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| Viewpoints | |
| Thursday, 09 November 2006 | |
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You never really know what your children will inherit from you. Will our baby get lumbered with years of orthodontic work thanks to my wonky teeth? Will it inherit my husband's short-sightedness? Will it love Star Trek or Anne of Green Gables, hate football and love travelling? Or age four will it suddenly decide that vegetarianism is the way forward and shun our beloved Hainanese chicken recipe? My husband has, unsurprisingly, declared he will disown any child that refuses to eat noodles. Fears for its appearance will be put to rest once we meet him or her (any day now!), but other aspects of what our baby will be like are harder to qualify. As a mixed race couple we've been told for years that our children would be beautiful...but will they also be confused, lacking in a clear identity from being neither white nor Chinese? I think my husband's racial background is already somewhat confused as a BBC, and he's pondered himself just how 'Chinese' he is. However, from my point of view, being with him has brought a great range of new foods into my life, and new traditions and celebrations that we pick and choose from which to celebrate. For example, with this upcoming birth we will be holding a traditional 'one month' party for the baby, but I am not planning to inflict myself with the pigs trotter soup that new mothers are meant to drink. (I know, it's meant to be good for you, but in my experience these 'good for you' things tend to taste vile, and I feel childbirth itself will be enough of a challenge for one year!) So along with his cultural influences I bring my own checkered background, with my muddled accent and upbringing that has a strong Northern slant, although I've lived down South and worked in London for years now. My family history is peppered with genes from Birmingham to Denmark including, apparently, links to a circus family somewhere way back...And together and separately during our relationship we have travelled to various places around the world, have found a deep love of Japan and all things Japanese, been influenced by Singaporean friends (I get some funny looks with my cry of 'aaaiiii-yaaaaaa' whenever anything goes wrong) and we plan on taking this little person around the world with us to see the places we already love, and discover new ones we don't yet know of. This longed for baby of ours will be a true hodge-podge of cultures. People are intrigued as to how 'Chinese' we will raise our baby. My husband doesn't speak Cantonese fluently, but does understand quite a bit. I, needless to say, continue to cause family hilarity with my desperate attempts at even basics such as 'dor tzer' for thanking people. I do know how to call someone a 'stupid egg' should occasion arise, but I think that for our baby, for the language side of things, it will be down to my husband, and his parents, to at least teach it how to pronounce the Chinese names for the food we eat. So as not to be left out I am planning to take it to baby sign language classes, and teach it some French too. (Poor baby...!) My husband had also better be in charge of the chopstick usage. After 12 years together I'm not a complete disaster area now when it comes to chopsticks, but I do still tend to drop tricky items, or flick them embarrassingly across the table. But what else is there we should be thinking about? We've already had the grandparent discussion, which applied to both sides of the family since there are so many variations on what you can call your grandparents. My parents have settled on being Nanny and Granddad, and my in laws are going for the Chinese option of Ma-ma and Yeh-yeh, so at least there won't be any confusion there about who we're talking about (in my own childhood both my grandfathers were 'granddad' so I referred to one as 'granddad at the seaside' because that's where he lived. Helpful, but a bit longwinded!) The baby's name is another issue. We're heading towards giving him or her an 'English' first name, which is problematic enough. Trying to hit on something that isn't at the height of popularity right now, that can't be made into a taunting rhyme, that sits well with our very short surname without turning the whole name into a verb and at the same time doesn't remind us, or our family, of anyone's schoolyard enemy/dog! Once this dilemma is resolved, probably several weeks after the baby's birth, we also want to give the baby a Chinese second name. Both of us were in the dark as to quite how this would work, but apparently my husband's grandmother in Hong Kong, on hearing of the baby's arrival, will declare her name suggestion. It seems we still get to veto this if we don't like it, and in that case I think would discuss it with my husband's parents and see what ideas they have. I'm just hoping for something easy to pronounce with a nice, happy meaning. I think that all aspects of parenting for us, be they Chinese or not, will be one big adventure with successes and failures along the way. For all our educational achievements in our lives we have no certificates for parenting, and we genuinely will be winging it. I suppose we will just gather our own memories and ideas and, as in most things in our life, trying a little bit of everything will give our child the opportunity to choose for itself. Hopefully he or she will feel ripe with the experience of coming from a mixed race family, and that our best of both world's approach will make him or her feel unique. Most importantly though I know it's going to be fun, and that this baby will be wrapped up in love by all of our family and friends, wherever they're from. |
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