Families are an ever evolving, often complex set of relationships, aren’t they? I look at my parents and my kids, particularly my dad who my brother and I had an uneasy relationship with growing up at times, and see how easy it is between him and the girls. It’s not something that you could ever know until it happens, much like how you don’t really know what kind of parent you will be until you become one. But this…seems so natural (uncooperative family photo poses and all).

And then there is this:

I can tell you that it took my dad a while to accept the fact that my brother was having a baby 2 years ago, mostly because it was a surprise to all of us. It didn’t happen the way that maybe he envisioned it might happen. There was a time when my dad and my brother did not speak for a few months. At one point my brother resigned to the possibility that his kids might not have the same kind of relationship that my kids have with their grandfather. I think as first generation Asian Americans and kids who grow up identifying mostly with American culture, we expect our immigrant parents to accept our decisions no questions asked. I just told my brother to give him some time.

He is right in one sense. My dad doesn’t have quite the same relationship with my brother’s kids as he does with mine, but this is because of distance and nothing more. My brother and his family live in California and we only see them once or twice a year. They were in town to celebrate my nephew’s 2nd birthday and his new daughter’s traditional 100 day celebration.

So it would come as a bit of a surprise to hear my dad make a speech during the party with our whole extended family. That he would be the one to say that despite the fact that maybe the additions to his family might not have been what he envisioned when he thought about it abstractly years ago before any of this ever happened, when he looks at his children’s spouses and his 4 grandchildren, what he sees is family.

I’ve referred to my mom quite often in recent posts about childhood and parental role models, but not much about my dad. If you’ve been here for while, you may know that my relationship with my dad has been complicated and I keep it generally vague, partially because he started reading the blog about a year and a half ago (you think it’s awkward to get a Facebook request from your parents? Try having your parents read your blog!! Awkward x 10!). But as I’ve written before, the kids have been a great “buffer” in our relationship and he adores them. We see my parents quite often, every 3-4 weeks, and summers are particularly fun because my dad teaches the girls how to harvest lettuce and cucumbers from the backyard garden. We often eat outside, grilling Korean barbeque from a tabletop grill on the patio and Mia’s love of Korean food never ceases to be a source of pleasure and pride for my dad. I often look at the girls and my dad together, when they are out in the garden or taking the dog for a walk, and imagine an image of myself with my dad at that age in their place. While I see snapshots of moments through old photographs, I don’t have a whole lot of early memories of he and I together. I guess that’s not so important anymore. Instead, I’m building new memories.

btw, don’t the girls look like 2 little ajumas? If you’re Korean, you’ll understand.

Technically 1/4.

I always wonder if mixed race people identify more with one side of their racial makeup than the other. I also wonder if you become influenced by how you identify yourself based on how you look, mostly because that’s what other people see first – your outward appearance. I’ve written about my identity confusion growing up, but my struggle wasn’t about race or ethnicity, but rather, nationality. My girls are undoubtedly American (as I am too), but I wonder if they’ll ever feel confused about what race or ethnicity they “belong” to. Will it matter by then? Does it matter now? They have stronger ties to their Korean heritage than their Russian, Norwegian or Italian side and that mostly comes from being around my side of the family more. Like many families, this centers mostly around food. We always joke that while Mia may be the whitest looking half-Asian kid ever, you can tell she has Korean in her strictly by her love of Korean food (I mean do you know any other kid that can snack on those tiny dried anchovies, right out of the bag, fish head and all, like potato chips? Yeah, thought so). Claudine, who looks more Asian than her sister, doesn’t stray at all from her typical kid diet of Mac & Cheese and other carbs.

But I’m reminded every time we do go up to visit Mark’s uncle and father upstate, that the girls have another ethnic side that we don’t really address here at home, except for these trips to visit family (we don’t really ever learn much about Mark’s Norwegian side of the family in Washington). When we do go upstate, we hear stories about how Mark’s grandmother had a pot of mushroom soup and pierogies waiting every time any grandchildren came to visit.

Mark’s uncle’s house is full of family treasures like the Russsian eggs. The girls like to try and spot Mark, as a child, in all the old family photos hanging up around the house. I’m realizing how important it is to show the girls this side of their family history too. It’s nice to think that they will have fond memories of driving up to Uncle Mike’s house, where a bowl of soup and a plate of pierogies, always await them.

We traveled upstate last night to spend the weekend with Mark’s dad’s side of the family. We seem to find ourselves up here the last few Easters and the girls get a little dose of their Russian side. I like coming to stay at Mark’s uncle’s house because there are a lot of objects and photos here that’s tied to family history which is really cool because I feel like my mom’s house, which they moved into about 10 years ago, is pretty devoid of that kind of stuff. We don’t have old family heirlooms like these beautifully intricate pysanky eggs from the 60s and 70s.

We plan on doing Easter eggs tomorrow. I think one year we attempted to get fancy with the eggs using these as inspiration, but dude, it’s HARD. I think we’ll stick to simple egg dyes. Happy weekend.

