Color Blind

The start of the school year means multiple emails and meetings with various folks involved in educating our kids. For Sky, who started seventh grade this year, the exchanges I've had with his teacher center around ways to lessen his anxiety related to assignments or unclear instructions. For Stow, my time has been spent working with his first-grade IEP team to incorporate new strategies related to recently diagnosed language delays. These are the kinds of interventions I expect to have to make as a special needs mom.

But, this past week, I found myself writing a whole different kind of email to Pink's school principal in response to an incident on the school bus.

Before she even made it into the door, she was telling me what happened. "A mean boy on the bus said Jay and I were boyfriend and girlfriend," she fumed.

I was half-listening in that way I do when I am trying to do too many things at once and said something to her about just focusing on her friendship with Jay and not worrying much about the negativity of others. Then she said something that made me stop what I was doing and ask her to repeat it because I was sure I'd misheard.

"He said, 'I'm going to put a Made in China sticker on you,' and then he pointed at me. And, he said he'd put a Made in Africa sticker on Jay. I tried to tell him he was wrong because I wasn't made in China; I was sort of made in Japan, but even that's wrong. He wouldn't listen to me, though! He told me I didn't know anything! He only believed it when Jay told him he was dumb for not knowing the difference between Japan and China."

What do you say to your child when a thousand thoughts rush through your head at once? I wasn't sure where to start, so I started with the perhaps dumbest question possible.

"Is Jay black?" I asked.

Pink looked at me funny and said in an exasperated tone,  "No, Mom. He's brown."

We talk more about skin color at our house than other people might because it's a question that comes up, usually in first grade or so, when the kids become aware that they don't quite look like their peers. The conversation usually starts with the same question: "Am I white?" and is usually followed by the equally vexing, "Then what color AM I?"

This is not a simple conversation to have. Kids are not "color blind" and we shouldn't strive to raise children who are. Non-white kids see and feel the ways in which they are different and experience that difference sometimes quite painfully. If we tell them to be blind to these differences, we erase their experiences. Instead, what I've tried to teach my kids is that the color of a person's skin doesn't tell us a thing about their character, their talents, their flaws, their pasts, or their futures, but it can tell us a lot about how they experience the world around them. When Tamir Rice was shot, Sky was about the same age as he was, and it hit me in ways I hadn't understood before that parenting a black son is different than parenting an Asian son, so Sky, Pink, and I have talked a lot about how to recognize overt and covert racism and how to stand up for their peers.

I struggled to explain to Pink why what the kid on the bus said was so wrong. Sure, both of us bristled at the complete lack of awareness that Japan and China are nowhere near the same country. And, sure I was incredibly annoyed to see that "mansplaining" happens even in fourth grade. But, mostly I wanted her to know that everything that happened in that interaction was wrong and was not her fault. Pink was silenced and Jay was provoked almost to the point violent resistance. And, this was done to them solely because they look different than all the white people around them.

Pink didn't want to spend much time talking about any of this. Once she'd told me what happened on the bus she was ready to move to other things. But, I wasn't. It's hard to know how often things like this happen to my kids. I'm sure it happens much more than they tell me. I imagine something like this is why Stow to tells me that he hates his Japanese face but loves his American body. Maybe it explains why he wishes he looked like the neighbor boys and had a daddy that looked like theirs. It's hard to parent against the effects of ingrained stereotypes and ways of thinking. And, it's hard to help educators and others who have never not benefited from their white privilege to understand that it exists.

At first, I wasn't going to follow up with Pink's principal. I figured there was little I could say that would push him to think beyond a single disciplinary action for the mean boy on the bus. But, then I saw how worried Pink was about school, so I asked her if she wanted me to follow up with him. She did, so I did. Here is what I wrote:

This evening Pink told me about an incident on the bus that I wanted to relay to you. Apparently, she is assigned to sit next to Jay on the bus as well as at school, so the two of them have become friends. Today on the bus, a peer named D started to tease them about liking each other. This kind of thing happens, so when Pink told me about it, I told her just to ignore it. Later, though, she told me that D also said, "I'm going to put a 'Made in China' sticker on you (pointing at Pink) and a 'Made in Africa' sticker on you (pointing at Jay)." Pink was most upset by the fact that D didn't know the difference between Japan and China and that he ignored her when she tried to tell him this.

As you know non-white students like Pink and Jay are few and far between in the R schools, and I think this incident highlights the need for education in diversity and the often subtle but strong impact that racism (or at least the notion that the white majority prevails) can have on the thinking of kids even as young as 9 and 10 years old. I understand that it is hard for students from a small town in the rural Midwest to understand that there is a great big and diverse world out beyond the boundaries of their town, their state, and their country, but it is important that we start working to help them grasp this reality--if not by ensuring that it's reflected in the population of children and teachers they encounter from day to day, then at least in purposeful education about this.

On her one of her papers today, I saw that Pink had written, "I hate school." When I asked her why, she struggled to explain, but I imagine the fear and discomfort she felt at being made fun of because of the physical features she was born with (and that are an important part of her identity) had a lot to do with the development of such a sentiment. Implicit bias in any form can be detrimental to the person who is subject to it, but this is even more true for children like Pink who are just now starting to figure out who they are and who they want to be.

I'm not sure what the answer is. I fear that disciplinary action directed at D will only lead to more trouble for Pink and her friend, but I wanted to make sure that you were aware of this incident in the hopes that we can work harder to prepare all students to be open-minded and accepting of difference.

********

Postscript:

The principal's response was entirely predictable. He assured me that he wanted all students to feel welcome and safe and that he did his best to make sure "situations like this stop completely." Then he met with all involved and meted out what he determined to be the appropriate punishment. I mean, I appreciate the effort, I really do. But, this is an issue that requires all of us to regularly interrogate the ways that we respond intentionally and unintentionally to people who aren't like us and to think about how we can best make sure our kids aren't inheriting biases we sometimes don't even realize we have. I can't imagine a lost recess or in-school suspension achieving that.

