It’s strange to pass milestones more than once in pandemic, partly because I assumed that by the time [x] holiday rolled around again things would be back to normal.
I’m pleased to report that unlike last spring break when I tried to homeschool the kids, this week has been wonderful. Things aren’t back to normal yet, but Husband’s parents, now fully-vaccinated, are visiting from LA. Not seeing our families has been the hardest part of the pandemic for me, especially around holidays and breaks when their absence feels sharpest. This has been our longest gap without seeing our parents in 20+ years.
So it’s been a lovely week of hiking, good food and catching up. We’re still mainly living pandemic life (enjoying the outdoors and eating at home), but it’s felt so energizing and good to spend time together. There’s nothing better than spending time with people you love. It feels like something incredibly important taken away by the pandemic has been restored.
Photo by Sergey Shmidt on Unsplash
I’ve been reading more posts by Asian-Americans about their experiences with racism. I shouldn’t be surprised by how similar they are to my own, but I am — getting taunted on the playground, being told not to fight back, dealing with the perception that you’re a foreigner in a country you grew up in. It felt sad but validating to read so many versions of the same story over and over again.
It also made me think about how my parents, who are Chinese and immigrated to the US from Taiwan in their 20s, see themselves as very different from other types of “Asians” — Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, etc. — since they come from different countries and speak different languages. Yet here in the US we get lumped together in one racial category (as do Blacks, Whites…). First-generation children start to share more in common with others born in America that look like them. They are strangers to the countries their parents came from, united by a shared set of experiences and injustices large and small imposed by others who perceive them as the same.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
For April Fool’s Day, the kids declared “Prank Wars” on the parents. In the afternoon they started shouting for me and Husband to come upstairs because the toilet was smoking. They win!
I saw this prank on an FB Moms Group. Kids, are you in that group too?