When I wrote that Tiger Mom related post last month, I was reminded of the identity struggles I grew up with as a first generation Asian-American. I often felt that I was straddling between 2 cultures, never completely one nationality or the other. Often I felt like I was expected to behave one way with my family, which sometimes conflicted with what I felt was the “American” way of doing things.

I’m a US citizen, but I wasn’t born here. I came to NYC in the 70s with my dad when I was 3 and reunited with my mom who had already been working here as a nurse for 2 years when she left Korea when I was a year old (a different story for another day). Immigrating to America when you’re 3 is a lot different than immigrating to America when you’re 8, which is when many of my younger cousins came. At 3, you’re just starting to grasp language skills. Throw in a move to a foreign country where suddenly everyone is speaking a different language and you have some confusion at a critical time when you’re learning how to speak. Not surprisingly, I am not fluent in Korean and what I do know was learned at Korean school in my later years. My cousins who came when they were older, on the other hand, can speak the language fairly well. Because of this, I felt there was always a cultural and language divide among my large family of cousins – those who were born in the US and those who came at a later age, 8 or older. I related most with my cousins who were born here since I came at such an early age and I had no real memories of Korea.

Even though the few early memories I have of coming to NY were somewhat traumatic, kids adapt to new environments fairly quickly and soon I was just about as American as any other kid on the block. Back then, in the 70s, you didn’t really want to be different even in a diverse city like NY. I assimilated into American culture so I could fit in like everyone else and even my name, my full name, was given to me by my mom because it was the most popular name of that era (Jennifer). By the time I hit public school, I was choreographing dance numbers with my friends to the BeeGees, becoming obsessed with the Jackson Five, and developing crushes on Leif Garrett and the members of the Bay City Rollers just like any other American kid in the 70s. I remember being really frustrated, however, because my parents weren’t aware of so many “American things” like the tooth fairy. When I lost my first tooth, I hid that that thing under my pillow and checked every morning, only to discover that my tooth was still there. Finally after a few fruitless nights, I took that tooth and marched over to my mom and told her all exasperated, “you’re supposed to be the tooth fairy! You have to leave me a quarter under my pillow! Why don’t you know this?!”.

At some point my parents thought it would be a good idea to reacquaint myself with Korean culture, so the one and only time I ever went back to Korea was in 1981. I was part of the first government sponsored trip of about 20 or so Korean-American students ranging from age 10-17 and we stayed with host families for a month. We toured the country together, learned about history, culture and traditions, and then I stayed on for another month with my relatives. In Korea, I was paraded around by my cousins as their “American cousin”. Their friends bought it because my hair wasn’t jet black and I wore fat red shoe laces on my Nike sneakers. At age 11, I remember getting into a fight with my mom prior to the trip about what to wear to the airport, where some of our relatives would be meeting me for the first time since I left the country. My mom wanted me to wear a dress and look nice, to show respect for my relatives. I wanted to wear jeans and a logo t-shirt, either Sassoon or Jordache, which was really popular back in those days. I knew all my other friends on the trip would be wearing the same. I guess I won that battle because my mom did eventually let me go in jeans and a t-shirt, but I also remember my Korean relatives expressing bewilderment at my “coming home” outfit.

I know most kids go through wardrobe battles with their parents, but for me and probably other first generation immigrants, it was also about something more, something deeper than the clothing. At home, we were taught never to forget our ethnic heritage, but at school, I did my best to not remind myself or others of my Asian-ness so I could fit in. It was also a defense mechanism to avoid any racial teasing because as an Asian-American, or the so-called “model minority”, there were all these stereotypes that we were geeks, adding to the pressure and expectations to be academic overachievers. To many Americans, we were also lumped together into one group. It didn’t matter if you were Japanese or Korean or Chinese. Back then, if you looked Asian, you were automatically assumed to be Chinese no matter how many times you clarified that you were not and that being Korean was in fact, different from being Chinese. This just added to the overall identity confusion. Was I Asian? Was I Korean? Was I American?

Growing up was always about that push and pull between 2 cultures. It made me think twice about doing really normal teenage things like going out on dates in high school or bringing a boyfriend home, neither of which I did when I lived at home. There’s a reason why neither my brother or I told my dad about our respective partners until we were ready to get married. I always wished I grew up in an American family where normal things like that wasn’t such a big issue and so complicated. I totally laugh about this now, but I used to worry all the time about how I would disappoint my parents whenever I decided to break it to them that I was planning on being a rockstar when I grew up. I was serious too and that stress was real, but we didn’t have those kind of role models growing up that I could point to. Asians played classical violin or piano at Carnegie Hall, but you never saw them on MTV, or movies or television shows back when I was a kid. And if you did see the rare Asian in popular culture, it was always a role that perpetuated stereotypes (Long Duk Dong in 16 Candles, anyone?).