In Which I'm Being Completely Honest

Several years ago, Ren and I made the conscious decision to try to take the kids to Japan once every two or three years. Despite the expense (you could buy a pretty nice car for the price of round-trip tickets for a family of five) and the hassle of preparing everyone for the trip and closing up the house for a month, we have always believed that the benefits outweigh the costs.

I mean, how many kids get to leave their house in a village of 9000 people to stay in a 25th-floor apartment in one of the largest cities in the world?

Sunrise (from one window in our apartment)

And, post-sunset from another...

And, how many go from weekends biking lackadaisically around the neighborhood to exploring the pathways and tunnels (and fire jugglers and Pikachus) of Tokyo?

This is how we combat jetlag -- laps.

He wanted me to give it a try.

Pikachu, moments before being accosted by two Midwesterners.

Everything is an opportunity to take in entirely new and unfamiliar surroundings (whether in the city or the rural beach front or mountainside)....

Sunrise over the ocean

....and to practice Japanese, whether it's kids shows or Godzilla.

Singing and dancing with the TV.

Godzilla VS Mothra!!!!

Being in Japan is a chance to engage all of our senses in ways we can't normally do when home in the US. We're fortunate to be in a position where we can make this trip every few summers so our kids can begin to figure out their identities as Japanese-Americans, to continue to build the foundations of their understanding of written and spoken Japanese, and to create memories together that will hopefully stay with them for the rest of their lives. Traveling to Japan is fun, but much more importantly, it's key in helping our kids figure out who they are.

Riding the train.

And, until this last trip, I was completely convinced that it's the best way to help our kids stay connected, but then things went south. I mean, there was a lot that was really great about our visit to Japan. But there was one thing that was really, really bad. Stow regressed.

In fact, both times we've taken Stow to Japan, he has regressed. The first time, he was 3, and he basically hit and bit me the entire time we were in Japan. He didn't do it before we left the States, and once we returned, he stopped doing it again. It was horrible even though now he doesn't seem to remember Japan as being a negative experience for him.

This is a picture he drew nearly TWO years after the trip to Japan.

Having Stow go from being fairly complacent and totally non-aggressive to biting, hitting, and running was unnerving. Suddenly we felt like we were looking at a young Sky all over again. But, then we came home, and it was better, so we figured it was just an anxiety response to all the new things he experienced his first time in Japan.

Stow's older now, and he claims to love going to Japan, so I figured he'd be fine this time. Just to be safe, though, in the weeks leading up to our trip this summer, we worked at length with our OT and behavioral therapists to create social stories and to put together a bag of fidgets to help Stow with the trip.

Our preparations didn't work. Stow slipped into his alternate state as soon as we got on the plane and demonstrated aggressive behaviors and a high tendency to wander throughout our trip. It was just like last time, only this time, the behaviors didn't stop once we got home. In fact, we are still working very hard to undo whatever it is that was "done" while we were in Japan. It's hard. It's frustrating, but most of all, it's incredibly heartbreaking to see Stow struggle like this despite all of his hard work.

We still don't know what triggered the regressions in Stow. Was it the sensory overload from being in a country where just about everything is different than what he's used to? Was it the food that wasn't always as GFCF as we would have liked? Was it the stress of trying to relate to his peers without being able to speak Japanese well? Was he bullied at preschool by kids who saw his giant size and inability to speak an invitation to be aggressive? Did the long airplane ride mess up the pressure in his ears? Were the transitions just too much for him? Maybe it's all these things. Maybe it's none of them. I guess the only thing that really matters is that Stow doesn't know why he's doing what he's doing, and his behavior is negatively impacting the quality of life for all of us.

I think this has to be the hardest part about parenting non-neurotypical kids. Sometimes everyone can be working as hard as they can and doing all that they can, and the interventions just don't work. Sometimes whatever is going on is an impossible puzzle, and all you can do is keep at it until you figure it out. We are back in our routine now, back on our diet, and back at our therapies, and we are even trying a couple of new things to see if they help Stow settle back into his old ways.

Other than that, we are waiting and praying and hoping we can help him work through this. (While trying really hard not to panic). It will be okay. It won't be easy, but somehow we will figure it out. We have to.

The Things I Learned and Re-learned While Traveling Internatinoally with Three Small Children

1. When booking a Japanese hotel room online, avoid places that claim to be only for foreigners or at least ask them to send the dimensions of the room you book. Otherwise, you end up with a "triple" room that looks like this:

Three year-old included for scale.

For the record, I cried when I saw this room, but not before Sky had a massive meltdown over its minuscule size. In case you're wondering, the meltdown occurred in the hallway because although he could look inside and see how small the room was, it took time for all of us to squeeze in with our luggage.

2. It really is possible to get three children and a stroller, four rolling suitcases, four backpacks, and a man with a cane on or off the train during the 30 to 60 seconds the doors are open, but it may require yelling.

3. When traveling through Japan during rainy season, you will get rained on, the children will splash you with puddles, and their umbrellas will turn into makeshift water funnels, dropping streams of water into your shoes.

To make yourself feel better, you should have your children re-enact scenes from movies they like.

4. There can never be too many convenience stores.

5. GFCF is not as easy as it should be but also not as hard as you might think. On the one hand, this:

See all the yellow arrows? They are pointing to the clearly-marked list of allergens found in each of the dishes. Most restaurants have this helpful information, so that's good, right? Well, kind of. You see, even though many restaurants are savvy enough to make sure customers know what's in the food, this doesn't actually mean they offer alternative options. I mean, I'm glad to know all of the things my kids can't eat. I just wish there was something they COULD eat. And, if you've spent any time in Japan, you know that asking them to simply remove an ingredient to make it allergy friendly doesn't always work. McDonalds absolutely would not take the buns off the hamburgers I ordered which meant that the kids whined and cried about not being able to eat them. Telling people the kids were allergic sometimes made things worse as there is clearly a protocol in place for making sure that moms of kids with allergies take full responsibility for possible cross contamination. On one flight, I had to tell multiple flight attendants that I understood that my choice to have my kids eat the food was solely my responsibility.

