We stand out. There is no getting around this fact. We have fair skin, light hair, some of us have freckles. We have four children. We educate our children ourselves at home.We usually eat our meals at strange times (breakfast at 8am, lunch at 1pm, dinner at 6:30pm) instead of Indian timings: breakfast at 10am, lunch at 3pm, dinner at 9pm. Our children go to bed around 8 and they (usually) sleep in their own beds instead of all of us piling into bed together around 10pm. Our kids love to have ice in their drinks and prefer cold milk over hot milk on their occasional Corn Flakes. When we go produce shopping, we try to buy all the food we’ll need for a few days or even a week instead of just what we’ll cook the next meal. Weirdos are we.
Fortunately our neighbors have mostly gotten used to our strangeness and we are loved and accepted. This past weekend I was reminded of how it used to be in the adjustment years, before they were used to us, the constant explanations required. When our oldest was a baby we lived in a village with a local family and they (and many other vocal friends) insisted her late walking (15 months) was due to wearing diapers…after all who could move in such cumbersome wear? I served many cups of tea to well-meaning visitors who came to warn me she would never walk unless I removed her diapers. Finally I was at the end of my rope and at the least mention of it I would tell them, “In our country, babies wear diapers and they all learn to walk. My baby is fine and she will learn to walk.”
A couple of months ago my older two children led the neighborhood gang of kids (yes, MY children) into mischief with an open pail of paint that some laborers left in the kids’ play space on the vacant level of our building. After peeling bits of paint off their bodies and hair I told them that if they ever found leftover paint there again, to come and get me right away so I could put it somewhere else, out of temptation’s way. A couple days ago Sara came home from playing with her friends and there was more paint on her. She had neglected to come and get me and tell me about the paint and the consequence was she wouldn’t be able to play with her friends the next day.
Her friends overhead this and immediately wrote her an apology note and begged her to ask me to relent. Nice try, but the consequence stands. The next day her friends appeared before 8am asking for her and Caleb to play so he went and she, of course, had to stay. Her friends wrote more notes asking for her to come and for me to relent, even setting up a movie date at their house. The doorbell rang all day long. After lunch her friends appeared with a neighbor lady who came armed with a bag of candy for all the kids, wanting to know about Sara’s lack of availability to play today. So I explained for the millionth time that day about the consequence for actions, that, no, I wasn’t angry or mean, just teaching my child about obedience, and she would be ready to play the next day. I found it exhausting to explain in my second language such a foreign concept as boundaries and consequences.
The scrutiny that day was a good reminder that I no longer feel like we are living under a microscope most days, and I so enjoy the relatively normal status our neighborhood has conferred on us and our children.
