Asian American Memoirs
I am a multitasker. Usually, I have at least 1 book which I am reading and 1 book-on-CD which I listen to in the car while driving. My book-on-CD comes from the public library (unless I'm listening to a course from the Teaching Company); the hard copy book is from the library or from my ever growing TBR (to be read) pile. Occasionally, the reading book and the listening book are related.
Recently I was reading The Accidental Asian by Eric Liu and listening to The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan. The parallels between the books were worth noting. Both books are autobiographical by second generation Chinese Americans. Both authors are very aware of how they have had to give up many aspects of Chineseness to live in America. They talk about the influence of their parents. They reflect on what it means to be Asian American, Chinese American and just plain American (all different) and whether any distinction is really desirable.
I could identify a lot with what they were saying although I'm one more generation being a plain American. I did not have the difficulties of using a different language to communicate with my parents and the rest of the world. Although growing up in Hawaii, being Japanese was not being of a minority - then I was thrown into the East Coast condititons when I went to college (fortunately the Northeast and not the deep south). I did find myself trying to avoid groups and labels which would identify me as Asian or Asian-American.
However looking back, I see some missed opportunities in terms of learning about my Japanese and Okinawan roots. Being firmly entrenched in middle age now (over 50) I realize it's important and not too late to fill in the gaps for this aspect of my knowledge.
Dealing with leaves
Normally, Fall in the northeast is the prettiest and my most favorite season. Every year the colors of the changing leaves leaves me awestruck. I never grew up with these kind of colors in Hawaii, although Hawaii is colorful in its own way - none of it is seasonal. When rainbows occur here, it's a big deal for my wife (who grew up in New Jersey). But I've seen so many rainbows growing up in Hawaii, that I don't get excited unless it's a double or triple rainbow. And yes, the spectrum does go in reverse order in the double rainbow.
Unfortunately, Fall doesn't last forever. It's transitional to winter and the leaves which had been a big show turn into a big chore - they have to be raked up. You have to deal with this quickly since if you wait too long you may have everything covered with snow. Or it becomes too cold to work outside comfortably. Temperature in the forties is fine for raking up leaves. You can go on for hours without getting tired (you're more likely to get blisters on your hands before getting tired). In Hawaiii and the high temperatures and humidity there's no way I could go on and on raking like I do here. The trade off is that in Hawaii, you never have many leaves to rake up. To give an idea of the scale of the problem, imagine if all of the leaves of all of the trees in your yard dropped to the ground. That's it. Fortunately, they usually fall over the course of a few weeks and not all at once.
We still own our old house and while waiting for it to sell, I have to maintain the yard. So it's been two lawns to mow over the summer and two yards' worth of leaves to process. I'm up over my head with leaves. The bigger problem than just raking is getting the leaves out. You can either pack them in large bags and take them to the recycle center (where they compost all of these leaves) or they have curbside pickups scheduled at certain times (so you have to get the leaves out to the side of the street). But at least once all the leaves are removed and the yard is cleared, it stays that way until next fall.
Next task will involve shoveling snow at both houses.