6. You can never have too many KitKats.

Image from: www.mylostintranslation.com

7. I'll never stop missing Japanese-style customer service.

Each time we flew on All Nippon Airways, they gave each kid a toy. They also brought around warm wet towels for wiping our hands, plenty of extra wet wipes for eating with children, and hot soup broth as one of our drink options. Gas station attendants came out to greet us and make sure we knew how to pump our own gas. Hotel and restaurant staff walked us to the door and bowed us away. When Stow hit his head, not only did the concierge bring him ice, but she also checked on his well being the following day and every day after that until we checked out of the hotel. Every purchase was carefully wrapped, and wrapped again and bagged, and at one point, when I told the person at the register I was in a hurry, she called two people to help and still apologized for taking too long to wrap. I could go on, but you get the point.

8. It's still nearly impossible to go to a hot spring bath with a preschooler.

9. You can never get enough bad English. This sign took me awhile to figure out:

I had to read the Japanese to understand they meant no beer or wine and not necessarily no illegally produced, low-quality spirits. I assumed, since it was the Hyatt in the heart of Tokyo, that they probably didn't have a significant backwoods moonshiner problem, but then again, you can never be too sure about these things.

10. If you carry your things through US customs in a cardboard box, you will be searched, even if the thing in the box is a heated toilet seat in its original packaging.

This was not the first time we've been stopped for carrying a box of stuff (link). It was, however, the first time a customs agent laughed so hard at me that he waved us through while clutching the stitch in his side.

In Which We Go To A Funeral and Learn About Life

Unbelievably, tomorrow is our 28th and last day in Japan. For the most part, all has gone as expected. The kids have been insane approximately 80% of the time due to diet and schedule inconsistencies and the general unpredictability of life on the road. Ten different cities, eight different hotel rooms, and at least six different bullet trains in the course of a month is hard for anyone, much less for our kids who react strongly to change. Despite my success in getting my work done, I have to admit that more than once I found myself thinking I'd made a huge mistake spending thousands of dollars to drag my loud and cantankerous brood all over Japan.

But, then a week ago Monday, we got news that convinced me we were all right where we needed to be. That morning, on his way to work, less than 100 feet from his front door, Ren's younger (and only) brother was killed instantly when a distracted driver swerved onto the sidewalk and crushed him against the wall of his building. It was his birthday. He was wearing new shoes and pants. The massage chair he'd selected as a birthday present was due to arrive that afternoon.

The number of things that had to go wrong in order for Ren's brother to die blow my mind. That we happened to be in Japan as a family for the first time in five years and that we were also already headed toward where his family lives when we got the news astonishes me even more. Ren and his brother weren't especially close in recent years as their lives had taken very different directions. If we'd been in the States, I doubt Ren could have gone to the funeral (last-minute flights to Japan can be hard to come by and astronomically expensive), and missing his brother's funeral would have led to the kind of regret that changes a life forever.

Things being what they were, though, the whole family ended up attending the funeral. We made the trip from Kyoto to Tokyo on an early morning bullet train and got to the funeral just as they were preparing to send Uncle to the crematorium. The kids helped as we covered Uncle's body with flowers while a Buddhist monk recited a particularly mournful chant. Sky wondered aloud if the somber chanting of the monks was intended to make people cry because suddenly he couldn't find a happy thought. Stow wanted to know if Uncle was sleeping and why he was so cold. Pink hated that he looked a little too much like Ren. Watching my three usually boisterous kids take in the scene before them, I was amazed at how much they suddenly seemed to understand. But, as I saw Ren gently pat his brother's head, memories of the past and thoughts of a lost future reflected in his tear-filled eyes, my heart broke all over again. Ren's brother would never meet his youngest nephew, never get to know his sweet niece or discuss trains with his curious nephew. He would never sit in his massage chair or see his younger daughter marry. He would never meet his grandchildren.

It was a long, hard day.

After seeing Uncle to the cremation chamber, we sat down for lunch. What does a person talk about over a fancy boxed lunch while a loved one is being turned from flesh to ashes downstairs? Suddenly, I was relieved to have the chance to ride up and down the escalator with Stow. Keeping him entertained was much easier than the awkward conversations we left behind. Two hours later, our lunches barely touched, we returned to the chamber to welcome Uncle's ashes out of the fire, and together, chopstick to chopstick, we placed his ashes and bones into the urn. After final prayers, Uncle's remains were prepared to go home for the 49 days of mourning. From the end of lunch until the end of prayers, no one spoke, and aside from the constant chanting of the monk and the occasional clicking of prayer beads, there was no sound at all.

Watching these Japanese relatives, some close, some distant, somberly carry out the task of ushering their loved one out of this world and into the next, I was struck by the sheer determination with which they faced this grim and heartbreaking task. Buddhists talk about the suffering that comes from not realizing the impermanence of all things and from being too attached to that which is, by nature, passing. I can't imagine a more searing lesson in this than watching a man go from human form to dust over the course of an afternoon.

If you read this blog regularly, you know I spend a lot of time thinking about how to help my ASD kid make sense of this crazy world and meet the unexpected with flexibility and determination. Burying a brother who was so full of life one day and so completely gone the next, I realized that I've been going about this all wrong. My real task isn't to help make life easier for my children; it's to help them understand that sometimes life isn't fair. And, it certainly isn't predictable. But there is a distinct beauty to be found in the chaos and the suffering and, most of all, in the dogged perseverance some days require.

I wrote about this again HERE.

Let's Take This Show on the Road

Last week, I bought five tickets to take the Moe family to Japan this summer. I'm going for work, and I really want them to tag along. Stow has never been, Pink P doesn't really remember it, and Sky needs to brush up on his elementary-school boy Japanese. Plus, Ren's mom isn't getting any younger, and the kids hardly remember their cousins.

