Lists: Things I'll Find in Norfolk

In one of my favorite books, Never Let Me Go, Norfolk, England is where lost things end up.
Kazuo Ishiguro writes: "When we lost something precious, and we’d looked and looked and still couldn’t find it, then we didn’t have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day when we were grown up, and we were free to travel around the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”

Norfolk wasn't just a repository of lost objects. It also held missed opportunities, words left unspoken, and roads not taken, friends who grew apart, and other experiences forever receding from the present.

Heart shaped pendant
My mom gave it to me when I was in middle school but it sat in a box for years because I thought it looked too dowdy. Everyone else had those silver Tiffany chokers. Then in senior year or maybe junior year of undergrad I began to wear it continuously. Before then I didn't have one necklace that I wore  all the time. But I soon got used to it hanging around my neck when I woke up in the morning.

I lost it the day I left Detroit Metro Airport for Denmark. Later walking past the dancing water fountain in McNamara terminal I felt the chain sliding oddly around my neck. It had broken but was still draped around my neck. But the pendant was nowhere to be found. I must have lost it when I was taking off my layers at the security checkpoint.

Before I left Denmark I bought a daisy pendant, a very popular design by Danish jeweler Georg Jensen, as some sort of compensation, but it's just not the same.

A pair of angled forceps
My grandfather had a tremendous influence on my life. He was also an otolaryngologist. He taught me never to run around, laugh too hard, or talk too much while eating nuts. One of the last times I saw him before he died, he gave me a pair of forceps not because he wanted me to be a doctor but because they're just so useful for picking at things!

Sometimes when I get something valuable, I squirrel it away in a safe place. But I decided that I would honor his memory by actually going to use this tool, or at least looking at it everyday, so I kept it at home on my desk in a pen cup. But somehow throughout the years of undergrad, I lost it.

You can by forceps shaped exactly like the one I had at any surgical supply store. But of all the things I've lost, I would most like to find this one.  I would give a lot to get it back again.

 
My hospital birth certificate FOUND! 
My mom dug through a lot of boxes of my school projects, notes and childhood mementos to find this little slip of onionskin paper. It says my birth date, time, weight and was signed by the attending physician, who apparently was a family friend of my grandparents. There's no way my mom will let me hold on to anything important anymore.

The movie adaption of Never Let Met Go has been reviewed by various media outlets. But if you haven't read the book, you MUST NOT read any reviews of the film or book that give away the reason for the children's isolation. You will do yourself a great disservice.

First Days

I left the States last Sunday morning and arrived in Århus on Monday local time so I have been here for a week now.

The past week was a mirror-image of the first few days of college: moving in, finding the grocery store, going to the grocery store, figuring out bus routes. Though it's a very distorted mirror since this is a whole different country. The day I move in, a German girl was also moving in to this house. She and her parents drove up from Germany with their car packed full. Much of her belongings were in plastic tubs. My mom would have fretted over my accommodations the way her parents did, saying that the kitchen was small or the room was cold or the bathroom dirty. It reminded me so much of moving into my dorms and my parents helping me. It made me miss my mom right away.

Meeting new people made it seem the most like starting college anew. The past week has been non-stop introductions. Then followed a series of formulaic questions we asked one another countless times. It starts with introductions: What's your name? Where are you from? What are you studying here? Which dorm do you live in? Next we moved on to chitchatting about the weather: How cold is it where you're from? Oh the Australians must be having a hard time adapting. Oh I should have brought warmer clothes.  Then we complained about our living situations. Oh I live so far away. Oh my rent is so high. Oh I live with all Danes. Oh I don't live with any Danes. Then we compared who got the most money to study. Americans are the clear losers. Then we talked about drinking. It seems that students the world over drink a lot.


Throughout the week, there were events I wanted to go to and events I felt I should I in order to get to know people. I know that like starting college, many of the people I meet in the first days will become my friends for the durations. It's not the time to be anti-social. At times I really wanted to meet people, but other times I had to drag myself out into the bitter cold to meet more people. It was mostly great fun but all quite exhausting.

