Connecting With a High School Classmate From Thirty Years ago...

When the telephone rang on Sunday night at 9 p.m., I was hesitant to answer it. I figured it was too late for telemarketers and solicitors to be calling at that time of the night. I made my husband answer it. We were in the midst of dinner with company from Japan. The phone was for me and my hubby informed me that it was someone from Australia. I expected the caller to be Brenda, my other high school classmate. The voice coming from the other end was not Brenda's; it was from Mary, a classmate whom I had lost contact with for over thirty years. What a pleasant surprise! We talked about our families and children. We reminisced about our childhood, the various teachers we had and generally life in Calcutta. We shared stories about our struggles. Mary started her life in the U.K. and ended up in Australia. I ventured out to the West Coast of United States and went through my share of struggles with the immigration department. After a four-hour marathon conversation, we barely scratched the surface of sharing our stories. Our next plan is to chat on Skype.

I had no idea that reconnecting with someone from the past can be such a healing experience. Just by sharing our stories, it seems like there was no lapse in time from when we parted as high school classmates. We picked up from where we left off and continued our friendship. All the rivalry we experienced as high school classmates was gone; now we are a couple of mature adults retracing our journeys, our roots...

Since my children were born in the United States, they grew up in a very heterogeneous community where Asians are a minority. They do not seem to have any difficulty with their identities. My husband and I on the other hand struggled with our identities initially. We spoke Chinese with an accent that the Chinese people from Hong Kong, or Taiwan, or China could detect without having to strain their ears. We have been told that we don't look like thoroughbreds. There is always a hint or suggestion that we could be mixed with some undetectable race. It is funny to hear that because as far as we can trace back to our ancestries, both sides of our families are full-blooded Chinese. Our children receive the same comments when relatives meet them. Well, we feel very much at home in California where ethnic diversity is prevalent than other parts of the country. Even though we were born and raised in India, we looked so different and we stood out amongst the natives. We were known as the fair-skinned who ate weird things. Our parents went overboard to preserve the Chinese customs to the point where the natives of China even find our ways archaic and primitive in many respects.

After my long chat with Mary, I finally came to terms with the fact that by being geographically displaced twice, our lives were enriched with the gifts of several cultures. It is ok to stand out amongst our Chinese immigrants; it is alright to speak Chinese with an undetectable accent, and it is perfectly ok to look like a mix-breed...