The last time we were there, Sky was five, Pink P was two, and there was this moment when I was weaving my way through Ikebukuro Station (the second busiest train station in the world with nearly 3 million visitors every single day) with Sky tripping along behind me and Pink sitting in her stroller singing some silly song at the top of her lungs, and I thought, "Next year they'll be 6 and 3, and this will be a lot easier."

Ha!

Hahahahahahahahahaha ha ha ha!

Sometimes I crack. my. self. UP!

I mean, we all know how things turned out. A few months after that trip, we learned we were expecting Stow, Sky got diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and Pink developed serious asthma. A couple of months after that, Ren's back went south for good. Then I defended my dissertation and we moved again. In other words, the next year was definitely NOT easier. In fact, it was much, much harder.

Before the extra kid and the various diagnoses and the bad back, we were on the move a lot. Sky and Pink logged thousands of airline miles, visited all sorts of places, and lived in one of the biggest cities on earth. We spent a year in a 150 sq. ft. apartment commuting to preschool on bike and spending our weekends wandering all over the back alleys and side streets of Tokyo in search of the new, the exciting, and the bound-to-keep-the-kids-entertained-ing. But the year between our last family trip to Japan and my dissertation defense was the hardest year of our lives. It stopped us in our tracks and forced us to rethink everything we thought we knew. All of it.

It has taken us awhile to figure out how to move on from there. We've had a lot of fits and starts (you know, like the three back surgeries and all the weird stuff with Stow's health; not to mention the trip to Mayo to see if maybe Ren had some kind of rare nerve disease--he doesn't), but after learning that Ren is just going to have to live with the bad back, we decided it's time to get going again. Smaller this time.

Step one: An overnight trip to Chicago during spring break.

I'll be honest. I didn't want to go. I wasn't sure Ren would be able to get around. I didn't know how we would handle all the food restrictions and allergies. I was sure the boys would be overstimulated by all the sensory input and spin away in a thousand different directions. I could imagine a million different ways things could go wrong. Plus, I desperately needed to make up for lost sleep and lost grading/class prepping time after a stressful week at Mayo. But I'd promised the kids we'd take them to a hotel with a pool during their spring break, and since I hadn't kept that promise during the summer (because we moved) or around the time of their birthdays (back surgery #3), I didn't have the heart to cancel on them again.

By the time we were all in the car and on our way to the city, it was already clear we had to simplify our schedule. So, instead of trying to go to Legoland and swim in the hotel pool, we went straight to the pool with a promise to visit the Lego store the next day when we went to American Girl Place (a stop I'd promised for Pink). And instead of trying to make it through dinner at our favorite restaurant, we opted to stock up on bentos from Mitsuwa and eat as many meals away from crowds as possible. The following day, instead of trying to see every exhibit in the museum, we limited our visit to three hours and got the kids out before they were too hungry or too tired to behave like human beings. By slowing down and focusing our efforts on just a few stops, we managed to have fun and avoid several (though not all) meltdowns.

At the end of our 32 hours in the city, Sky summed up the best and worst of our trip:

The Good

Rainforest Cafe with new friends
Seeing tall buildings
Lego store
Staying in a hotel
The hotel pool
Watching TV in a hotel
The museum

The Bad

Lots of noise
Expensive parking (he may have heard me complain a couple of times)
Losing Daddy

The positive certainly outweighed the negative, despite the unfortunate incident where we waited for 40 minutes in 34 degree temperature because Daddy didn't pick us up at the pre-arranged meeting spot and instead waited for us a just around the busy corner where we didn't think to look (which is somehow a metaphor for our marriage, though I'm not sure how exactly).

Are we ready for Japan this summer? I have no idea. But I'm pretty sure we can't just sit at home and worry about how things will go.

Adventures in Bilingual Parenting

When we moved to Japan when Sky was three, he called me "Mommy." By his second week of preschool, he was calling me "Mama." Soon enough, I became "Okaasan." Because we'd always spoken Japanese to him, we assumed he understood it and could speak it. We may have been wrong about that.

His first week at Japanese preschool, when he still called me "Mommy," Sky managed to lock everyone out of  his school. It's still not entirely clear to me how he did that, but at just three years old, he was stealth enough to sneak back into the school building, close the sliding door, and apply the lock while everyone else (including all of the teachers and the head nun) was outside enjoying recess. It must have been interesting for a sensory-motivated kid to see so many animated faces mouthing Japanese words to him through the window. Fortunately, he unlocked the door before they had to break the glass.

That's when we realized he might not understand as much Japanese as we thought. During summer break of that year, we spent a lot of time practicing simple greetings: ohayoo gozaimasu, konnichiwa, arigatoo gozaimasu. His teacher thought this was the key to his becoming conversant in Japanese. I'm not sure it was, but Sky did become much more fluent with his friends at school, and soon enough, he was calling me Okaasan.

Gratuitous "awwww" shot of Sky using his Japanese to woo his preschool "girlfriend."

I've never felt like an Okaasan. When Big Sissy was still in junior high, before we all moved to America the first time, Ren would refer to me as Okaasan, but Big Sissy didn't call me anything. Somehow that word didn't work for her foreign stepmom, at least not then. Once we moved to the US, she slipped comfortably into calling me Mom. Okaasan has always seemed unnatural to me.

On this grey, snowy morning in the Midwestern United States, as we all sit by the fire to warm ourselves in this bitter cold, I listen to Ren building train tracks with the kids, speaking to them patiently in a Japanese that seems foreign to them. And I am reminded of these moments past when I was Okaasan and not Mom. I think of the year or so we lived in Japan and how strange it felt to have my own son speak so fluently in a tongue that wasn't my own. And I am thankful for Ren's persistence as the kids vacillate between resistance and acceptance, incompetence and fluency. Most of all, I'm grateful for his patience as they slowly but gradually figure out how to go from calling him Dad to Otoosan.

