Who am I? Who I am?

[sienamystic]

Every once in a while, my sister and I get into a conversation about who we are. The best phrase that encompasses the both of us, as well as many other military, state department, and missionary brats, is "third culture kid." It goes a little bit further for us, though, because we didn't just grow up living overseas, but our parents both came from very different cultures. So sometimes we both find ourselves feeling very out of place, and sometimes we find ourselves feeling quite vanilla.

Dad was a homegrown American from Missouri German stock. His family was in the same small town that I am named for, doing homegrown American things like making liver dumplings and running a general store. He did the Air Force thing, and then entered the State Department, becoming a foreign service officer and getting posted to the Philippines. There, on a blind date, he met Mom.

Mom was a daughter of a wealthy captain of industry. The family was mingled American and Spanish, with Jewish roots from Alscace-Lorraine somewhere back in the distance. They had been living in the Philippines for a long time at this point - probably since the early 1900s. During World War II, a great uncle I would never meet was shot by the Japanese occupying force as the family fled to the mountains to hide. Mom's family spoke Spanish and English to each other, and Tagalog to the maids and drivers (the Philippines was, and is, a society with a great gulf between rich and poor). I grew up with a good Spanish accent, from hearing it so often, but without actually learning more than a few words, because Dad didn't speak Spanish. His second language, which became the main reason we spent so many years in Asia, was Korean. Aside from a brief period when I was three, and apparently spoke decent Malay, I grew up with only English, a fact I regret very deeply.

I grew up being shuttled back and forth between some Asian country and the Northern Virginia area. My sister came along when I was ten, and so her memories of those times are not as extensive as mine are, but she was still marked by the experience. We are different in our attitudes to those times; I'm profoundly grateful, while my sister craved more stability. But we both feel the same way when we walk into, say, a Filipino grocery - very comfortable and at home, and yet not at all, because we neither speak the language nor are ethnically Filipino (except, perhaps, about an eighth...we haven't worked it out quite. It may be less or more than that.)

So, my sister and I are mutts: our bloodlines and our experiences both show it. We're too tall and too fair to be Filipinos, too almond-eyed and olive-tinged to be WASPs. I could pass for American Indian; my sister, who is almost my clone, cannot. Small things make us identical, and equally small things set us apart. There's no profundity here, just reflection on the small pieces that, over the years, result in who we are.

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[max-und-moritz.livejournal.com]

Guess you are Homo Globalis ;)