampon and they both move on without another thought. There is little of the sacred feminine, little celebration, little sense of community, sisterhood or brotherhood surrounding the different stages of life. Comparatively. Perhaps the biggest coming of age surrounds crossing an arbitrary age barrier delineating the legality of driving and drinking alcohol. Which neither are things that say anything substantial about people’s relationship with the larger community. And I wonder: to the extent that some of these communal celebrations have disappeared, have the binds that tie us as a society weakened?

The second thing that came from this book was a very real sense of what it was like for women to not have any choices in life. When things really mattered, very often, choices are made for them by men. It took real manipulation and chicanery to take control of one’s own fate. And what Diamant illustrates so deftly is that women in this time could not even cry foul at injustices. Not only were they not allowed to, they could not even conceive of the possibility of claiming an act against them had been unjust. It simply was the way things were. It is a difficult thing to wrap our heads around now, when we can look and say, “Why didn’t she complain? Why didn’t she fight against her oppression?” There were socio-cultural blinders preventing these women from even entertaining the possibility of fighting back. It’s easy for us to judge in hind-sight, to see outside the social frame of the time with the benefit of a different perspective. But it does raise the question: what are we blind to? Are there things that we don’t even see because it never occurred to us to question them?

And finally, there is a moment between Dinah and a dear friend of hers who says, “Dear one…I am so honored to be the vessel into which you pour this story of pain and strength.” I am so honored to be the vessel. Herein lies what I believe to be one of woman’s most incredible strengths. We have the strength to endure, to survive, to sacrifice, not only for ourselves, but also for others. When we falter, our mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends become the vessel when there is too much to bear. (I don’t mean to say men don’t do this too; men can be incredibly caring, strong, and supportive.) But can we recognize in our sisters fellow vessels of the world’s burdens? Can we, even where there are betrayals between sisters, forgive and live with an undivided heart?

If anyone has thoughts on any of this, I would love to receive them. I would love to have a discussion and hear what others think. I hope you all find this fascinating too.

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Friday, November 13th, 2009

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nothing like family, to keep it real

accidentFifteen years ago today I was in a car accident. One big enough to make the front page of The LA Times. It stills affects me today when I’m passenger in a car with a less cautious driver, or when I see car accidents on the road, it still makes my belly do funny flips.

It was my freshman year in high school and I had just moved to a new city. My cousin, who is 2 years older than I am, had moved to our home from Thailand, and was living with us at the time, so she attended the same high school. Her boyfriend picked us up for school in the morning, along with a couple of other friends. I sat in the back, with my cousin and two other girls – which meant there was four of us in the back and only three seatbelts. I went without one.

The drive to school was only about 10 minutes. It’s amazing what can happen in the span of seconds. We left my neighborhood and turned left onto a major street…and then inexplicably, without warning, my cousin’s boyfriend lost complete control over the car. From what I could tell, it looked like he had turned too far left and to avoid hitting the median, he overcompensated in turning right. Probably, he hit the accelerator instead of the brakes. I know we somehow passed a biker, but we sideswept two cars. I had a window seat and front row view to the other driver’s face as he watched us collide into him. We continued on to the next light, crossed the median – and this is where I blacked out – crashed head-on with a car waiting in the left-turn lane going the opposite direction, flipped two or three times and landed on the roof of a fifth car before coming to a final stop upside-down on the road. People at the Del Taco witnessed the whole thing and called emergency responders immediately. Police reports later said we had gone from 0 to 60 in the space of about as many feet.

When I came to, I found myself on the roof of the upside-down car. And my only instinct at that moment was to get out of there as fast as possible. Not caring that I was crawling all over bits of broken glass, I found an out through the front passenger seat and its door. I crawled to the nearby median, and just sat down. I’m pretty sure I was in shock. I wasn’t crying. I just looked around me. Later, I would marvel at the different ways people deal with trauma. Most of the others in the car didn’t remember any of the accident. Thankfully, there were no fatalities. This is one instance in my life where I could truly feel there were guardian angels that day.

When the firemen checked my head and neck for injuries; all was clear. They asked if I hurt anywhere else, I said, “I think my arm is broken.” I lifted it up for them to see – there was a clear gap in my elbow from where the joint had dislocated. They nodded. “I think you’re right,” they said, and they gently lifted me onto a gurney, put me in the ambulance and off I went to the hospital. My parents were there almost immediately; I know the fear and shock in their faces mirrored my own. My mother said she could hear the sirens when she was out for a walk and she just knew, deep down in her guts, something had happened.