Things My Kids Eat That Yours Probably Don't

One of the benefits of being a bicultural family is that Sky, Pink, and Stow have been exposed to a wide, some might even say extreme, variety of food. Since Ren is a better cook than I am, and since I basically learned to cook in Japan anyway, nearly all of our dinners and about half of our lunches are Japanese.

I realize may be going out on a limb here, but I am guessing that your kids don't eat some of these Moe Family favorites:

SEAWEED AND SEA KELP 

Once we start to introduce table foods, the first favorite foods for all of them was wakame (sea kelp). Ren is convinced it's the perfect food for a growing baby. He may be right. Wakame is  low in calories or fat and high in things like calcium, iron, iodine, magnesium, and folate, not to mention several different vitamins. The most common usage of wakame for us is in miso soup.

Dried wakame (before it's reconstituted)

The kids also like good ol' seaweed. It comes in individual packages so they can take it in their lunch and wrap it around their rice balls.

Yummmmmm.

While all of our kids love wakame and seaweed, only Pink P is a "dai-fan" (super fan) of arame. She would eat it every meal if we let her. Between the arame addiction and the princess fetish, I sometimes wonder if she's my kid. But then she stomps her foot and digs her heels in to fight a completely pointless battle about something that's only significant to her, and I realize she's just like me.

Arame--Pink P's Obsession (photo credit: veggieatlas.com)

TOFU

The kids also all totally dig tofu, which is awesome because then we could avoid that whole pureed meat phase when they started eating solids and needed the protein. Meat should never, ever come in a jar. I don't care what anyone tells you. Tofu is high in protein and low in saturated fat. It has been shown to lower cholesterol. Fortunately, no one has turned up allergic to soy yet, though it may just be a matter of time. Oh, and when you buy tofu, organic is best, but if not organic, at least make sure it's non-GMO certified.

Miso soup with tofu and wakame.

ALL KINDS OF FISH EVEN THESE LITTLE BABY ONES

When I first started getting interested in Japan, my mom joked that it'd never last since I absolutely hated fish. Since the Japanese diet is very much fish based, she figured I'd either starve or find another way to spend my time. I hated fish so much, I couldn't even be in the house when it was being cooked.

Fortunately, things have changed. We now eat fish regularly (sorry, Mom!), but not too often (and not when pregnant), just to be on the safe side.  Like tofu, you should be aware of where the fish came from before you eat it.

The kids love salmon, but they also seem to indiscriminately love of all things fishy, including this:

Shirasu -- baby sardines (not one of my faves, not by a long shot)

And most of this:

Though no one, I repeat no one, can convince them to eat mushrooms.

NATTO

Two out of three of my kids also love natto, which according to my informal research, is statistically impossible. Families are usually evenly divided over the natto question. Every seventh-grade class I taught during my time in Japan was evenly divided as well. I know this because one of the first grammar points I taught each year was "I like ~~." ("Do you like natto?" "Yes, I do." "No, I don't.") Given the number of times I asked or was asked this question, it's obviously a contentious debate. And yet, and yet, in my family 3 (and possibly 4) out of 5 of us, love natto. I am firmly in the "no" camp, and Stow is still too young to vote--mostly because it's hard to find so we haven't had any in the house since he started eating table food.

Photo credit: seriouseats.com

What is natto, you ask? It's a sticky mess of fermented soy beans that folks usually eat with breakfast, though goodness knows Ren would eat it three meals a day if he could. Fermented = stinky. But actually, it's not the smell that I don't like. It's not even the sticky. It's the fact that when you chew it up, it expands in your mouth. My like/dislike guidelines for food are pretty simple: First, the food must be dead and no longer moving. Second, it shouldn't be chewy (unless it's candy such as licorice, taffy, or chewing gum). Third, if it is a meat, it should not too closely resemble its living form (so no heads or eyeballs, please), and fourth, it should never, ever multiply or expand once I put it in my mouth.

You'd be surprised the number of times one or more of these guidelines has been tested. There was the time the squid tentacle flopped over the edge of the plate and started moving up and down as it made a last-ditch effort to escape. There was the time a guy plucked out the fish's eye and popped it into his mouth just before I could get to it (darn!--and by "darn" I mean "OMG! Did he really just do that?!!?!!!!"). There was the time my mollusk tried to crawl off the teppan** when it started heating up. There was the raw chicken. And, there was the broth full of tiny swimming fish that was harder to eat than it looked.

SUSHI

And, of course, my kids like sushi. The stuff pictured below is one of Ren's creation. If they had their way, Sky would eat kappa maki (cucumber rolls) every day and Pink P, sweet potato rolls. But if you twist their arms, they will eat some of this stuff, too. Stow? Well, Stow eats just about anything.

In the end, it turns out we're lucky that the kids are adventurous eaters. It lets me pack lunches like this:

And it also makes it a tad bit easier to deal with our newly embraced gluten-free, casein-free diet. Not sure what I would have done if they only liked chicken nuggets, pizza, and mac-n-cheese!



**Teppan -- metal griddle used for cooking

I Should Have Been Taking Pictures All Along

Some people dress their kids to impress, buying expensive name-brand clothes that they quickly outgrow. I tried this with Sky for about six months, and then I realized that my fashion commitments lie elsewhere. Why dress your kid well, when you can dress him ironically? 

This will always and forever be my favorite. 

Multiple trips to Japan have given me ample opportunity to buy some awesome clothes for the kids.  Of course, as soon as I decided to write this post, I realized I can't find half of their cool t-shirts. I'll be switching out the winter and summer clothes soon and promise I'll take more pictures. For now, here's what I've got! (Oh, and apologies in advance for the poor photography skills--my targets are almost always moving...)

Might Soy Los Angeles (Look! A soy bean super hero!!)

Little Pigs BBQ -- This one could be for real, but the question is: Why?

Random Keith Haring art.

