My ONE LOVE life

A while ago I heard from a reader who had a few good questions for me to write about.  She wanted to know, if and how my family’s opinion of my marriage had changed over time.

The process of getting used to my new husband did take my parents some time.  And it’s hard to say if it had anything to do with his race or culture, or just my family getting used to me being married and coming back to the US. I had left at age 26, single and only 2 years out of graduate school.  I returned 3 and a half years later a pretty different woman.

At first I would notice everything my parents said and over analyze it, looking for discrimination.  I remember my mom once saying that my husband was her “black angel”.  Of course she meant it as a compliment, but why did she have to add the word “black” in front of angel?  My parents have always thought my husband was nice; and he is.  Everyone thinks he’s nice.  People tell me that all the time.  But the adjustments came in other ways too.

For years my parents struggled just to understand my husband when he spoke, even though English is his first language.

I think for a long time there was disappointment.  My father expected his high achieving, Master’s Educated daughter to “marry up”.  And by this I mean someone who is equally or higher educated than I and able to “provide for me” a lifestyle grander than the theirs.  I suppose on some level all parents want this for their children.  Who wants to see them struggle?

For many years it was hard for me to adjust to that too.

But the comments still bubble up.  Just this week my mother proceeded to tell me a story about some cable guy who came by her house.  She spoke at length about how nice he was and helpful, etc.  He also happened to be African American.  She invited him into the house to seek his advice about a television upstairs.  Then she mentioned that several years ago, this would have made her very uncomfortable.  But now she’s fine, and thoroughly enjoyed the man’s visit.  Imagine that?

The whole incident is heavy and gives good reason to pause. But that’s a conversation for another post.

Having children and moving back home (not to the same house, just the same town) has nurtured the adjustment over the last 5 years.  My parents love being grandparents and adore our girls.  My oldest daughter has been spending the night over there on a regular basis since she was 2 1/2 years old.  They call each other and chat.  My husband even calls my parents and does thoughtful things for them.  They buy him extravagant, thoughtful gifts.  The relationship is as good as it can be given all of our own personality quarks, but who doesn’t deal with that?

There have been tough times for me with his family too.  I had known my husband’s mom and family almost a year before I even met him.  I thought they had fully embraced me, but hurtful racial comments have come up over the years.

Experiencing another culture/another race/a complete stranger all require a certain level of flexibility, commitment, and willingness to self-reflect; especially when the experience is brought into our lives without permission.  The experience of adjusting to differences is unique for everyone.  For me, being dropped into a Caribbean jungle opened me up and required me to change on many deep and profound levels.

The opportunity of time, and the comfort of a home culture to fall back on have impacted the intensity of my parents adjustments.  I am sure the fact that we live so close is a good thing. I am always on guard for the protection of my children.  Ignorant comments pop out every once in a while and I quickly work to mitigate.

I see it as a lifelong journey.

When I joined the Peace Crops more than a decade ago I was signing up for a cultural exchange program. Though people generally join because they want to be of service, that is really only 1/3 of the Peace Corps mission. The mission statement, a 3 point statement, is really 2/3 about having a cultural exchange. Anyone who has served in the Peace Corps quickly comes to grips with this reality as the challenge of finding something meaningful to do becomes an ever increasing philosophical debate. But I digress….

The reason I mention this Peace Corps cultural exchange is because sometimes I feel like my life is a cross cultural exchange program.

Last week my husband joined the US cross cultural program called, an “American Vacation”. We drove more than 1000 miles round trip to spend 7 days residing in a small wood cabin in the forest. It was a place where my family of origin has been going for more than 30 years, the same week every year, to join other families going for more than 30 years, the same week every year.

