My daughter and I were preparing\u00a0dinner.\u00a0 Chinese food.\u00a0 I was making chicken lettuce wraps and she was using toothpicks to make\u00a0little fruit kabobs comprised of\u00a0canned pineapple chunks and maraschino cherries (totally traditional Chinese fare, right?).\u00a0 At which point\u00a0I came up with the idea of serving the whole meal on the coffee table in the family room.<\/p>\n
“Come on!\u00a0 It’ll be fun!!” I said.\u00a0 “We’ll sit\u00a0on the ground and be a regular Chinese family tonight!”<\/p>\n
Pause…2…3…4<\/p>\n
then\u00a0my daughter says “have you always wanted to be a Chinese family??” as if, with my fun-Friday-night approach to dinner, I was actually\u00a0expressing some deep seated, Toni-Morrison-The-Bluest-Eye desire to be\u00a0something I never would or could be. (full\u00a0disclosure at this point –\u00a0I’m not Chinese, but you probably already knew that from my fruit kabob description)<\/p>\n
“Of course not, honey!\u00a0 I’ve always wanted to be the family we are,” was my immediate reply.<\/p>\n
But the question deserves some consideration.\u00a0 I mean, despite frequently\u00a0channeling\u00a0the obsessive and frantic Tiger Mom persona of my\u00a0Chinese sisters, would I really want to BE one of them??<\/p>\n
Let’s see.\u00a0 They’re probably way better cooks.\u00a0 And the newscasts make it seem like they\u00a0have tiny houses to clean.\u00a0 [plus]<\/p>\n
But their everyday-wear seems to all be in\u00a0grays and browns.\u00a0 Not my best colors. \u00a0[minus]<\/p>\n
And the women seem exceptionally\u00a0slender.\u00a0 And petite.\u00a0 [plus again]<\/p>\n
But the deciding factor in not wanting to be a Chinese mother would really have to be…that\u00a0I wouldn’t have been able to spend a cold, snowy Colorado school-day-off with the people I love most in the world cooking Chinese food and sitting at a coffee table eating it.<\/p>\n
God bless the USA.\u00a0 And God bless us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My daughter and I were preparing\u00a0dinner.\u00a0 Chinese food.\u00a0 I was making chicken lettuce wraps and she was using toothpicks to make\u00a0little fruit kabobs comprised of\u00a0canned pineapple chunks and maraschino cherries (totally traditional Chinese fare, right?).\u00a0 At which point\u00a0I came up with the idea of serving the whole meal on the coffee table in the family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}