Observations and Reflections

Lately I've been thinking about a comment that Hao Yuan made to me a few weeks ago. (She is the university exchange student that lived with my parents for a bit last school year and who is now attending our local community college.)

Yuan told me that she is really starting to settle in at school and with living back in the USA. She really enjoys her classes and is proud of the progress she is making as she continues to learn English. She told me that one of the funniest things, that she hadn't expected, has actually happened to her... sometimes she forgets that she's Chinese and sometimes it surprises her when she looks in the mirror and sees an Asian face looking back at her rather then one more of the Caucasian variety she is used to looking at.

On the surface that may sound improbable to many people. I mean come on now, right? I know what she means though. When we first landed in Beijing, and probably for the first day, I felt like I stood out like a neon light as we toured around and explored the area around our hotel. As the days wore on however I felt like I was blending in.

Since school started I've noticed a change in how Savannah draws pictures of people, other than herself. Virtually every person has blonde hair, whereas last year hair colors varied. Since Yuan made the remark about forgetting that she's Chinese, I began to place that perspective as a filter of sorts on Savannah's life. Looking at school she is the only non-Caucasian in her class, and with the exception of one girl every other girl is some version of blonde. There's me (another blonde) and the cousins she sees the most are all blondes. A few weeks ago I asked Savannah why she has been drawing girls with blonde hair and not other colors and got a shoulder-shrug response and "I don't know." I let that go for now because I want her to come up with questions when she is ready to ask them, and will continue to observe in the meantime.

I'd put this whole line of thinking on the back burner, until our trip up to Vancouver last week to spend a day at the Olympics. (We're so lucky to live in town that was so close to the action that a day trip was easily doable.) We arrived in Vancouver around 9 am and wandered around, checked out a few spots and had lunch at Live City Downtown. Figuring that we needed to give the kids a break we headed down to False Creek to a playground we'd spotted when we were up in Vancouver in January, but hadn't actually stopped at. The weather was amazing, temps near 60 F and kids were all over the place. The ethnic mix seemed fairly balanced between Asians and Caucasians and our kids blended right in with the crowd. In fact I was thrilled that I'd put Savannah in a bright green t-shirt as it was easy to spot her, Baden on the other hand wore a navy blue Team USA tee and really mixed right in. After a bit we continued on along the Seawall, past several of the provincial pavilions that were there as part of the Olympic festivities toward Science World and the Olympic Village. For the Olympics, Science World was converted into the home of Russia House - Sochi Russia's launch venue of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Along the way we stopped off at the same play area the kids had played at in January, and this time it was much more crowded than before. Savannah was delighted to continue working on mastering the monkey bars there and had a good time playing with another Asian girl. At one point Savannah asked her "Are you Chinese?" The girl (who was about 7 or so) looked at her like she was asking a silly question and said yes. The expression of delight and the sound of her voice as she exclaimed "Me too!!" made me smile and at the same time realize that we need to spend more time in Vancouver on a regular basis. While Seattle has a large Asian population, it's nowhere near Vancouver's, which is much more like San Francisco in that respect.

Baden's day-to-day experience is slightly different, beginning with the ethnic demographic in his class: 2 Korean-American kids, a boy whose mom is Chinese and dad is Caucasian and Baden, obviously, as well as a 2 kids who are another ethnic mix (I know that one is Mulatto and my guess is that the other one is as well). Aside from school everything else is really the same. Baden tends to draw more animals than people, so I haven't been able to use his art work to interpret his perspective as much, and when he does draw people it's generally him (with dark hair.)

It's interesting to see what people and places look like when we see them through our children's eyes rather than use our assumptions and perspective as a filter on their life. Really eye opening in a way. With this new paradigm in place I hope we can add experiences and adventures into our lives in a manner that is more subtle, rather than leaving the kids feeling like something we're trying to force on them.