Human Connections

The other day I could have sworn I saw a former neighbor from Tokyo walking past the mosque on the way to the post office. A thin, frail little woman in slacks and a white blouse, she had her back to me, and as I passed her, I couldn't resist turning around as casually as I could, to see her face. And no, she wasn't Inoue-san; I didn't really expect her to be. But with her slight frame, bony shoulders, greying permed hair and hesitating way of walking, she could easily have been her sister from behind. Her Turkish sister. I've seen the woman a few times since that first occasion, and whenever I do, I think of Inoue san. God knows, she might be completely different from Inoue-san, who likes fishing, baseball, and flower arranging, but I can't help smiling at how much these two women resemble each other.

In one of my classes last term, I had a student who was a dead ringer for George Clooney. His smile -- playful, but a little self-deprecating, a certain intelligent intensity of expression -- everything about this kid reminded me of George Clooney. Thirty years younger, of course, and many shades darker: this boy is from Sri Lanka. I doubt that George Clooney can speak Tamil, but if he did, he'd be a bleached-out older version of this kid.

In an intermediate class I taught in Yokohama, I had both my aunt Alice Jane and my Uncle Leon in the very same class. The Japanese Alice Jane had shrewd, canny eyes and a pretty smile; her male counterpart had my Uncle Leon's keen expression, shock of thick white hair, and biting dry wit. The resemblances were so startling that I had to keep reminding myself that these two people were Japanese; they had never met before this class and could not possibly be my aunt and uncle, a couple of Caucasians residing in San Francisco. And yet it always amazed me that they never sat together. Didn't they know they were married?

One of my daughters' nursery school teachers looked so much like my Sunday school teacher, Mrs Hunt, that it was a struggle not to speak to her in English. Takahashi-san, the nursery school teacher, didn't know a word of English, but her laugh -- low and musical -- her pretty face, her kind, heavy-lidded eyes -- all of her features screamed Mrs Hunt. Mrs Hunt was African-American and Takahashi-san was Japanese, but when they were on the great assembly line that installs personalities and mannerisms, believe me: these two got the same package, and lucky them.

If you've ever seen the movie, Wag the Dog, the actor in it who plays Private William Schumann looks so much like one of my young Turks, a thin, blue-eyed boy with a keen, wild-eyed stare, that it honestly freaks me out. I will catch his eye in class from time to time and have to look away. I can't take any chances: I'm middle-aged and dumpy and, in short, entirely crazy Private Schumann's type.

I could go on and on and on here -- and I will, just a little. One of my daughter's nursery school friends, a little Japanese girl, looked just like Martin Sheen -- it was just so obvious I had to laugh every time I saw her, and yet I could hardly tell this child or her parents how closely she resembled a first-rate American actor -- a man in his sixties. The UPS delivery man from my neighborhood in San Francisco bore a striking resemblance to a doctor I once worked for in New York. And every other year, someone entirely trustworthy will claim they've seen my double somewhere. And given what I've noticed, I believe them: there's bound to be a couple dozen mes muddling around out there, in Bolivia, Bangladesh, Djibouti, Germany, and Portugal.

I've been around a little in my time, and it is my firm opinion that we're all related. I don't care if you're from Iceland and every single ancestor you can trace back to Adam and Eve was too; you might just be the dead ringer for someone in Swaziland. If you're from Madagascar, for all you know, your double might be one of my Turkish colleagues. And this is bound to be a widespread phenomenon: if I've seen all these likenesses in my own limited sphere, imagine all the ones I've missed. These resemblances trump everything: race, nationality, class, gender, age. And it isn't just physical features; in fact, sometimes it's not physical features at all. It's the way you talk, the way you smile, the way you duck your head when you apologize or shuffle when you walk. There's no way around it, folks: we are all really and truly one big family.

No wonder we can't get along.

Miss Personality

Our eldest is what they call an Alpha type. This is a nice way of saying she's a bossy little so-and-so with a penchant for ordering others around.

When I was her age, I was unassertive and all too easily cowed. I would like to think that I was not the type who is easy to influence, but the awful truth is that I was so meek and shy, I probably would have been a follower if anyone had given me half the chance. No one did. I was so timid, insecure and slavishly humble that most of the time no one even knew I was there. I was easily offended and hyper-sensitive, and I might as well have worn a big placard on my back inviting bullies to come and give me grief.