On Sunday I finally had a less hectic schedule. I went to Risskov, a seaside park with a few friends -- not too many. Walking in the woods and along the sea was much more relaxing than I thought it would be. Then I came back to the house and had some quiet time to myself. Blogging is really relaxing. I feel recharged and ready for the next week.

I hope now that I'll gotten over these introductions, I can get to know some people in greater depth. I think that will be very rewarding.

Right now I'm craving a bagel with cream cheese. The latter is available in all grocery stores, but the former, not so much.

A view of the harbor from Risskov

Pre-Teen Life, Part II

For all the middle school nostalgia, there were things I don't miss from the summer of 2000, when I was 11 and moving up to 7th grade:

Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle brands were the markers of popularity. In fact, the cult of popularity seemed to rise out of nowhere. I think this is where I gathered there was a social stratification around the hallways that run in a square around the perimeter of the Clague Middle School courtyard, just as social stratification existed in the "real world" outside the plot of land at the corner of Nixon and Bluett Roads by income, by class, by race.

Sometime in middle school, East Asian girls showed up with brown or reddish brown highlights in their hair. I desperately wanted at the time but my mom wouldn't let me do it. Her reason was that the chemicals in hair dye were bad for me, but I thought her main reason for denying me this wish was because it was expensive. But I'm glad I held out until that desired passed from me. I am satisfied with my natural hair color now. I don't think that dying one's hair is a manifestation of discomfort with one's racial identity. It's far more complicated that just wanting to be white. I know that I'm not gonna be white if I have light brown hair. But there is an element of cultural tweaking that makes me uncomfortable.

I really wanted a second piercing in my ear, right above the first one that I have had since I was about five. I thought about it very seriously and actually convinced my parents to let me do this when I turned the very mature age of 13. But then I chickened out because I was afraid of the pain. I have a higher tolerance for pain now, but thank god I didn't go through with it then. I think they look so tacky now.

The Mysteries of Pre-Teen Life Revisited

Teen Magazine really had the pulse on the mysteries of pre-teen life: boyfriends, makeup, and periods. Basically these aspirations translated to crushes, lip gloss and bright nail polish, and period mishaps.

I had a jolly good time flipping through the July 2000 issue of Teen Magazine with a couple of Women's Council members. I don't think I have read an early teenage girls' magazine since that time and I had forgotten about the content of those magazines. I can look back and reminisce and laugh about that time.

I saw a Bonne Bell Lip Gloss ad in the July 2000 issue for lip gloss with a top that flipped open when you pushed a sliding button. I remember that model lip gloss. They don't even make it anymore; I checked the Bonne Bell website. We were all "addicted" to lip glosses, especially Bonne Bell's LipSmackers, in its simple cylindrical tube. They used to be as cheap as $0.99 each, but they're probably close to $2 now. That seemed like make-up to me.

One mainstay of pre-teen magazines were the Embarrassing Moments combining bodily functions, friends and family, and very bad timing. The submissions rated most embarrassing reliably combined periods, boyfriend, and extremely bad timing. A sure winner would be: I got my period when I was having dinner with my boyfriend's parents for the first time. I was wearing a white skirt and I stained their dining room chair!

Cooties did not follow me from fifth grade to sixth grade. I left them scattered like wood chips around the elementary school jungle gym. The pre-teen years made me see boys in a different light. Teen Magazine -- very timely -- was on hand to guide me through this feeling that I really wanted to talk to this boy who was in my class. It answered such burning questions as "How do I know if a boy likes me" and provided valuable advice on a very grown-up skill called flirting. Today I read an article in which a genuine teenage boy described the signs that a girl is interested in a guy: she touches you on the arm or the shoulder and smiles and laughs at everything you say.

Somehow in middle school (and to some extent high school), everyone followed the same conventions of what pre-teens thought romance. It's really cheesy to recall now, but at least we all agreed on those conventions. Yes this shows he is interested in you, no, this means you're just friends. "Going out" meant you were entitled to very intimate privileges such as going to the movies together (even though your parents had to drive you there), holding hands, and slow dancing with the same partner during Fun Nights (6-8pm in the gym with the cougar logo on the floor about once a month, I think).

