wonders

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone reading this had a wonderful holiday with their loved ones.  今年もよろしくお願いします。

Every year on New Year's Day, the whole family on my mother's side gather.  We used to get together at my aunt's place (because it was the only place that so many people could fit in -- yes, we live in tiny apartments) or my grandmother's place (when my cousins were away managing their own families), but for the past couple of years, we've been gathering at a restaurant where they serve osechi (special New Year's food).  It's better because then, no one has to feel the responsibility to prepare fancy foods.  Nor does anyone have to spoil their first day of the year being compared in terms of cooking abilities (-- every family cooks the same thing around New Year's, and my now 85 year old grandmother loved to compare and judge whose osechi was the best).

Anyway, this New Year's Day gathering is the only occasion I see my cousins and their kids.  I'm not especially fond of children (especially after being exposed to some random nausea-causing virus at the pediatric department), so I'm totally awkward around them.  I don't know what to say to these human-looking creatures.  They're cute, but it's kind of like talking to a dog, and I don't do that.  Of course, they don't even know who I am.  Thank goodness the six-year-old is starting to form some memories.  Not that I hate introducing myself all over again every time a new year starts.

Putting my own awkwardness aside, I've noticed that I actually do enjoy watching these near-humans actually become humans -- as in beings that can distinguish "you" and "I", express themselves in words, call people by their names, and whatnot*.  They start to think and wonder about funny stuff in a very reasonable way.

My uncle in law happens to be French, and the six-year-old above asked, as we left the restraurant, if he was married to anyone (in the family).  I could almost see inside his head -- after six years of living in this world, he had learned that 1. there were different races, 2. a family was a group of people who were related biologically or by marriage, and 3. Asians bred Asians.  "So if this white guy happens to be a family member he must be married to someone... but who???"

It reminds me of things I used to wonder when I was his age, or a bit younger.  I moved to New Zealand when I was four, and I'm not sure at what point I realized the concept of race.  I still remember about when we went camping with another family.  One night, the daughter (one of my best friends) and I were having a shower, and the mother suddenly started laughing at my blue butt.  But Mongoloid kids are supposed to have blue butts, and I had been told that the color went away when you "grew up".  So I looked at my friend's white butt and (since we were the same age) took it as a sign that she was mentally mature but that I was still a "child".  I was enormously embarrassed.  Maybe my parents told me afterwards that it was a matter of race; I may or may not have understood the concept.  I don't remember.  All I remember is that some of my Japanese friends had also lost their color before me, and I'd been sensitive about my butt color even before coming to New Zealand.

Anyway, I wish everybody a year full of new wonders and discoveries!

*In case I offended anyone, I did not mean to say that people without these abilities are not humans.  I just meant to emphasize the fact that humans (compared to other animals) often change considerably in the course of growing up.