The Times, They are a-Changin'

Thirteen years ago, I walked across a stage at the University of North Florida to receive my M.Ed. With the exception of  a couple of high school graduations held in their arena, I haven't spent much time there since.
Until this past January...when Isabel began taking language lessons there at The Jacksonville Chinese School on Sunday afternoons. I have been waiting for years for her to be old enough to begin. As a foreign language teacher, I know the importance of being exposed to a second (or third) language as early as possible. While I was in China, I visited a multi-storied version of Barnes and Noble to buy as many Chinese language children's CDs as possible. I wanted Isabel to remember the tones and cadence of the first language she ever heard.
Fast forward five years and she is once again being exposed to Chinese. So, for two hours a week, we trek over to the university for her lessons. Is the classroom management the best? No. Is the pacing wonderful? Nope. Do I care? Not a bit. And do you want to know why?   
Because for 120 minutes a week, my child is no longer... The Asian.
Instead, I am...The White Woman.
And I like that.
I need that. I need to remember that my child's world is not my world. I need to be reminded that while I waltz through my days oblivious to feeling out of place, Isabel is acutely aware of her difference.
We have entered a new developmental stage. You know, the one of growing awareness that, for all our love for each other, there will always be hard things that will be our reality. Being a trasracial adoptive single-parent family, it pops up in different ways. Like recently, when Isabel commented that the Barbie she got in her Happy Meal had "brown hair and brown skin like me, Mommy." Or when I received her recent Valentine's Day card that was addressed to Mom and Dad. When I asked her about Dad, she replied matter-of-factly, "He's in China."


I see changes. In little things and big. In subtle ways and obvious ones.
Yup.. the Times, They are a-Changin'.


PS. After our trek to UNF on Sunday, we discovered the class was canceled due to the holiday. Isabel asked to hang out on the steps for a while practicing her "Take-Aways" (subtraction) in her notebook.
We did.
She did.
Here are some images from then.

A Wake Up Call

Up until now, life for Isabel and me has been relatively smooth, but I know that very soon she will begin to recognize the differences between us. She will realize that we have different skin color, eye color and eye-shape. She will struggle and wrestle with issues that I can’t begin to understand. She has been asking me to tell her about her foster mom and dad for several months now. She (the animal lover) tells me she’s going “to visit my foster daddy because he has a farm.”

The awareness is beginning to surface and with it, the first steps in the lifetime journey of coming to peace with being a transracial adoptee to a single mother. I know that she will have to work through many difficulties. I know that she will encounter prejudice and racism that I, as a white person, have never had to deal with. I know that I can’t protect her from the world forever. I know that. I just wasn’t prepared to deal with it so soon.

I was at the hair salon on Wednesday. (Isabel was not with me.) I was sitting in the chair and tuned in to the rambling of the young (I later found out) 12-year-old behind me. She was yakking away about her mother getting the color wrong on her hair and that she “looked like a flippin’ China baby.” She repeated twice, each time with even more disdain in her voice.

I felt like someone had kicked me in my gut.

…and then she continued. “You know how THEY get their names??? The mother throws something at the wall and the sound it makes is what they call their kid. Ping. Dong. Wang. Ha ha ha!”

I wish I could describe what I felt but I am still processing it all. I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me. I know there was anger…and disgust… and sadness. This was a TWELVE year old!!! Sixth grade!!!! How in the world could she come up with such things? Clearly, it was learned in an atmosphere of ignorance and fear and small-mindedness. It is a world that I have been protected from. It is a world that Isabel will be a part of.

I teach in an inner-city college prep school with a multicultural student body. My students are from Korea, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, China, the Philippines, Mexico and Russia. They are Hispanics, African Americans, White, bi-racial, multi-racial, rich, poor, big, small. Some live in the local neighborhood; others endure a 90-minute bus ride each way. It is a microcosm of the world. Though not perfect, there is a deep sense of respect for people and their culture. I love teaching there. I love that my daughter will have the opportunity to have classmates that look like her. I love that diversity is embraced. It is the world in which I have been living for the last 15 years.

However, it is not the world that a lot of people either live in…or want to live in. I needed to be reminded of that… not so much for my sake, but for my daughter’s.