It’s a place where the greenery rules and the smell of dirt reminds you of an old dear friend. We hung out by the river, swam in the “swimmin’ hole”, and floated on rafts. We participated in square dancing night and kicked up dust for the Hokey Pokey. We sang songs like “God Bless America” in a group around the camp fire and roasted marshmallows, eating s’mores. We hiked the national forest and jumped in to snow melt tucked between the rocks and greenery. The kids screamed at a water snake. We played Bingo and shopped for groceries in a store that sold cowboy hats near the check-out counter. We slept on the veranda and listened to the mix of laughter and the roar of the river 30 feet below. It was pure Anglo-American fun.

My girls were the only children of color. There was of course curiosity but everyone was more than welcoming and openly warm. It had been 12 years since I last visited this annual village of friends. My oldest daughter sang with confidence at the Friday night talent show. And they both taught the camp fire group the Caribbean song, “Brown Girl in the Ring.”

It was a great experience for my husband. He loved most being in nature and living in a small “board house” much like the one he grew up in.

Unlike most same culture marriages our differences are often unique and easily identified. I imagine if most people viewed marriage as a life long tour of a different culture, perhaps there would be less divorce and more room for understanding. It’s invigorating and exhausting sometimes getting to know my life partner’s culture on a daily basis. But it’s empowering to know that we all have the flexibility to define our own culture.

When I lived in the Caribbean I was often approached by strangers when I went to town. They would walk right up to me and start having a conversation with me as if they knew me. It wouldn’t take me long to figure out that they thought I was Katie.

One of the benefits of living on a small island is that you get to know a lot of people. And Katie was a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, so I knew her and people consistently mixed the two of us up. She shared the same experience, people often approached her as if she was me.

This week my daughter made a new friend at camp. When I came to pick her up she introduced her to new friend to me and said, “don’t we look alike?”

I was pretty thrown by this and said, “Yes, you both have brown skin.”

They really looked nothing alike.

They bonded instantly. The camp director said that my daughter came up to her as soon as she arrived, threw her arm around her and said, “Come on, I’ll show you how we do things here.”

It’s great how quickly the connection was made.

The funny thing to me is that it reminded me so much of the joke my husband and I had with each other while I lived in the Caribbean. Whenever someone confused me with Katie, or any other white person, we’d turn to each other and quietly say, “What’s up with that? Do all white people look the same?”

Is my daughter suffering from an “all black people look the same” syndrome by growing up in a primarily white and Latino community? It’s hard to say. She goes to a school with a lot of mixed race children, but there are not any darker than her.

A reader writes:

“I’d love to hear about the early days of your marriage. What weren’t you expecting?”

My husband and I fell in love almost instantly and moved in together within the first six months of dating. This was the first time either of us had ever lived with a significant other. We were trying to be practical, since we had meet in the beginning of my second year in the Peace Corps and we knew our time was limited. We decided to test the strength of our relationship with cohabitation.

As it turned out, my work was going well and easily justified an extension of my two-year commitment. So I stayed a third year.

Living together was more fun than I ever could have imagined. My husband was thoughtful, which brought out the best in me. I often came home to find my things put away, my laundry washed and dinner cooked. We enjoyed spending hours talking and getting to know each other, playing scrabble, and taking long walks in the land behind our house, where we gathered fruit from the banana, mango, cocoa, and nutmeg trees. We had no television to distract us, no neighbor within shouting distance, and no shortage of time to stare into each other’s eyes. Our life was idyllic.

At the end of the third year, though we loved each other, we were scared of the next chapter. As a result, my soon-to-be husband displayed a few sabotaging behaviors that drove a wedge between us. By the end of the third year, I decided to leave the island without him. I spent five months soul searching, (which I posted about a few weeks ago).

We married in the Caribbean and ran into problems entering the US. He had a common tourist visa to enter, but needed to amend it to a “resident alien” visa after we were married. As a result of the visa problems and my acceptance of another overseas job, we spent 4 of the first 6 months of our first year of marriage apart. And, he ended up living at my parents house, without me, for 2 of those months. Those months were difficult, but I think especially for him.