An almost-but-not-quite grammatically correct advertising for MIKEPOPCORN.

Sometimes the misplacement of a tiny particle makes all the difference.

Saftey Drive 60 Enjoy Holiday

I Like Banana No. 1. Big Banana was Found. (This shirt is awesome because it's super awkward but also very true. There's nothing Stow loves like a big banana.)

Of course, it's not all about making a statement. Over the years, I've also realized that Japanese clothes wash a heck of a lot better than other stuff. They dry quickly.  They are lighter weight, pack better, and hold up better from kid to kid. Who knew there'd be a bright side to the Japanese habit of hanging clothes on the line to dry?

Now that my kids are older, they don't always appreciate dressing ironically. Fortunately, they've inherited my off-beat sense of humor, so if I explain what's funny about the shirts, they usually still want to wear them. Unfortunately, some of their classmates like to make fun of things that are different. From seaweed to funny pictures on shirts, some kids just aren't cool about it. Pink refused to take onigiri (rice balls) for awhile because one of the boys said to another, "Ooo, look! There's fish poop on that." Telling them to ignore ignorance doesn't always work, so lately I've been teaching my kids a new response that gets more to the point:

"That's rude. You don't know what you're talking about, so you should stop talking now."

I'll let you know how it goes...

Maybe This Wasn't Such a Good Idea After All

My kids go to a Catholic school. We are not Catholic. I am protestant, and Ren is agnostic or possibly even atheist. So we have some fairly interesting conversations about who believes what. My extremely protestant father nearly fainted the first time he saw his grandchildren doing the sign of the cross for dinner blessing. (That alone made our choice to send the kids to Catholic school worthwhile.) We chose their current school because it's small and offers a predictable structure with superior academics. In other words, it's a perfect fit for Sky. The religious eclecticism that's become part of our life as a result is just an added bonus.

Sky already had a year of Catholic preschool under his belt when we left Tokyo and moved to our small Midwestern town, so I didn't expect there to be too many differences in terms of the religious influence of his education. It turns out I was wrong. See, where Catholic school in Japan just looks like Protestant school with a tad more emphasis on Mary (a.k.a. Maria-sama), in the U.S., there's a greater focus on teaching kids what it means to be Catholic and not just what it means to be Christian. When Sky came home from his first day at his current school a few years ago, he was captivated by the fact that he had seen real life bits of Jesus and his blood. Sensing the emergence of a new, most likely inappropriate obsession, I explained that these things symbolized Jesus and weren't actually Jesus. Then, not knowing whether my comments were in line with what he learned at school, I added, somewhat furtively, "But maybe you shouldn't tell your teacher about this." It turns out it's hard to walk the line between helping him learn the religious lessons that are part of his school life and helping him make sense of the discrepancies he encounters between school during the week and church on Sunday.

Lent is a big deal for kids at Catholic school. The last two years, Sky and I decided that he would prepare for the coming of Easter by helping others and saying additional prayers at night. My protestant family never gave up anything for Lent, so my experience with this is thin. I had a friend in high school who gave up stopping at stop signs once and another who gave up doing homework.  What I learned from observing them is that I didn't want to ride in a car with the first, and I didn't want to sit next to the second in biology class. In other words, I gained no practical knowledge about the practice of going without.

To help Sky learn about the idea of self-sacrifice and preparation behind Lent, and to help him be a little more like his classmates, we decided Sky would give up something this year. Many of his classmates gave up candy and soda. Sky thought that was an awesome idea, particularly since he never eats candy or drinks soda. Then he suggested he give up doing homework, practicing piano, or sitting on the floor heater to keep warm. "That last one would be a real sacrifice, Mom," he said. Somehow, though, none of these things seemed quite in the spirit of Lent.

I needed to help him grasp the meaning behind the practice, but how? Then it hit me. He needed to give up his Kindle, and the only way he'd grasp the gravity of his sacrifice is if I modeled good Lenten practice for him by sacrificing something, too.  And that's how, on the fifth day of Lent, a few days late, but with plenty of time left until Easter, I find myself sitting in my office exhausted from a busy weekend, with piles of work in front of me, and absolutely no Diet Coke in sight. Curse you, Catholic school, curse you!***

A break from Diet Coke might not be all bad...

***Now you know I'd never really curse an entire religious tradition. That'd be bad on a lot of different levels. Besides, if this all works as planned, I have thirty plus days to enjoy not bring awakened by Sky at 5:30 each morning with, "Can I play my Kindle?" And I might also be able to kick my Diet Coke habit. It's too early to tell, but I'm thinking this could be a win-win for me!

A Valentine's Vignette

Yesterday, I wrote the obligatory Valentine's Day post (link). Truth told, I've never been a fan of Valentine's Day. That, coupled with the fact that the way it's celebrated in Japan is much different than in the US, makes it one of the "take it or leave it" holidays for us (link and link). This year, we decided to "take it." Here's what happened.

A Series of Shots

Shot 1

Establishing shot. White-tiled table covered with red envelopes, stuffed animals, and a bag of dark chocolate.

Shot 2

Five year-old walks into kitchen, sees pink unicorn and her face immediately lights up, "A pink pony! My favorite!!!" Next she opens the card and finds a small princess bracelet that she immediately places on her arm. As she turns, she glimpses a gray hippo in her peripheral vision, "Hey, I wanted a 'Stuffie,' too!" and her laughter dissolves into tears.

Shot 3

Eight year-old enters next, stage right. Eyes two lonely envelopes and asks, "I just got envelopes?" "Look inside," comes the reply. He does and finds a $10 gift card. For a moment, he is distracted by the Perry the Platypus cardboard figure inside the card, but then he looks around. "Hey! She got two things and I only got one!" He, too, starts to cry.

Shot 4

Mom exits stage right. Camera follows as she climbs the stairs and crawls back into bed.

