Growing Family

Friday Musings

I'm sitting down at the keyboard, with no plan of what to write...let's see what comes out of the keys.

It's been a very busy week or two. We've done stuff/seen people ten days out of the last eleven. That's some kind of world record for my home-body self.

Today, hanging out with a newish friend that I've spent quite a bit of time with, considering the length of time we've known each other, she was asking more about my background and how I grew up. She asked me again, as she has before, "how did you become who you are now, from the way you grew up?" She can't quite put together how my history leads into my present. And honestly, when she puts it that way, I feel a bit confused myself.

I am reluctant to talk too much about my childhood on this blog. I don't want to be cast as the poster child for an experience that other people could label with the heavy adjectives of "fundamentalist, conservative, home-schooled", as the connotation of those buzzword doesn't fit who I am at all. Today my friend asked me "did you churn your own butter?" Yes, once, for fun. It WAS fun. We put milk in a glass jar and took turns shaking it for FOREVER until we finally got it to thicken into cream, then butter. "Did you have a pony?" Yes, and a horse. "Did you read a lot, way out there, by yourself?" My whole family has always consumed massive amounts of reading material.

It was a bit of a rough transition from that world into the one I live in now. No one from my family (my parents included), live the way we lived while my siblings and I were growing up. There were ways that my childhood experience seemed lacking, and yet I feel so enriched by the experience as well.

Homeschooling gave me the opportunity to do so much. I got to explore interests to such a deep level. Nature walks, art projects, imaginative play, and reading, reading, reading. I found book work to be a bit tedious, but the life we led, out in the country, was a canvas for our childhood imaginations. We lived in a safe world there, where we could walk for hours in the woods, play down at the old mill catching crawdads and cooking them over a fire we built at the river's edge, playing house in an empty log cabin on our property...then, at a later house, finding a coyote's den with two cubs, exploring acres of pasture, sleeping in a tobacco barn under the sweet smelling leaves, sleeping on the trampoline, waking up cold and covered in dew. We were city folk, transplanted to the country, delirious with the fresh air and the freedom.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my own children and how to draw a bridge between the dreams in my head, and the choices I make in real life. In my head I see a kind of Pippy-Long-stocking meets Anne of Green Gables (and other fantastic L.M. Montgomery characters) meets The Chronicles of Narnia, childhood for my children. A cornerstone of that dream is a large, interesting house with nooks and crannies, and unexpected windows. Then, the house must be full of children, either permanent family members or those seeking temporary solace in a warm, happy home. Our table must always have space for the traveler, and under our eaves we should always be able to fit in one more sleeper. Then there's pets - they should be many.

I want a boisterous, happy, tangled life, full of joys and tears and whole-hearted living. I want "scope for the imagination" (Montgomery, again) in our living. While I don't plan to home-school my own children, I want to achieve the same opportunities for creativity and experimentation that I had.

How do I do that in the city (or country), as part of a school system, and a neighborhood, or a community? I experienced it within my family, wild and free, living following our fancy, out in the country, unfettered by any social system. Can I achieve that within the context that I am choosing to raise my own family?

Hm. Don't know. Must try.

On the whole topic of children, for anyone still interested in the process of expatriate adoption, good news for ex-pats! American citizens living abroad can now pursue domestic infant adoption, regardless of their "domicile" or "habitant resident" status. Unfortunately, that doesn't change things for us, as the wall erected between us and adoption is standing on the Australian immigration side of the issue, but it is a big hurdle overcome for other families.

My parents come in, count 'em, 9 days. SO EXCITED. We're going to take a road trip to Nelson's Bay to stay in a cabin in the woods, near the beach. The park is part of a nature preserve that harbors Koalas, amongst other things. How cool is that?

We've felt the mornings getting warmer. Although the setting is different, I can instinctively feel, in the change of the light and the temperature, that spring will be coming soon. I wonder what it will be like?

Lots on my mind. Lots of brooding. Sighs. Questions. Reading. Dreaming at night, before I fall asleep, and then some more before I wake. I'm dreaming of birth and labor, stretching and beginnings.

What will our lives be like?

Assimilation and Acculturation: Tough Stuff

First of all, may I just say that you all are superb and I think I am spoiled with some of the best online friends!

I've spent a lot of time thinking about assimilation,  acculturation, and cultural appropriation. Go ahead, click and read if you're not familiar with these terms. They're good ones to know.

