A Family Like Mine | Ode to the Most Diverse Family on the Block

A google image result for "diverse family"

If we had a housing association, I'm sure they'd be simultaneously thrilled and horrified. Our existence more than likely tripled the diversity cred for our neighborhood, especially since the Asian family moved out quickly after our arrival (I'm sure we had nothing to do with that).

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I've been told to love myself unconditionally, because love is love or whatever Taylor Swift and Katy Perry say when they're doing their makeup. I'm mostly there, with a few days of not being there at all. It's truly been a journey and I probably can't count on all the hands in the family how many times J has had to tell me over and over again that I can look how I want, how I can change my mind and that I am beautiful. Despite my cute shirts with bananas on them to match my new cute boyish charm, I've had a rough time grappling with this new look since I cut my hair a few years ago. 

In all honesty, I miss the attention. As annoying as it was to be stopped constantly at the intersection of Asian and Woman, ogled and sprinkled with a pinch of weird comments about how my eyes tell a story or that I'm a tropical Island princess, I miss being seen. J reminds me often that I'm seen by people in the LGBTQ community and that it's so important to be so visible, but I can't help but wonder how many people in the Asian/Pacific Islander community (especially elders) don't engage with me because of how I look. I've had trouble connecting with all communities at once. It feels like they only want parts of me, but my face cannot be split for them all to share. 

Beyond even this, when flipping and flopping as I do between returning to how I looked and loving where I landed, I think of this family of mine. And it gets all the more complicated. 

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We are sitting at the mall and a pair of white women in saris approach our table--missionaries. They look at  Brother P, eating his Indian food as he does, unaffected by their presence, maybe noticeably developmentally disabled, maybe not. They see him because they want him, but don't speak directly to him. "Does he speak Hindi?" one says to J. "We're going to India for a mission and we need to learn the language and culture before we leave." Their journey to eat, pray, love begins in a food court, how fitting. When J tell them no, they leave in search of their miracle Indian person, awaiting their curious hearts outside of the Lady Footlocker. What is Rosetta Stone? What about this mall in the middle of redneck country screamed "Resource Haven for Learning Hindi" to them? I pray for them.

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The neighbors are friendly with J. She's waiting for the other shoe to drop. When the old man who waters his lawn shirtless sees us checking the mail together, we side eye to see his wonder. She is the one who gets the questions and the eye contact. I know she hates being the spokesman for this family. She stands in a world that is between erased and elevated, and neither feels quite right. 

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Sister S comes home from work and says that a smelly man prayed for her. He held her by the shoulders in the fluorescent light of the mall. He did so without asking. Maybe realizing that she couldn't get away if she wanted to, maybe not. He asks God to let her walk again. He asks God to "make her normal." She is the only Christian in our home. A few days later, she is crying before bed. She's frustrated that we don't let her wear her leg braces to bed. She just wants to be able to go to the bathroom at night without a fuss. She asks why she had to be born disabled. She just wants to be like us. We tell her that she's beautiful and that God made her this way because he knew she'd be famous one day. She likes that enough to calm down for the night. 

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I can't stop thinking about all the people I want to punch in the face. I can't stop thinking about how if I punch them in the face then I'd go to jail and the rest of the family would lose the house and be homeless and the sibs would have to go to a church for meals and get prayed on for not only being who they are, but for also being hungry and having a sister in law who has a bad temper and punched their Pastor Geoff in the face. I sometimes want to grow my hair out so that my family has one less thing going against them. I get paranoid about mass shootings, maybe because of the world I grew up in, maybe because of the person I grew up to be. In this world, all I want to do is protect those who I consider to be my world. This maybe extremely dramatic, but may be not. 

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