Shot 5

Cut to living room. Eight year-old struggles to deal with the injustices of the world. Like many other obsessions in his life, he is unable to let this one go.  He weeps. He screams. He thrashes about. He knocks over toys. Eventually, he is subdued by his father, an older gentleman with a bad back, a soft voice, and stories of dinosaur extinction. Off-screen, Mom makes bentos and feeds the baby.

Shot 6

Eight year-old returns to kitchen. Sees Mom and immediately loses it again. Yells about the unfairness of receiving only one gift instead of two. Mom walks into pantry and comes out with year-old leftovers from birthday piñata -- cheap plastic whistle, yo-yo with no string, glasses and moustache--emphatically places them on the table and says, "There, now you have four."

Shot 7

Everyone at kitchen table, eating cereal in sullen silence. Except the baby who giggles with uncontrollable joy over his new Stuffie.

FADE OUT


ROLL CREDITS

The Agitants (in order of appearance)

The Unsuspecting Unicorn

The Culprit (don't let those droopy eyes fool you)

The Single Card (oh, the horror)

The Payoff

Well, at Least They Probably Won't Become Extinct

Over the years, I've traveled a lot--I visited 45 states and 15 different countries in my 20s and 30s. But recently, I've been feeling unnaturally grounded, as if no matter how hard I try, I can never really get anywhere. I suppose part of the reason for this is because I really never can get anywhere. Summer family vacation? Thwarted by Ren's back surgery. Business trip to Singapore? Cancelled due to illness. Christmas vacation road trip? Blizzard of 2012 (granted, this last one may have been ill-conceived from the start, but still).

And sometimes we can't even get beyond our own block. 

Saturday, we planned a little road trip to IKEA and the international grocery store (in desperate need of tofu and seaweed). The cold weather makes things infinitely worse for Ren's back, so the only way a road trip was going to work was if we had full cooperation from the kids. To that end, all Sky and Pink P had to do was refrain from fighting, crying, or excessive complaining. You'd be amazed by how hard this is for them, particularly lately.  

Before we even pulled out of the garage, Sky had a good cry.  Since he was crying about a book that fell on his foot when I tried to hand it to him, we decided it didn't count for the no fighting/no crying/no complaining rule. Still, it was an inauspicious beginning, and I knew we were doomed by the time we got to the end of our very short driveway. That's when Sky lamented, "Oh man, the battery's dead, now I don't have anything to do." To try to distract him from repeating this complaint (over and over and over), I said in a cheerful, if not slightly loud, voice, "That's okay, we can listen to your music." Then I turned on the CD player, an act which immediately prompted Pink P to chime in from the back, "It's too loud!" And when I turned it down? "Now it's too soft!"

By this time, we'd made it around the block and back to the end of our driveway, and I found myself seriously questioning why my children couldn't figure out when to keep their mouths shut. All they had to do was appear to be cooperative. 

Once we were back around to our driveway, Ren faltered. It's not easy getting everything together and putting everyone in the car. Plus, we really wanted to get out of town for awhile. Midwestern winters are long and tedious, and we needed a change. But they had just managed to squeeze in one cry and several complaints into the space of 2 minutes. It was a tough call. Just as Ren made his decision and started to inch past the driveway and down the block, just as the possibility of going still existed, just when they could have helped their cause tremendously by simply keeping their mouths shut, just at that moment, Pink P said, "It's all Sky's fault, I didn't do anything." And then she broke into a high pitched cry. Not to be outdone, Sky jumped in to defend himself vigorously.

At this point, I tried to intervene with, "Stop talking. Now!" I'd like to say I said this calmly and coolly, but my voice was loud enough to rise above the din of their whines. After the briefest of pauses, Sky started repeating, "I just have one thing to say. I just have one thing to say. I just have one thing to say..." When I tried to get him to stop, he just got louder. By this point, it was abundantly clear we weren't going to make it to IKEA. So, after our second trip around the block, we pulled back into the garage. I wish I could tell you that we all calmly returned to the house and took a moment to ponder reflectively on what had happened. We didn't--at least not right away.

*****

Sometimes I am absolutely amazed by how thoroughly our children ignore us. When they are together, it can be as if Ren and I don't even exist, and no level of bribery is enticing enough to get them to do what we ask. Because, when they are together,  they are 100% intent on doing whatever the other is doing. When they are alone, they are pleasant, helpful, and respectful, but when they are together? Not so much. 

My friend, the geologist, tells me that this behavior makes complete sense. "They know they are competing for limited resources. They have to keep their eyes on each other in order to survive. It's totally evolutionarily sound behavior." It doesn't help anything to know my kids' rude behavior is part of their natural instinct to continue their line, but somehow the explanations of my geologist friend always make me feel better.

So, this weekend was a bust, but there's always next week. Maybe by then my kids will have evolved a tad further. If not, look at the bright side: we save a lot of time and money by never going anywhere.

What CHiPs Taught Me about International Marriage

Twelve years into our marriage and fifteen years after our first date, Ren and I discovered our first and only shared cultural touchstone: CHiPs. Somehow, though I don't quite understand how, we both "grew up" watching Poncho and Jon save the day. The discovery that we shared this one thing from our youth made us giddy, if not perplexed. After all we not only grew up in two different countries but also in two different generations.

It can be strange not to share any experiences from your youth with your spouse. In our case, the lack of overlap carries on in our adulthoods. Ren likes Japanese historical dramas on TV, sci-fi and special effects in his movies, maudlin Japanese folk songs in his music, and his reading on the computer. Plus, he has nothing to do with any kind of social media. I like independent films and alternative music. I read books constantly. And I blog.

Don't get me wrong, we agree on some really important things: what we want for our kids, how we will use our money, the importance of hard work and shared responsibility. It's just that our interests and opinions diverge on most other things. And sometimes that can be difficult, especially when life keeps introducing new changes and challenges.