Most of my processing on these issues has been around my role as a white mother to a son with African American heritage. As I seek to connect as much as I can, and learn all I can, I try to remain cognizant that I am not black, I cannot innately know about the black experience, and I don't have the right to consider myself part of black communities. A lot of adoptive families believe otherwise. It's not uncommon to hear people say something like "now that we have a daughter from China, it's like we're Chinese too!" My son is not a pass. I can do everything I can to provide him a comfortable proximity to his culture, but it's not my culture. Having African art in my home, and books by African American authors on my bookshelf, and brown faces on our dolls does not make me black. Anyway, I digress... That is the context in which I usually think about assimilation, acculturation, and cultural appropriation, but today I want to try to talk about something else.

Because of the horrific history many countries have connected to these terms (think Native American and Aboriginal children separated from their families in forced assimilation programs, stripping them of their cultural values and practices in order to bring them into mainstream -European, "Christian", western- culture), I always think of them in a mostly negative way.

Since being here in Australia, I've heard a sentiment that was not at all uncommon back home, and one I heard often in Holland as well: "If you don't want to speak our language and join our culture, go home." Basically, assimilate or leave. The dominant culture can take what they like, via cultural appropriation, and reject anything that doesn't "fit". The difference, is that previously, I'd always heard members of the dominant culture expressing that sentiment, and here I'm hearing it from immigrants. Here are some examples:

When we were buying our car we spent several hours with the car salesman. Towards the end of the transaction, he started a more personal conversation with me about our move here. He asked if we had had any troubles, as foreigners and was pleasantly surprised when I said our experience had been positive. He shared that he moved here 30 years ago, from South America, and was tormented by his peers at school. He said that so much has changed, and now when people find out he has South American roots, they think it is interesting and appreciate his heritage. He said that there are two kinds of people migrating to Australia, people who want to leave the politics and problems of them homeland behind, to come and become Aussie, and people who try to drag their home country with them, refusing to assimilate and making all sorts of problems. "If you don't want to be Aussie, go home", he said.

A friend originally from Indonesia, and living in Sydney after living in the U.S. told me about the trouble her daughter is having in school. Her daughter is in a class with predominently Korean classmates, who don't speak English in the classroom. The Korean mothers do not talk to her, or make connections outside of their community. My friend feels that this is hindering her daughter's education and she is considering changing classes or even schools. The sentiment is, if you want to be here, speak English, make and effort, assimilate.

Most of our friends here are not Anglo Australians. Most of them began life in another country, speaking another language. Yet, cultural heritage doesn't seem to be a very big deal to them. They want their children to be Aussie. I don't know of any of our friends who are teaching their children their first languages (which is understandably difficult given many of them are inter-ethnic marriages with two first languages represented). And when I've asked how they help maintain their family's cultural identity for their children, within Australian culture, I've gotten the hairy eye.

Coming from a framework where I've only been aware of two modes: majority culture forcing assimilation on everyone, and minority culture/ethnic/religious/linguistic families struggling to maintain those things for their children, the attitude I see here seems quite foreign to me. People say "we came here to be Aussie." Basically, to live the Australian dream (which is pretty much the same as the American dream): a better life for our children, a stable political environment, opportunities, advancement. Nurturing cultural identity doesn't seem to be such a big part of that. When I look around at our friends, I can imagine that their children won't be able to speak to their grandparents except in English, they won't know how to prepare the dishes their parents make, they may find their grandparent's religion to be odd, and their frame of reference for the world will be completely Western.

I'm really trying to understand this sentiment, and withhold judgment. I wonder if this is the way migrants to American processed things for a long while? Leaving the home-country identity behind to become a proud American? Is the current focus in American that you can be "both", more of a recent development?

For the first time this has implications for my own life as well. If we stay, will I become Aussie? When my children develop Australian accents and this place shapes their world view (as is evidenced already in the insistence of "biscuit", not cookie, and "wee", not pee), will I be fine to let our Dutch and American heritage slip away? I can't imagine that I will...but then my situation is quite different from many people immigrating from hardship, persecution, or lack of opportunity. It's something I keep thinking about...trying to understand this fierce Aussie pride that is predominant over historical ties.

300th Post of This and That

Small Sun is obsessed with the color brown. It's all he wants to draw, color, and paint with. Whenever we get out the art supplies he's asking "where's the brown? I want the brown!" Other than having identified himself as brown and us as "white", he hasn't made any observations about the skin color of others. However, he often points out when people have curly hair. Most of the time, he notices people who look multi-ethnic and says "they have curly hair, like me!" For example, that's what he said about this Old Navy Ad.