But a really unexpected thing happened when I left my NYC art school to a attend a small town liberal arts college in Washington State. There were all these student groups that were organized by ethnicity. There were Students of Color. There were the Pan-Asian and Asian-American Coalitions. This was a new thing for me and I joined in on some events and meetings because I was encouraged to do so, but it was a jarring experience. Suddenly, it was all about Asian Pride and that just didn’t exist in the 70s and 80s. I can’t say that I felt entirely comfortable in these student groups. It’s sort of the same experience when I compare it to going to Koreatown and not being able to speak to anyone in Korean. You’re looked down on and there’s this air of disapproval. Suddenly I didn’t feel Asian enough because I didn’t know the language well enough, or the history and I wasn’t actively engaging in any of the traditions.

Needless to say, it’s been a long journey to get to where I am now, where I no longer feel uncomfortable straddling two cultures. By the time I moved back to NY and went to grad school, I was hanging out with more Asian-American friends than I ever had in my life, but we were all a bit older and we weren’t dealing with so much identity angst from our childhood and college years. It was just fun to go out and have group karaoke night in Koreatown, or organize a game of Mahjong on the 4th floor of the Tisch building or have dimsum in Chinatown.

Now that I’m a parent, I realize that it must have been hard for my parents too, to balance the traditions and expectations with a world they had just left while assimilating into the culture of a new home in America.
I think it does say something about the world (or maybe it’s our part of the world) that the issues I dealt with growing up haven’t been on my mind at all. While the sad truth remains that some of those traditions will fade as our family continues to grow into second and third generation Americans (not to mention the whole multiracial aspect of both my children and my brother’s kids), I’m doing my best to teach and remind the kids about their various ethnic roots and what being American means. I wasn’t born American, but in 1984 I chose to be. I stood there with other soon-to-be Americans in a courtroom and took that oath in a Naturalization Ceremony. Was I still Asian? Yes. Was I still Korean? Yes. Was I American? Officially, as of that oath, yes. I guess it just took many years to realize that I am all of these things.

We’ve pulled the scooters out now that the weather has been exhibiting Spring-like tendencies. Claudine was barely able to ride it when we put it away 4 months ago, but something must have happened during those few months. Maybe she’s grown into her body a bit more (or her “big fat head”, as she likes to call it), or maybe she’s a bit more coordinated. Whatever it is, she hopped right on there and started zooming down the street like she’s been doing it for years. Have to admit, it sort of makes me nervous seeing her go down a hill so fast. I mean, we didn’t have scooters when we were her age. We rode around the sidewalks in Big Wheels and that ride was looow to the ground. If you fell, you didn’t have far to go. But what we didn’t have were helmets. We rode around on Big Wheels, bikes, rollerskates, and skateboards, all without helmets. Hell, we didn’t even ride in carseats. The 70s were dangerous, I tell ya.

The girls and I had an interesting conversation the other day. They were pulling their eyes with their fingers like the way people do when they want to make fun of Asian people. I kinda just shook my head like, what? I asked them why they were doing that. They said it was because it looked funny and they were making funny faces. I told them that when people did that to me when I was a kid it hurt my feelings. They did it to make fun of me because I was Asian and I didn’t look like them. They got kind of serious and I didn’t see them do it again.

This afternoon on the walk home from school, Claudine randomly blurted out loud, “You shouldn’t pull your eyes with your fingers”. I asked her why. She said, “Because it makes fun of Asian people”. I was sort of surprised that she remembered. But then I paused and thought to ask her, “Do you know what an Asian person is?”. She replied no. Huh. I asked her, “Do you know any Asian people?” She just shrugged her shoulders. I told her that I was Asian, that Grandma was Asian, Grandpa, Aunt Jeanie, Uncle, and Aunt Dorothy. She smiled and laughed and said, “ohhh”. I told her she was Asian too and she giggled. Ok, so really, why would she know what Asian meant if I never explained it to her? She knows what Korean is about, but it’s not like we really discuss race issues, or maybe I should say, race really isn’t an issue in our lives for the most part. Most of her friends in the neighborhood are of mix race and that’s been a big reason why we choose Brooklyn to raise our kids.

I remember when Mia was this age and noticing that her nanny had darker skin color than our family. She was noticing a lot of differences in people at this age, actually, and I would pray that she didn’t blurt out something offensive in a public place, like say, the subway. I know kids sometimes state the obvious and it’s all done innocently (mostly), but sheesh, talk about prime opportunities for embarrassment. Then you feel like an ass because it looks like you don’t teach your kids about racial sensitivity, but in your defense, it might not be until these moments happen that you even realize that they notice and are able to articulate the differences in people. Mark sort of had that moment with Claudine the other week. They were in Chinatown when all of a sudden, she started looking all worried and walking with her head down. Mark asked her what was wrong and she replied that she was scared because everybody looked “strange” and was speaking in a different language. I was sort of surprised by this given that we go to Chinatown a lot, however, it made me realize that we needed to talk about it.

I don’t know if Claudine really gets it yet in the way that Mia now understands that she’s half Korean. Claudine’s been saying around the dinner table all night that she’s Asian-American and that daddy is just American. I was going to correct her and say that we’re all American and blah blah, but I got tired just thinking about all the explaining I’d have to do. I’ll put that off for another day.