When you marry someone who is from a different country and who speaks a different language, you can't presume to know where he or she is coming from. From your very first date, you understand that you will have to work a little harder to make things work. You will have to figure out how to communicate effectively. You will have to carry out some top-level negotiations (not to mention savvy money-managing techniques) as you decide which country to call home and how and when you will visit the other country. Once you have kids, you have to decide what language to speak at home, what holidays to celebrate and how to celebrate them. Even little the things like whether your kids will use chopsticks or forks (or both) are up for debate. In other words, nothing is a given. Everything must be discussed and negotiated. Sometimes you won't be able to agree because you will be coming from very different places. And you have to be okay with that, too.

Having an international marriage is hard. There are a lot of sacrifices involved, and someone is usually giving up something. But here's the thing: isn't that true of all marriages?

In our case, we were just lucky to figure it out at the beginning instead of at the end.





Image from http://collider.com/dvd/article.asp/aid/8277/cid/3/tcid/3

Why I Should Probably Never Become a Cultural Ambassador or a Parenting Advice Guru

It's January, normally the bleak midwinter for this part of the country, and therefore a perfect time to talk about...pumpkins.

"Pumpkins?" you ask. "MOE, don't you know that the season for pumpkins is long past?"

Why, yes. Yes, I do.


But, then there's this:

And this:

We bought these pumpkins two weeks before Halloween. That's right. We've had them for nearly three months now. They not only survived Halloween, but they also survived Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. They even survived the great blizzard of 2012.

And I suppose this is exactly what I deserve for trying to avoid carving them. As you know from my post from way back when about dyeing Easter eggs (link), I'm not the best cultural attaché when it comes to the messy traditions.

In fact, in the nearly 13 years Ren and I have been married, we've only carved pumpkins three times. Once because it was Ren and Big Sissy's first Halloween in the US, once because we were at a party and everyone else was doing it, and once three years ago, our first year living back in the States when Sky and Pink P were old enough to appreciate it.

The last pumpkin carving produced this:

Impressive for a guy who'd only carved two other pumpkins in his life.

Our friendly pumpkin lasted less than 24 hours before someone smashed it in the road in front of our house. Sky took it so well (link) I hesitated to repeat the crushing pumpkin crushing two years in a row. Then we had another kid and Ren's back went south, and somehow no one mentioned carving a pumpkin.

That is until this last Halloween. This time Sky and Pink wanted pumpkins and they wanted to carve them.

"Shouldn't we draw faces on them instead?" I offered, lamely, hoping they would choose the easier way out.

"Nah, if we do that, they'll look terrible," Sky reasoned.

"I want to cut out faces and put a candle in them!" Pink P chimed in.

"But if we carve them. They'll rot quicker," I explained, reminding them of the moldy pumpkins we'd seen at a friend's house. A dirty trick, I know. I mean, who likes moldy pumpkins?

No one, that's who.

For days, the conversation was at an impasse. Then we got busy and went trick-or-treating, celebrated birthdays, had a skating party, wrote letters to Santa, and generally forgot about the pumpkins.

And, now, three months later, there they sit on the back porch. As permanent reminders of my bad parenting. Of my failure to embrace the hokey, messy traditions that should be a part of every kid's childhood.

And, as logistical challenges. After all, I promised the kids the pumpkins would last longer if we didn't carve them, so now I can't even throw them out. And it's way too late in the season to sit them on the front porch and hope someone will smash them. At this rate, these darn pumpkins may well become family.

Anyone know how long it takes a pumpkin to decompose naturally?

On Amusement Parks and Dead Tadpoles

One of our tadpole friends died yesterday, just short of seven weeks after coming to live with us. All things considered, he lasted longer than I expected. He might have been doomed from the start, with his abnormally large head and lethargic way. Things started to really go south about ten days ago. When we went to change the water, Sky exclaimed: "Look, Mom! One of them is doing stunts. He can even swim upside down." It took me a minute to realize that an upside down tadpole is usually a dead tadpole. Turns out we were both right. The tadpole was swimming upside down, but he was also slowly dying. We did everything we could, but in the end, the day after another water change, our tadpole went belly up for good.

Sky handled it pretty well actually. That is, until I asked Ren to help put the tadpole to rest. His solution: throw the dead tadpole into the brush. Note to self: the next time I give Ren the important task of helping one of our children process the death of a beloved (okay, maybe not quite beloved, but still...) pet, explicitly remind him not to just hurl it into the bushes. By the time I got there, Sky stood staring distractedly in the direction Ren had tossed his pet. I did what I could. I offered a prayer for the deceased and told Sky it wasn't his fault and that he'd done an awesome job taking care of the tadpoles. I also made Ren promise to give the tadpole a proper burial. Which he did. As soon as he recovered it from the brush. Which took awhile. Which kinda served him right.

*****

In other news, we made our first visit to a major amusement park since receiving Sky's diagnosis. And it went very well. With an ASD diagnosis, Sky could get a pass which allowed him to jump to the front of the line. I can't tell you what a difference this made. All previous trips to amusement parks have included at least one (and usually way more than one) major meltdown. Not waiting in line = much less anxiety. Much less anxiety = a better time for everyone. Sure, some folks glared at us (after all, he doesn't look autistic), but I decided to ignore them and enjoy the fun the kids were having. We pay the price of Sky's ASD every single day, so if any of the glarers had had the guts to complain out loud, I would have gladly offered to trade life with a kid on the spectrum for a day of line jumping.

At some point during that hot day of roller coaster riding, it struck me that we're still only 18 months post-diagnosis. Our lives have changed considerably since embarking on the journey to manage (and hopefully eventually overcome) Sky's ASD. We've learned a lot, but we have a long way to go. It has been an 18 months brimming with transitions and challenges. We welcomed a new baby. We learned about Pink P's asthma. And Sky's heart murmur. And Stow's hydronephrosis. And Ren's back. We moved. We finished and defended a dissertation. We applied for and interviewed for, numerous jobs before eventually landing where we started. We had back surgery. We went to an amusement park.

And killed a tadpole.

And I'd say that's about par for the course.