I look at my eldest and am awed by her confidence. I was fully conscious when she was born; I saw them clamp the same bracelet I wore on her wrist and ankle. She looks just like my mother and she has my legs and thick, bushy hair. In short, I know she's mine: no one mixed her up with anyone else's baby. But in personality we are so different that I can only gaze at her in wonder -- and hopeless longing. I wish I'd had half her self-assurance.

When she was a toddler, she led her class at the nursery school, quickly monopolizing attention and making sure that she ran the show. At first, we thought she was merely capitalizing on being the odd man out -- the only Caucasian child in the entire school. But the teachers assured us it wasn't this. "Your child is a natural leader," one of them remarked. "When there's a fire drill, she helps us organize the others." Two years later, another teacher said bemusedly, "Your daughter even bosses us teachers around." I saw her in action once when I had come to collect her. There was a new teacher who was still unfamiliar with the protocol for putting away the bedding after naptime. I caught my daughter imperiously telling this woman exactly how it should be done and I didn't know whether to be proud or ashamed. Frankly, I was a little of both.

When she was four, we worried that she might be bullied, but her teachers laughed this notion to scorn. "She doesn't have much humility, but she's got a tough core," one pointed out. "And she knows how to stand up for herself, so you don't have to worry about that." Although our child's obvious lack of humility was mortifying, my husband and I were greatly reassured.

When she was around six, she suddenly realized that she was a big fish in a small pond. Her class was now old enough to go on field trips and my child quickly learned that although in her own school she reigned as queen, outside of our own neighborhood she was simply a foreigner. This took her down a peg or two and it was heartbreaking to see: when the others came back from field trips they were still happy and excited, whereas my daughter was obviously shell-shocked and reflective. "People cat-called her and pulled her hair," one teacher sadly reported. "And the children from the other schools talked about her in Japanese. They ran away when she tried to talk to them."

The transition from nursery school to elementary school was relatively painless, and during her first year our daughter did well. The fact that she was a head taller than even some of the children a year older didn't faze her in the slightest. On her first day of school, she proudly announced that she was the tallest and strongest girl: she could pick up every boy in her class. Better yet, she crowed, only one of them could pick her up. All I could do was stare at her in wonder. I had been the tallest girl in my class too, and this had mortified me no end. What I had seen as a humiliating affliction, she saw as a natural advantage.

During her second year, things started getting harder. Academically, there was little to worry about. Like most children in Japan, my daughter had learned to read the basic Japanese syllabary in nursery school, and she did well at picking up the more complicated Chinese characters. Socially, though, she was beginning to lose ground. There were other Alpha types, especially among the girls, and they vigorously competed with her for the position of class leader. Moreover, only a few of the children from her nursery school were her classmates, and those who had not known her from babyhood saw her as a foreigner rather than one of the gang. She had her work cut out for her learning to cope with those who bullied her and treated her as different. She became a little withdrawn and less gregarious.

Most of the time she kept all of this to herself. Like a lot of children who grow up in a foreign culture, she identified strongly with her peers and saw her parents as the true foreigners. "Don't say anything," my blonde-haired blue-eyed child used to hiss at me, "Or they'll know you're a foreigner." Gradually, the awful truth dawned: not only were we her parents foreigners, but she was one as well. My husband and I began to worry that she lacked the skills to cope with bullies and the children who shut her out, that her natural confidence and resourcefulness might never recover.

Then one day when I was walking her home from school, she started talking about all of these issues. Clearly she was being tormented by one boy in particular, a bully by the name of Hiroshi, and I was horrified. "He calls me gaijin!" she exclaimed indignantly. "And he claims I look funny!"

Wanting to offer her support and inspiration, I began a long-winded and impassioned story about Dr Martin Luther King, about the children in Arkansas who had been racially taunted and bullied by both children and adults and who'd had to run a gauntlet just to get to school every day. My daughter listened politely, then interrupted. "It's okay, Mom. I know how to take care of Hiroshi!"

Amazed, I stared back at her. "You do?"

She nodded eagerly. "See, no one is supposed to call me gaijin. But I don't want to be a tattle-tale, so I just pretend I can't hear him. That irritates him and he gets louder and louder until he's actually shouting. And then the teachers hear him yelling gaijin and he really gets it." She smiled happily. "He's not all that smart, so he hasn't figured it out yet."

I decided to save my lecture for later. I knew her teacher was right: what my child lacked in humility she more than made up for in confidence. She really didn't need my help at all.