3 posts tagged “family”
I saw both of my little sisters this past summer, which is rare because one lives in Greece and the other in British Columbia. A little brother or sister was number one on my wish list growing up, especially during ages 4-10, which were lonely times as a result of my parents divorce. When I turned 14, my sister Ivvy was born. I was able to help take care of her and together my stepmother and I were like her two parents. I was never even close to being at risk of getting pregnant, but taking care of a baby at that age struck me as 1) an effective form of birth control for teenage girls and 2) a small glimpse into parenthood and the blessings that come with it.
Back to last summer: we went to visit a family friend, who gave each of
the girls an identical doll. Both of them named their doll Molly.
"How's your Molly? My Molly is taking a nap," Chantale would say. "My
Molly and your Molly should eat eggs when they wake up," Ivvy would
say, in her thick
Greek accent. As I watched them play with their
Mollys, I suddenly felt a wave of relief and joy wash over me. They have what I wished for all those
years, and I felt comforted by this. One of them has also seen
a divorce, but she has an older sister who will
always support her, and a younger sister who will always look up to
her. It looks like I got what I wished for!
I have family visiting right now, and with ten people in the house, six of us within a very close age range, I'm thinking alot about the importance of humility, patience, detachment, service...not just as words but putting them into action from moment to moment - in this case with people I know better than my own siblings and who know me so well they can guess my next move. It's harder than I thought and I hope I don't end up learning nothing because of ego. I have never needed to reflect on my actions and level of sincerity so frequently before.
It's been fun having so many people I love and care deeply about around, and at the same time it's been hard to face my own imperfections. I am learning alot from these guys!
My dear cousin at Denny's, 3am
Barnes&Noble and Borders have begun carrying books published by the Baha'i Publishing Trust. I found a description of the book "Marriage Beyond Black and White" at the back of another book called "Advancement of Women", and I was interested because I've really been craving meaningful discourse on this topic. The book isn't really about marriage - the focus is on the experience of a whole family growing up in the midwest.
When I found this book, I realized that interracial families still aren't discussed in the media. As far as I can tell, it's still a pretty taboo subject. This book and a newspaper article that listed some statistics about interracial families in DC and the Twin Cities were about the only examples I can think of. There's alot of eagerness for dialogue about healing racism, inequality, etc. but I am excited to read more about the experiences of mixed kids growing up in this country. All of the awkward identity crises, the way this society places you into categories, forcing you to choose between black/white/hispanic/asian/arab, and where people land in adulthood with their racial identity - I want to know what other people's experiences have been like. I am looking forward to watching a change as these generations of multiracial children start to get old enough to talk about their experiences. Children in my sisters' generation (4yrs and 9yrs) are SO mixed, and I'm eager to find out how this will play out when they are adults.
Of course, I hesitate to put too much focus on race. I work at the Multicultural Center on campus, and I hear alot about how bad racism is and how we have to eradicate it, but the action is often missing. Or the action is there but without any reflection. My guess is that a balance between dialogue and action would be effective. Think about the effect of people visiting each other in their homes and connecting at a spiritual level rather than keeping the discourse intellectual.
