Keepers

– Posted in: Bullying, Cleaning, Elfie, Family, Holidays, Kid Friends, Mouths of Babes, Personal Insanity

This is, without a doubt, one of my favorite times of the year. Everyone else sees it as some sort of limbo-land period between semi-lame holidays. But at my house, we’re cleaning, sorting through junk, and — my favorite of all favorites — throwing/giving stuff away. That’s right, folks, it’s Chinese New Year.

I’m half-Chinese — just enough to claim the holiday (but not really since I wasn’t brought up culturally Chinese). My dad knows some stuff, but he grew up in Hawaii, so he’s this odd mixture of Chinese-Hawaiian (and trust me, it’s a lot different). So why do we do Chinese New Year at my house? Ask my lilly-white husband.

I think my German/English husband, Tenzin, is a reincarnated Chinese person. Or more likely, he just has bamboo fever. He’s always been drawn to all things Asian (including me, obviously). So now, as is tradition, we do our “spring cleaning” during the lunar new year. It gets Tenzin moving, so that’s all I really care about. After four years of living in this house, he finally cleaned out the garage so that we can pull both cars into it. I think my knees sort of buckled when I saw it.

And my lilly-white kids — even they get into it. Elfie, my hoarding daughter, finally agreed to getting rid of the rocking chair in her room. And Newt, my son who has a penchant for saving all of his papers, sorted through a huge stack that’s been sitting on his dresser for months.

My kids, as un-Chinese-y as they look, are quite obsessed about the fact that they are, indeed, Chinese. This, I must admit, makes me proud. As a child, I grew up in a very white, very small town, and the last thing I ever wanted to be was Chinese. We tried to turn it to our favor by proclaiming that people looked at my brother and me because we were so “striking,” not different. In kindergarten, when some boys teased me for having “Chinese eyes,” I formed the “Chinese eyes gang” with my friends (don’t ask — it worked). But every ideal of beauty around me didn’t look anything like me. My mother had light brown hair and blue eyes. All of my dolls were blond. And every woman on every magazine cover was white.

When Elfie was born, it was like looking at a childhood dream personified — a blond-haired, blue-eyed me. Which is why it’s funny that sometimes I actually worry that she, ironically, will wish she had dark hair and dark eyes (Because if you have straight hair, you want curly hair — and vice versa. And if you have big boobs, you want smaller boobs — and vice versa). After all, her mother has brown hair and brown eyes. Her favorite Disney princess is Pocahontas. And she jokingly declares on a regular basis, “Poor Daddy has no Chinese.”

But unlike me at her age, Elfie’s proud of who she is and isn’t afraid to tell anyone about it. She’s excited to try different foods and see new places. And she’s thankfully living in a time when being quarter or half “whatever” is actually kind of cool (everybody’s doin’ it — even the president).

And those are things I’m more than happy to keep and never, ever throw away.

Previous Post:

0 Comments… add one

Leave a Comment

CommentLuv badge