Coming from a small island his knowledge of the world was somewhat limited. Though he had lived and worked on a cruise ship for a year he really hadn’t spent much time outside of the Caribbean. For example, he did not know how to navigate around the city utilizing street addresses or even know how to drive a car. When he spoke, though it was English, people just could not understand him. Big places were overwhelming, even for me, after being in such a small place for so long. We avoided chain grocery stores (still do).

When he did finally reach Micronesia, where I was working, he didn’t seem like himself, in my words, he seemed depressed and a little lonely, and he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, articulate how he was feeling.

We were both in a new place. Neither of us spoke the language or knew the customs and traditions of the culture. Of course he had an edge because it was a tropical island with similar foods and resources to his own island. But it was most challenging that he had very little to do with all of his spare time. His mood, and the stress from my difficult job, drove a wedge between us. I found myself being sexually attracted to a work colleague.

After several months of wrangling with the local government, my husband was able to attend the local community college. He was even able to get a few free-lance jobs, and meet people. He was developing a social network-doing lots of fishing on the weekends. But the wedge was pushing its way between us and I was growing more unhappy with the unexpected turn in our relationship.

I reached out to some friends in the U.S. via email. Through their kind and thoughtful advice they helped me confess to my husband, the attraction I was having to the work colleague. Though surprised, my husband was totally open to having the discussion about the nature of my attraction and how my needs were not being met. This brought greater intimacy to our relationship and deepened our weakening trust.

We reached a point where we were able to joke about the attraction and he grew less threatened by my desires to fulfill some of my emotional and intellectual needs outside of the relationship. Simultaneously he grew happier as he found more things to do and adjusted to life on the island. Our commitment deepened and our relationship grew solid and more predicible.

I expected out first year to be bliss and joy, much like our dating past. I was surprised by the challenges and though we have had little bumps in the road over the last ten years, nothing compares to our first year of marriage.

I started thinking about the idea that my children are not going to benefit from the white privilege I am privy to now and while growing up. It struck me hard yesterday when I was reading the question posed in the comments on another blog. The question read something like this, “Do you think that white men, raising black children, feel bad about not being able to pass on their privilege? Do you think it affects how they raise them?” For some reason seeing it in black and white shook me beyond my Pollyanna core.

It’s hard to even go there in my mind, imagining my daughters without every advantage afforded to me and what I always thought was for everyone. You know, “the land of the free” and all that.

I wonder, how will my daughter be talked about when she applies for a job? What if someone doesn’t want to hire her simply because she has a non-Anglo name? Or if she gets a job, can we be sure it’s because of her credentials and not because she’s the token “black woman”?

What happens if she makes a bad choice? If police are involved, can I be certain that she will be treated with the fairness I take for granted? Or will others attribute her bad choices with the “bad behavior” and poverty of her apparent race?

The idea that my children stand for something that is beyond themselves; something that can be perceived as negative without being given the opportunity to present their true selves is really beyond my inner knowing. If this is a free country and life is truly what you make of it, is that true for my precious daughters?

In sharing my concerns with my husband he offered his thoughts. He thinks that being foreign born affords him a certain level of privilege. He doesn’t see the US, or the American experience, as one of racial separation and discrimination. He sees opportunity, wealth, and lots of choices. And his view of the US seems to attract opportunity, wealth, and lots of choices.

His experience, while limited to only 5 years of living in the US, has not included discrimination or racial inequity perpetrated against him. While he knows it exists, and that there are acts of heinous racism; he believes that it will show up if he goes out looking for it. He chooses not to and seems to be a lot happier for it.