If only it were still that simple. In my early adolescence, I couldn't imagine something like friends with benefits. Well, I still can't really figure that out. Oh, did we just make out? I didn't mean that. Oh, let's have sex. But I don't mean it either.

I want this in a picture frame on my desk

Today I found that my maternal grandparents were married in 1949. I also saw this photo of them.

My mom says that in China our family still has a clipping of their wedding announcement from the local Suzhou newspaper, the city where they got married.

And my mom was right all along when she insisted that my grandfather was very good-looking in his youth. He's hot stuff.

Sex and Asian American Families

*This is a long entry but writing it meant a lot to me, so I hope you will stay with it. Thanks.

I've got a million things to do right now but I came across this blog tonight that I can't stop reading: Asian American Health.

One entry highlighted in a very personal and touching way one girl's experience with sexuality and her parents' attitudes toward sexual activity. It's called "White Flowers: A Personal Take On Culture and Sexual Health".

The blogger writes that she became sexually active with her boyfriend at when she was 16. Then for some reason she missed her period twice, which made her panic even though she took six pregnancy tests that all turned out negative. In the time before her next period came, she considered an abortion, if she was indeed pregnant. But she also reflected on her parents' attitudes toward sex.

I recommend you read the whole (short) entry, but I'll just quote a bit from it now:
She writes, "when I told [my mom] I had a boyfriend, the first thing she said was that I was not allowed to kiss him or hold his hand, much less anything about sex.

Her mom's attitude toward dating and sexuality was neatly summed up in her insistence that her daughter shouldn't hold hands with or kiss her boyfriend. This seems almost laughable since that's the minimum what most people expect to do with a boyfriend. Holding hands and kissing are the most innocuous of romantic gestures. But seeing that those are her mother's expectations, it makes a discussion of sexual activity nearly impossible.

Then she writes about her pregnancy scare:
"My parents were pretty obviously absent from this experience. In the end, of course I got my period, but the white flowers always stuck with me because of how messed up it was that I seriously thought about self-inducing an abortion rather than talk to them. Looking back, five years later, I realized my anxiety was not over whether or not I was pregnant—week after week of negative results should have convinced me. Instead, I was terrified of my parents' reaction to me having sex."

While I can't say I have experienced the anxiety of suspecting I might be pregnant, I can relate to her inability to speak with her parents about sex. I wonder if I'm ever going to get a talk from my mom about sex. (Talking about it with my dad is out of the question. He may drop dead of discomfort instantly.) I've gotten very brief snippets throughout the years, but those were more about relationships. (I can have boyfriends as long as I "don't get too serious" and "don't get hurt".) But these talks never directly addressed sexual activity. I've never asked my mom, "Would you be okay if I had sex before I got married?" She never asked what I did with my boyfriend and I wondered what she thought we were doing.

I am relieved that my parents have a somewhat realistic expectations about my relationships. My mom is okay with kissing and holding hands because she saw us doing that and didn't object to it. (Though I'm embarrassed that she saw even that.) I won't generalize to say that Asian American parents all hold conservative values like my parents and the blogger's parents, but that makes at least two.

My parents' attitudes toward sex, and indeed anybodys, are in part due to the cultural norms. My parents grew up in China where the norms at that time were much more conservative. Even contemporary Chinese norms are much more conservative than the ones here in the U.S. but comparatively liberal since my parents were young.

But I think it's also important to add that attitudes about sex are also shaped by smaller circles of influence, our families and our individual experiences. Not all Americans subscribe to liberal attitudes about sex despite America's place as a key generator of these behaviors.

I think her experience and mine show a generational and cultural gap between Asian American parents and children when it comes to issues like sex, though certainly not limited to it. The silence doesn't mean that Asian American teens and young adults don't have to come to terms with their sexuality and their families.

*A version of this is crossposted at choiceusa.org/choicewords.

I'm getting old (and I love my mom)

People always say that you don't know what it's like to be a parent until you're older.

Well in the past couple of weeks I realized that if I don't talk to my mom for two days, I get really worried.

I usually genuinely have something to ask her about every couple of days, but even if I don't, I make up some reason to email or call her.