Celebrating interracial marriages between Asians & Caucasians

The Haole Hubby Club Forum

This is for anyone who has a LOT to say about the meshing of Caucasian and Asian cultures. So get on your soap box!

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We say things like, “It takes all kinds, “ and “You are what you eat,” to our young children and then wonder “Where did I go wrong?” when, as teenagers, they show up with green hair and nose rings or, as adults, expect three-course meals every day.

Take Mr. Gunner, my high school biology teacher. Could he have predicted that his lecture about ovaries would produce my philosophy of cooking? Or for that matter, anything else I would just as soon not do—like shopping at the A&P or digging ditches (some call it “gardening”).

There I was, back from our honeymoon, my cup of steaming coffee in hand, ready to luxuriate in the tranquility of reading the paper. Without looking up, I heard Bennett sit down. After a few minutes, I realized he was too quiet. Putting down the paper, I saw him sitting there, bolt upright, a hand on either side of an imaginary plate, holding a nonexistent fork and knife.

“What’re you doing?”
“I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“For breakfast.”

It must have been the shock, because I actually got up and made the “American breakfast” my father was so fond of—bacon, eggs, toast, juice and coffee. At lunch, Bennett appeared out of nowhere and sat again, waiting. Same at dinner. Day in, day out, it was the same. He could be creating the most important piece of artwork to hit the scene since Picasso yet, like clockwork, he’d show up at that kitchen table and wait. Worse, he kept muttering things like, “meat” and “potatoes.” I didn’t know they were addictive, but I guess when your mother has
fed you that sort of thing on a regular basis, it can be. Anyway, I started to bastardize the Chinese dishes with extra slivers of beef. As to potatoes? “No way. Eat rice.”

This went on for a while. Then one day as he sat and waited, he announced, “I decided to be a vegetarian.” They say that a quick blow to the head can be the cause as well as the cure for amnesia. It worked for me. Remembering Mr. Gunnar and those ovaries, I informed Bennett of my new Philosophy of Cooking: I was born with just so many—so many eggs, so many dinners,
so many shopping trips, so many ditches. When they’re gone, they’re
gone…and there’s no use wishing for more. Ovaries, not women, run
out.

Cultures – like the Chinese - who have respected the crone, the post-menopausal, know this. The dynamics is natural, mathematical—not personal, and certainly
not moral. If everyone knows that they’re going to run out (and that, probably, the later ones aren’t nearly as energetic or enthusiastic as the earlier), then everyone can look at this dinner as, possibly, the last one. So: Appreciate the appearance of each, but Be Prepared for their total disappearance. That’s how it goes and there’s no one to blame.