My observation of him is that he is perceived as different, not only by his dark complexion and his accent, but by the energy for which he presents the world. He walks around open to possibilities, and he makes friends. When people talk to him there is openness, and everyone seems relaxed. Sometimes I can hear the sense of relief when white people are meeting him for the first time. Maybe because he is foreign born there is not an assumption or fear of “what’s coming next” floating around the conversation. People often tell me, “your husband is such a nice guy.” They almost seem relieved by this - a tone I don’t miss. But I digress…

When I sit back and attempt to look at the big picture, my mind wanders to Michelle Obama. I imagine that she spends little time, if any, thinking about how unfair or inequitable life is or has been for her. I doubt that she and her soon-to-be President husband teach their children to be wary of people out to get them. I would bet there are few conversations around their dinner table about all of the missed opportunities and disadvantages in their lives. So I am left feeling both sad and hopeful, knowing that so many wonderful African Americans have paved the way for a more equitable and free society for my girls. Where privilege will one day be afforded to those who choose take advantage of it.

I was a little surprised Saturday afternoon when I found a young, good looking twenty-something woman at our door asking, “Is your um, your husban, uh there was a guy here earlier, he’s um err aaaffrriiccan aammerican. Is he home?” She was clearly uncomfortable even saying the words, “African American”. Perhaps she was uncomfortable because my husband is not African American, and somewhere inside she could not find the words to call him anything else.

Upon moving to America just 5 years ago my husband began to notice that he was a part of a club he didn’t sign up to join. He noticed that other black people were befriending him everywhere he went. It didn’t take him long to notice the imbalance. He asked me about it. I explained to him that I understood this to be normal behavior among African Americans and I thought it was nice. But he seemed to be offended.

On Saturday when I told him how the young woman had asked for him, stumbling over her words, he asked, “Did you tell her I am not African American?”

Over the years I have noticed that he ebbs and flows with his opinion and behavior around all of the unsolicited attention. Sometimes he might say to me, “why did that woman say hi to me and not you?” On other occasions he has averted the gaze of others. And sometimes he has been friendly, responding with a nod or a word.

My husband does not like it when people equate him with being African American. He identifies as “West Indian” and/or “black”. But overall I noticed he doesn’t much care for labels of any sort. Maybe this is because he didn’t really know he was black until he came to America. He was always like everyone else, he grew up in the majority, something African Americans have not have the privilege of experiencing.

So we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary this weekend. We’ve been together for more than a decade now! It feels like it’s just flown by. The great thing is that I am more in love with my husband than ever. I don’t think I ever expected to reach this point with him.

Honestly we were in love when we married but I don’t think we were actually ready. We were living in his country when we got together and when my visa ran out I went back home. He had proposed early in the relationship and I felt like he was the one, I had no doubt about my feelings. But my head was in the way and I was trying to rationalize how we’d make it work, since I thought we were so different.

I went home and pondered my future with and without my potential husband in it. In the process I read a book called, Inter-cultural Marriage, Third Edition: Promises and Pitfalls by Dugan Romano. The book was great and really helped me see the benefits and strengths of an inter-cultural marriage.

During the five months at home I received a phone call from my father’s friend asking me to “consider what I was doing to (my) family by marrying an uneducated [black] man”.. I was aghast. I didn’t even know how to react. - And what was my father saying to his friends to think it was OK to make such a call?

So I went back to the Caribbean to marry my husband, without my family. My parents did not openly oppose the marriage, but I felt the weight of the fact that they envisioned my partner to be someone different. I wasn’t exactly on the path they had laid out for me.

We planned our wedding in a week and wed in the middle of the rain forest. For my husband’s family, the minister and most of my friends it was the first time they had attended a wedding that wasn’t in a church. It was a beautiful day which showered us with a drizzle of good luck.

Our first year of marriage was spent in a country that neither of us had ever even visited, an island in Micronesia.  We were set to learn together the customs and languages of a totally unique place while learning about each other in a deeper more committed way.The experience allowed us to define ourselves without assumptions. We co-created our relationship and found a language and way of relating that is uniquely ours. It was a tough first year, a really tough first year. But we made it and each year has gotten easier and more comfortable.

I started a page to celebrate inter-cultural differences. I hope you add to it! Thanks for reading and making the world a smaller place.