We have turned the corner on orneriness! I won! Sometimes, that battle for self-discipline and patience, that allows me to maintain my calm in the face of double-whine, is the hardest battle I have to face. I find myself physically exhausted at night, completely worn out from the energy it took to not-yell, not answer with sarcasm, not alienate, not punish. I was laughing with some moms at playgroup this week. We were hypothesizing what would happen in the work place if a colleague treated you the way our children do. Of course legal recourse would be available to you if your boss or colleague taunted you, smeared snot on you, threw food on the floor, yelled at you, peed on your rug, woke you up at night, hit you, bit you, and otherwise drove you mad. Yet we manage all that and more from our pre-schoolers, and try to do it with a soft voice and a gentle hand.

I am mobile again, after being without a car for several weeks. Our Audi A4 wagon turned out to be a total lemon. It is sitting in the driveway, along with our Subaru Forester, garnishing NO CALLS from our add in the paper. Shucks. Pray we can sell it for something. I commented to The Captain, "boy this Subaru feels really roomy!". He replied, "well that's what you get if you buy a big box." And that's what the '01 Forester is, a box on wheels. Not pretty, but very reliable, which is what we need right now.

The Sprout is learning new words every day. Today she started saying "All Day" as we read a book that has that phrase at the end of each page. Many of her words are unintelligible, but she is eager to speak and is repeating lots of new words. She seems so tiny and babyish, when Small Sun seemed so grown up at this age. Hearing her use new words just makes me beam with pride.

I am buying all of the kid's summer clothes at the end of summer sales online, then having my mom bring them when she and my dad visit in September. The reversal of seasons works out really well for me in that regard. If any of my real life friends want to send stuff to me, mom and dad are coming August 31st.

I'm getting ready to host our first party here. The Captain is turning 29 and I can't believe that after (almost) 4 months, we already have a crowd coming to celebrate. Tomorrow I have a birthday party with the kids, then a baby shower, before hearing Jim Wallis speak at our church in the evening. It's good to start to have a bit of a crowded schedule, now and then. The Captain and I are both starting to feel a bit more enmeshed in our various groups, and that's a good feeling.

Okay, maybe it hasn't been that interesting of a post, but it's what is happening with me this week. Just a few tidbits to record in my 300th post. I wonder if I am surprised that I have this much to say? 300 conversations started...with myself at least!

P.S. I'm reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, And the Collision of Two Cultures. Anne Fadiman is brilliant and this book is so incredible. I'm crying. It's horrible. But Ms. Fadiman's wielding of the broad and complicated subject matter is meticulous and direct. How she communicates massive amounts of information, while maintaining fluidity in tone, is beyond me. More thoughts when I've finished it.

He is SO Three

Today Small Sun voiced two noteworthy observations/questions.

This morning, in our bed, with the four of us snuggling, Small Sun said "I'm brown! And Pappa, you're white. And mommy's white. And Sprouty's white!"

Who told him that people with my skin tone are "white"? I didn't.

And this evening, during the bedtime wind-down, Small Sun asks The Captain, "are you Jesus? Are you Pappa Jesus?"

This boy has got a lot on his mind.

So do I.

Don't Trust a Vegetarian

Don't trust a vegetarian to buy your meat for you. If you do, you might end up with this:

Last time I was at the store I got all excited because I saw what I thought was prepared Lebanese meatballs. I decided to buy them next time I shopped so I got them today. Is there even such a thing as Lebanese meatballs? It wasn't until I started looking at the package for the cooking directions that I started to get puzzled.

Oh no, the

-"nutritionally complete & balanced meal for your dog"
-"pet food only"
-picture of a barking dog, and
-"4 Legs" logo

didn't tip me off.

How could such a glaring oversight occur, you might ask? Two reasons:

1. Shopping with two children for two weeks worth of groceries - you just grab stuff as fast as you can.
2. Desperation for help with preparing meat. If you don't eat it, it's hard to be creative with how to cook it and you end up in a rut quite easily.

*******************************************

I love to cook vegetarian food. I've been watching Top Chef all the time and while I enjoy it, I don't find much that translates to our dinner table. I did notice, however, the way a contestant was cooking peppers. I gave it a go and really enjoyed the flavor. Here are some bright ingredients from some pasta sauce from scratch, sans dog meat!

Bits and Pieces

Mind if I unload floating thoughts from my brain?

Last week Small Sun told me "my cheeks are brown, my hair is brown, I'm BROWN!" with great glee. I couldn't believe that right after writing the post about his lack of color awareness he made that discovery. He also has started yelling "I'm black, I'm proud" at places like the zoo and the playground. I smile at the other parents. I don't think he has any idea what it means. I hope he feels good about yelling that phrase for a long, long time, even if it makes me uncomfortable when he does it at high decibels amongst strangers.

A big part of me wants to go to the neighborhood church, even though I don't agree with their theology, just because the people are nice and it would be so easy!

