Oh the comfort . . .

. . . of spending time with friends who you understand and who understand you!. . . of reconnecting with culture and language you once called home!. . . of interaction without the need for pretense and guards!

BUT what a difference language and culture can make in how you interact and how you view yourself. It can make you very UNCOMFORTABLE at times! In a very strange way, one I can hardly explain, I caught myself this past weekend forgetting myself and my true color. It was so strange that I wanted to document it in case it happens again.

I spent the weekend with very good friends (2 families) we had worked with in Cambodia. One of the families is from around here and the other is originally from New Zealand. There were 13 of us in all, four being white with ethnic roots from Europe and the rest ethnically Khmer or Chinese. We all spoke English and Khmer interchangeably and all the children but our youngest were ethnic Khmer. And maybe that had bearing on my experience.

I hardly ever think about the fact that we are a multi-racial family. One of the other families was all Khmer and the other was bi-racial. My husband was away on Saturday, so the rest of us went out touring to an Amish tourist sight so our friends from out of town could learn about the Amish. At one point in setting up a tour I became suddenly aware of skin color. The man behind the counter was a bit confused as we explained who was going to go on the tour and who wasn't. Something in his reaction triggered my realization of how strange our group must have looked and how oblivious I had been to those dynamics.

Suddenly I was very aware that me and my baby I was holding were very white and stood out from the group. The husband of the one couple was white too, but his accent gave away the fact that he did not belong to me. That moment's hesitation by the man behind the counter startled me and I went from feeling a part of the group, oblivious of color, language and culture to being very aware of my difference, the different colors of our group, and the all-white color of the observers standing around us. While our friends from New Zealand and the wife of the Cambodian couple went through the tour, I stood outside with her Cambodian husband and all the children. I continued to notice looks from the people who passed by. It was a very strange experience and not very comfortable.

I do remember getting looks when I lived in Cambodia and we would travel as a family. But I always chalked it up to Cambodians were not used to seeing people with white skin. This time I was in a place where I would not expect my color, or that of my family and friends to make people look. I didn't really like it.

But what is even stranger to me and important for me to remember is that I realized that I do not always think of myself as white. The flip side to my experience Saturday is that sometimes I still catch myself viewing America through my Cambodian lens. It's as if I see myself as Cambodian like my children are Cambodian and my friends are Cambodian and I forget that others from here do not see me like that. I look at a place and think "how white it is!" when I myself am white! What am I saying? And people around here look at me and see I am white. They presume I am American and who knows what else they presume about my language and culture . . . what they don't see is that I actually feel like I have more than one or two identities. Hmm - that could sound like I'm schizophrenic, I guess.

I recall my room mate from college whose parents were Canadian but she was born and raised in Costa Rica. She used to comment how hard it was for her when people in America assumed she was Anglo yet she felt Costa Rican. Spanish was her first language. She had white skin, but she did not feel white. While my experience is not nearly as drastic as hers, I thought of her words as I reflected on how I can explain what I felt briefly on Saturday.

Thankfully my friends never made me feel "white" or different or separate this weekend. And that's another comfort of good friendships -- differences are diminished for you become an accepted part of each other -- no matter what your language or culture.