What does it mean to be a "me"? What is the "I" that speaks when I open my mouth and say things that "I" feel?
I am a baby in front of a mirror, watching the baby in front of me move her hands and feet when "my" brain tells hands and feet to move. Is this what it means to be a "me"? To know through observation what the self can do and observe its movements as if observing another person through a window? I learn what I look like by sitting in front of the mirror and tracing my movements through space and learning the way my face looks when it feels different ways.
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I am a kid at my first sleepover. For the first time I observe the habits of other girls before they go to sleep. When you are alone in your "youness" for so long you take things for granted, assume they are that way for everyone. I wear nightgowns to bed and never brush my hair. Other girls wear long plaid shorts and spend a long time brushing their thick brown hair. They eat pancakes for breakfast with lots of syrup, and I'm used to eating rice cakes or porridge with my Mom and Dad and sneaking sips from their coffee. I start brushing my hair and wearing plaid shorts too. Later when all the girls start shaving their legs I ask my mom if I can start and she says she never shaved her legs a day of her life and why should I? I resent her at first but I think about my Mom and how beautiful she is and I used to look just like her, and she looked just like me when she was young, and I think I can wait and think about shaving. I grow out of it - 25 years old and I've never touched a razor to my body and I am glad I never will.
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I ride in the car with my Aunt Peggy, who isn't related to me, but she's my Aunt's sister-in-law and I've been told to be nice. She looks me over, observes my tom boyish clothes, my sneakers and baggy t-shirt and my plain haircut and she's got a full face of makeup which seems strange to me because I've never seen my mother wear more than some perfume and blush even when she goes to a fancy restaurant. Aunt Peggy tells me I'm "white" because I grew up in Kentucky and my Chinese isn't great. I squirm in my seat a little and try not to let my face show how much I want to hate her right now.
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In middle school, all the black kids in my general classes make fun of me and pull their eyelids tight and make horrible sounds at me. They throw trash at me when the teacher is turned around. In gym class we do fitness tests and I can run faster, longer and do more pushups than most of the boys, and my body fat index is only a 12%, and still the teachers and older white girls in class tell me it's only because I don't have any breasts and they make me feel small and powerless. In the locker room, I'm ashamed to change out of my gym clothes. I don't wear a bra yet because I don't need one and I feel ashamed. I wear my gym shirt under my uniform until the gym semester is over.
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In high school some boy named Peter makes fun of me and calls me Su Ling, like he's so funny. I hate him in a way I can't articulate and can't do anything with because if I tried to do anything it would result in some kind of violence. So instead I bottle it up inside me and it hurts me more when it should be hurting him. He calls me Su Ling and pretends to speak Chinese at me. He asks me if I can shoot fireballs with my hands and when he finds out I am good at English, that I can write and read, he says I must be "half and half." I want to exact violence on him and think that if I knew how to shoot a fireball now would be the time to find out.
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I have my mother's nose and my father's chin but my eyes are mine. I grow up thinking I am small and short and skinny and it isn't until I am an adult that I am told I'm pretty for the first time, that I'm "tall for a girl" that I'm "tall for an Asian" that I'm strong and fit and sexy. It's a new thing but I never get used to it, and never can get enough of it.
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Some people say I look just like my father. Some people say I look like my mom when she was my age. Other people say I look like Anne Curry, or Mulan, or… I get mistaken for "someone I know" a lot. I wonder if there are only so many combinations of features and everyone's unique combination eventually gets repeated. It's inevitable.
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I've been thinking about genetics a lot. I look at people and I wonder what pieces they got from their parents. I look at my parents and try to imagine if they knew when they got together what their babies would look like. I look at couples and wonder what the products of their coupling will look like.
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I think back on childhood and adolescence and I think "I'm lucky I got out alive." So much self-hatred and uncertainty about who to be and how to be. So much judgment and scrutiny. When I was teaching middle school I observed my students with a certain level of curiosity. I never had an unattractive student. They all seemed perfect and cute and delightfully endearing. Do children realize how perfect they are, how needless of change? When I was a kid I sought to change everything about myself, the shape of my nose and eyes, the texture of my hair, my skin, my voice, the thickness of my eyebrows, the length of my arms, the size of my chest, the size of my lips. All I could see as a kid was flaws and how to change them. At some point that stopped and I grew into a confident woman who can see the individual beauty in each person, including herself. That is a remarkable thing. To look in the mirror and see flaws but embrace them, to observe them and know that they belong to you.