I went to a big kid's consignment sale today that I had been looking forward to for weeks. It was very underwhelming. Back in Nashville we had great kid's consignment sales that were HUGE with everything under the sun, and because they only accepted nice stuff, everything was nice. I miss the good second hand kids stores we had as well. I only know of one here and it is across town.

I am ashamed to admit it, in case Sster is still reading, but I miss American Capitalist Consumerism. I miss Target (the Target here is much smaller and more expensive, though everything is still made in China), Old Navy, TJMaxx, Diapers.com, and everything for cheap all the time.

Today at the sale, I bought a locally made gift for my niece. The vendor had beautiful clothes as well as some tshirts with old fashioned advertisements printed on them. One was of a black servant vacuuming, in that vintage style that is sometimes okay, and sometimes caricature and demeaning. I told the vendor that he might be interested to know, that from an American point of view, those shirts were offensive and racist and he might want to take that into consideration (especially since his shop is in a neighborhood with a high African population). He said "I understand, now that you mention it, it would be offensive here as well." Then why do you have it on a shirt? They were actually phasing those pieces out and they were in a toss bin for 2$ each. My friend Amy and I have talked about those pictures that you can easily find these days in the old-as-new recreations. Any thoughts?

I've been neglecting to do a meme that Cloudscome tagged me for. It's a book meme and I'm on my third book since being tagged. I want to pick a really great book to do the meme on, so you will all think I am so cool to be reading such cool stuff.

Starting over in a new place is weird. I'm realizing that in new situations, I make my personality like a blank canvas, like vanilla ice cream, waiting to see what the new people are up for. I don't want to make a fool out of myself or be something that they don't like. I just coast in neutral until I know what parts of myself I can be around them. I don't want to be the loud, obnoxious American with no taste and no culture, so I go heavy on my international experience and my broad interests. After I've somehow endeared myself to them as interesting, then I'll let out a few of my strong opinions. Wait, is that true?

I've found myself talking to total strangers, all the time, about my frustration with voluntary segregation, and my search for a diverse neighborhood. I think that's because in Nashville I feel like painted myself into a corner where my relationships were so dear to me, I didn't want to make people too crazy  with all my angst, so I came to the blogosphere for understanding instead. I don't want to do that again. So here, I'm saying things like "Hi, I'm Kohana. We've just moved here and we've been to some churches/neighborhoods/shopping centers that we liked, but honestly, they were too mono-cultural for us. We are looking for a diverse setting to affirm our diverse family."

The Captain and I got into a fight today. We never fight. Ever. We have conflict, but we don't get angry and say mean things about things that don't really matter. It's not very nice and I'm bummed that it happened.

Being the new girl everywhere, all the time, is hard.

Living without our stuff is really hard.

I'm a little bit stressed about money here. I haven't worried about money in at least five or more years. Moving here cost a lot of money, our income got reduced by almost half, and our expenses skyrocketed. We have a six month lease on our house and really, rent costs are the biggest part of our budget. I think a lot about if we should try to find somewhere else to live, and where that should be. Everywhere is expensive. I thought we'd buy a house here after about a year but that's not looking so feasible now.

Example: A house in our neighborhood recently sold. It rents for about 550$ a week. The payment on the INTEREST for a mortgage for that house would be about 2,000$ a week! Read it again. Crazy, huh?

I hope to buy a sewing machine in June. I am itching to sew.

I'm pretty used to it being fall here. It's been cold this week and the leaves are off the trees. It's still really green though. I just get sad when I look at ads from the States and everything is all tan and summer and beach vacation. It'll come here.

I think about my parents coming in August, several times a week. I can't wait.

Our car has issues.

I really miss Mexican food and black beans.

Okay, I think that is all of the fuzz sticking in my brain that I needed to shake out. Thanks.

And I know I don't say it enough, but for those of you who leave comments, I don't get to respond to comments as often as I'd like, but having your responses does so much to help me feel surrounded by community. I REALLY appreciate each and every one and feel so much comfort in your friendship, both live and web-based. Thanks.

My Nahville Top Ten

Per your requests:

1. Cheekwood Botanical Gardens
2. Bates Nursery (for greens, not kids)
3. The courtyard at the Downtown Library
4. The showers at Essential Therapy Spa (thanks Lil!)
5. "You're So Nashville" in the Nashville Scene
6. The Aspen Fruit Crepes at Le Peep
7. Green Hills theater and the films that don't show anywhere else
8. Fidos and Hillsboro Village (Pangea, Posh, Fire Finch)
9. Centennial Park, and
10. Calypso Cafe's black bean nachos and black bean salad...and don't forget the fruit tea and boija muffins, mmmmmmmm.