It was quite the experience, and dealing with the physical therapy afterward to regain use of my arm was not my idea of fun. But there is one moment from that time that always, always makes me laugh.

When we got home from the hospital, I with my arm in a sling, and my cousin with her collarbone broken, she turned to me and said, “You saw the paramedics, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Did you notice?” she smiled. “They were soooo sexy!”*

….

No. I hadn’t noticed. But thank you, for putting things in perspective.

(*She said this in a mixture of Thai and English, so I’m kind of paraphrasing here.)

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Thursday, October 15th, 2009

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on being part other

multicultural-me“Your daughter is beautiful.”

“A little chubby.”

“But her face is pretty. She looks like her mom.”

“She looks like a person from India.”

“True. She’s got good skin too.”

This conversation about me takes place as I look directly at the smiling faces of those discussing me. They talk as if I’m not in the room, as if I don’t understand, as if being part-white means I don’t understand Thai. My mother hadn’t made a concerted effort to teach me her native tongue, but I was around it enough to pick up a lot of the everyday language. I might not speak it perfectly fluently, but my comprehension works well enough. Thanks, guys, I think, as I smile innocently back at them.

In America, I am half-Asian. In Thailand, I am fahrung – foreigner (always said with a smile and laugh, so that makes it better, right?). I am classified by my otherness, defined by my whiteness. I am proud of my Asian heritage, but amongst Asian relatives, I feel I am always trying to prove my authenticity. I mimic the accent flawlessly when speaking. Most of my jokes about flatulence and genitalia are expressed in Thai because it’s just funnier that way. I know what to do with lemongrass and how to combine chili, shallot, and lime. I grab a mortar and pestle before I’d use a grater. I have a layer of cool reserve towards non-family, whilst full of conscious gratitude for my family cohesion and deep roots. I take off my shoes before entering the home, and I kind of take pleasure in the fact that my house is the one with the funny food smells that reduce you to coughing, sneezy fits when grandmother is roasting the chillies. I wai (bow) gracefully, sit properly, show deference to elders, and I cook and eat spicy food – because they always ask: “gin ben?” “Do you know how to eat spicy food?”

(”Do you know how to eat spicy food?” is reduced to “Know how to eat?”, as if eating only non-spicy food is, in fact, not eating at all. “Yes,” I say, “I know how to eat.” See chubbiness for detail.)

And still, I am not fully integrated among them. Do others feel this too: within your own family, even though you are loved, do you feel you sometimes do not belong? Isn’t it funny sometimes, how within family, the one place you are loved unconditionally, you feel the strongest need to prove yourself? And for all your effort, pretty much no one notices because 1) they expect it, and 2) they love you anyway. Talk about an exercise in futility. I try to prove my sameness, but what they see is difference. I am one step removed from that part of my heritage. While my cousins just grow up knowing certain things, I must make the extra effort to acquire them: the language, the history, the idioms. I feel sorry I never learned to speak fluently as a child, for now, as an adult, language acquisition is much harder. The sayings, the myths, the ways words are strung together, it all shapes and communicates a unique worldview. And really, most importantly, some of the humor just does not transcend cultural lines. You have to belong to understand. (Meanwhile, what I do come by naturally is the bone-deep need for deep-fried coconut snacks. Again, see chubbiness. Thank you, God, for your lovely sense of humor.)

Whatever distance I have now from this part of my identity, I wonder what my own children will feel. I will strive to pass on the tradition of cooking and enjoying food and conversation together. I will pass on whatever ability to speak Thai I have. And I will teach them the value of respect towards elders and responsibility to family and community. But they will never know my grandmother and the depth of her presence. Tales of their great-grandfather will be muted and second- or even third-hand. And I wonder what words of the blood line will I pass on to them? What stories will make up their identities? Where will they feel rooted? Will they find comfort in garlic and noodle soup, or will they turn instead to burgers and spaetzle?

I am proud of my multicultural heritage. I feel it adds color and dimension to an otherwise ordinary life. But I suspect passing it on and keeping it alive will be a challenge. What should be as natural as breathing will be a struggle for us, as a multicultural family: part Thai, part American, part Norwegian, part German, and part South African. As the varied strands of genealogical influence compete for dominance, I wonder what will persist? And what part of the heritage will fall by the wayside?

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Monday, September 14th, 2009

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