Family Impact on My Character

On Christmas morning, I found a gun under the tree. Must be for Uncle Tim, I thought, since he was going hunting soon. At 11, I was obsessed with science fiction and animals, so I rummaged around looking for Dune or maybe paints for my modeling projects. When my dad’s family gathered with their coffee mugs and self-assured smiles, I realized the gun was for me. “What do you think?” they asked with anticipation and pride. As someone who relocated earthworms after the rain and whose bed overflowed with stuffed animals (both are still true today), I wondered do you even know me?

And that is just one side of my culturally complicated family. In a union that seems impossible in contemporary times, my family includes the most celebrated and reviled groups in America, and which side is which depends on who you believe in modern media and politics. My dad’s side consists of generational rural white Missourian workers and my mom’s represents cross-cultural brown transplants. If I had been born to just one of these disparate groups, I imagine my bias would lean toward one belief system. Instead, I straddled fundamentally opposing views as striking as evolution versus creationism.

One consensus seemed to be consuming pig at gatherings. My paternal grandma puts bacon and its fat in everything, and my maternal tutu serves Spam and tocino. The simplicity of agreement ended, however, when my mom remarried a Jewish man and we began incorporating kosher high holidays. Oy vey.

I love my family. So, I was forced to reckon with their complexity beyond food choices. My dad is more than a gun-wielding conservative and my mom is more than a job-stealing foreigner. Sometimes, even, their seemingly divergent worldviews ended in a convergent value that had a deep impact on my character. My dad taught me Leave No Trace and Boy Scout practices to respect the land we use, and my mom shared her ancestors’ mythology about the mana of the natural world. This alchemy yielded reverence for our environment that continues to inform my climate change activism.

Furthermore, since my family’s diversity presented many paths, finding my unique Hapa identity has taken time and intention. Carrying familial imprints, my spirit has its own signature of service and spirituality. To my parents’ credit, they started to join my path, whether at a Tolkien conference, hobby painting class, or political protest. My mom now has an elf cosplay, her own brushes, and a BLM face mask.

I endeavor to sublimate the challenges of my rich cultural upbringing into abilities that build bridges between groups. I see past reductive stereotypes to the humanity of the individual, and I can listen beyond the noise of social media soundbites. Both intent and impact matter to me, and nuance continues to shape my relationships. Black lives matter full stop. Yet, when a young student asked me why don’t all lives matter, I leaned on my well developed skill of slowing down amid cultural clashes, something I also needed on the day my family gave me a gun. Instead of letting out a primal scream of disbelief and frustration, I became curious and contextual.

That Christmas, my dad was excited to share part of his heritage. The questioning kid was genuinely confused about how caring about all people could be wrong. I wish I could say it was all magic from there. My dad and I still spar over tradition (and evolution!), but we also fish and camp regularly. And I think my reading buddy is still confused by systemic racism and structural inequity, but he feels safe to keep asking hard questions as we learn together. I can tolerate complexity and differences as a result of the zeitgeist of my beautifully messy family. Challenges and hard questions will keep coming. I’m open and ready.