All of you Nashvegas peeps, when you partake of these things, smile for me.

24 hours till check-in.

Step Up 2 The Streets

I'm working on a response to Juno but in the meantime I wanted to write about the movie I saw last night: Step Up 2 The Streets. Although my dance background is is classical ballet, and ultimately, modern, my current fascination is with hip hop, and break dancing. I have no kinesthetic awareness of how to make my body move in those ways, but watching it really gets me going. I see pretty much every dance movie that comes out, regardless of its potential success as a film. I just love to watch people dancing.

Step Up 2 had some mad choreography. Interestingly enough, it had some stuff lifted right out of the most dynamic choreo from last season's So You Think You Can Dance. I did a quick Google to see if the same choreographer collaborated on the film but I didn't find anything right off the bat. Anyway, what I want to talk about in the film isn't the dancing, it's the plot.

This movie (and most dance movies) is not strong on plot or acting, it's strong on moves. Since the plot is so simplistic, I don't feel bad about paring it down to real basics (*spoilers*). Here's what I saw:

The main character is a white girl, recently orphaned, and part of a dance crew in a rough part of Baltimore. The 410 crew are survivors, they're all each other has, yada yada yada. Because she's becoming a problem for her mom's best friend, the woman who is caring for her, the woman decides to ship her off to Texas to live with her aunt. Her last chance to stay with her family, her crew, is to get into an arts school (MSA from the first film).

At the school there is a tightly wound, waspy directer determined to bring the school to Julliard's level, and his brother, Chase, who has left his ballet base to stray into street dance. He's seen Andie (our main girl) dance and convinces his brother to take a chance letting a street dancer into the school. Long story short, because she's going to the art school and missing rehearsals, her crew kicks her out. Yuppie ballet-street dancer Chase convinces her that she can start a new crew with the art school rejects who all have sic dance skills but don't fit the school mold and are overlooked in the school's classical dance programs.

The crux, and the part that kills me, is that the conflict of the movie becomes the kids from the art school struggling to be recognized as legit in The Streets (the street level, hard core dance competitions). The Streets is supposed to be for neighborhood kids only. It is the battle ground where kids with no other opportunity, outlet, or resource, compete for identity and pride.

The MSA school kids keep clawing their way back to eventually make it to the big competition. Everyone is booing them and Andie climbs on a speaker stack to give an impassioned (and totally corny) speech about how The Streets aren't just about neighborhood and turf, they are about giving a place for people that don't have any other place to find strength and support. She says something like "maybe we're not welcome here but anyone who wants to see us dance can see us outside!" Of course everyone is screaming and yelling in support of her speech (including the teary MSA director who has followed his students into the hood) and the crowd pours out into the rain where Andie and her school crew throw down some mad dancing and take the title from the reigning 410s.

Here's where I boil it down to the bones that stick in my teeth (I'm not even going to get into the completely stereotypical treatment of the Japanese student and the Latina girl.):

White girl gets kicked out of her black crew and almost thrown out by her black guardian. She gets into a privileged arts school and hooks up with power family white boy. Together they form a crew of mostly students of color (all privileged students in regard to the opportunities granted through the school), to go back into the projects to completely stomp the all black crew in their own territory at their own game.

In between the crazy dancing it was like the movie was yelling "hey black kids in the projects with crappy schools, no jobs, and no opportunities! think you can find a way to gain some self identity, success, and respect? well we privileged kids will come smack that out of you too!

Of course you can argue Andie was also from the streets, people of her school crew were persecuted in their school and were rejects and outcasts, etc, but basically, it was like the people who had something just put the smack down on the kids who didn't have anything but the respect dancing gave them. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I saw. See it yourself, and tell me, after you've stopped bouncing off the walls from the energy of the dancing, tell me what you think.

Privacy Bites

I use a false name for my magazine subscriptions so that my real identity doesn't get profiled by the sales mob. It freaks me out how much info they gather.

This was working out just peachy until I started cancelling subscriptions...A refund check made out to my alias won't do me much good.

Smart thinking there, old gal.

One Jesus, Two Jesus, Three Jesus!

Small Sun received this pencil case for Christmas. One day he illustrated his improving counting skills by proudly showing me "one Jesus, two Jesus, three Jesus!" pointing out the people on the front.

The Captain and I looked at each other in disbelief. We don't know where the bigger problem lies: Jesus as the embodiment of eurocentric beauty, or Jesus as a woman. I know everyone sees Jesus differently, but a Disney princess is the last way I'd imagine him!