Sunday evening ramble

Among the Stuff White People Like is authenticity, which sort of makes me a cliche, but it also doesn't. I don't like real injera because it's real; I like it because it tastes better. I decided to go to GrandMart because I had a hankering for kinpira and I was out of burdock. And because it was crappy out and I figured it would be lame to get in my car to go to Whole Foods, so if I was going to get into my car, I would go somewhere that wasn't remotely within walking distance. I'd love to get my food buying routine down to one-stop shopping, and I might be there with GrandMart if they could actually stock daikon. And if the African-run discount store in the same block, which sells a gazillion varieties of injera, sold just one that was all-teff. But it doesn't, so I decided to stop at Fair Price International. As I picked up my injera, a (probably Ethiopian) customer asked politely, "you eat injera??" I nodded. He said, "and the dark kind!" I nodded again, told him this was the only store I could find that carried the whole-teff kind. He seemed happy that I liked injera. Maybe I should have asked him whether he was Ethiopian, but I have a sort of natural distaste for asking people where they're from--so even when it's appropriate, I hesitate to do it. Anyway, you'd think (from the latest census if nothing else) that the DC area is yuppified (or at least Bobofied--apologies to David Brooks) enough that other stores might cash in on White People's Liking injera.

By the way, I hit the lottery at GrandMart: they had pomegranates in their discount bin--perfectly good ones, too. But I digress.

On our walk--what a great tradition the New Year's Day walk is--Nina and I talked about
our childhoods. At one point, Nina said, "coming from such a blue collar background...' and I wasn't sure how true that was. I mean, it was and it wasn't. Maybe it's more true for her than it is for me, even though it's hard to see ourselves as socioeconomically different. Our parents have known each other since they were teenagers, and we're all over one another's childhood photos. Her brother has a PhD, and that was the more expected career path than the one either of us took. Our parents think nothing of reciting poetry at dinner. Which isn't incompatible with being blue collar, but I guess the question is, what is blue collar (is it as vague as "middle class"?)? Or is the question, are both labels meaningless because they don't really tell you anything? If collar color refers to profession rather than income, Nina's way out there: both parents worked in an office. And they, and my parents, were/are lucky; the country's McDonalds are staffed with immigrants who might have been doctors or engineers in their country of origin. (Not to mention the country's taxis).

Driving (being driven) down Beacon Street after visiting a friend, we passed the apartments where Nina and her family used to live. I remember their very first apartment, and ours, not far from there (we drove near it on the way to the hospital last weekend). Not an English-speaking family in either building. For our families, (modest) houses in the suburbs came later, but the cramped apartments were the norm. Even once we moved away, we continued to visit family friends in those buildings devoid of the native-born.

I appreciate the point Nina was trying to make--it can be hard to connect to people from privileged backgrounds, was where she was going. Maybe what I'm trying to get at is that even if the blue collar/white collar paradigm applies somewhere, you can't really transpose it on immigrant families--it's a whole other dimension. Here's a fourth point: immigrants tend to understand that financial sanity isn't a given, and it's certainly not something you f* with.

Maybe another point I'm trying to make is that it's more normal than not for me to shop ethnic markets; I did it before it was cool. Of course, then--before it was cool--I wasn't comfortable with it. I hated being the only white person in Super 88 in Chinatown, and I hated being dragged through the very smelly Haymarket. Don't even get me started on the Russian stores--I hated those most of all. It's not like I've come 180 degrees--I don't love sticking out, I don't love shopping ethnic markets because it's cool--I just shop there because it's what I know, and what I need is there. I'm sorry if you think that makes me a pretentious, authenticity-seeking yuppie; get Whole Foods or Trader Joe's to stock burdock, daikon, injera, and reasonably-priced bok choy, and I might slip into the more traditional role of knows-no-better yuppie.

***
We also talked about being frustrated with our parents, as our less frustrating parents (her mother, my father) walked several meters behind. Nina's dad won't take the air conditioner units out of the windows, so the house is freezing. Her mother complains about it but won't talk to her husband. We talked about how challenging it is to let go, i.e., let one's parents do their own thing, even though their own thing is harmful. With mom, it's the twisted nutritional information. I can deal with her saying it; I just wish she wouldn't live by it. I wish she wouldn't fast when she's not feeling well, and that she wouldn't consume saturated fat by the gallon, when she has a cholesterol problem, and now an inflammation problem. I have no problem saying to the rest of the country, 'f* you--if you're going to eat disgusting food that's also bad for the environment, who am I to begrudge you your medical problems?' But I do have a problem taking on that attitude when it's my own parents. Not that arguing with them serves any purpose--they're both stubborn and set in their ways. And Nina's parents are the same.


***
Please keep in mind that when I get irritated at my mother for talking to me while I'm trying to read, it's not because she wants to talk. It's not she wants to discuss anything. It's more that she insists on thinking out loud and demanding a response. Imagine someone going through her mail out loud, and insisting that you listen. This is the situation I found myself in over the course of the week (and if I tried to read elsewhere, she'd call me over every few minutes to express a thought or show me something someone had forwarded to her).

***
Mom conceded to her friend--when they were on the phone, and mom told her that I'd put on weight (this definitely needed pointing out, especially since that same friend saw me on Tuesday)--that I'd been making good food. She told her friend that there were all these foods she hadn't known about, that were really quite good. Fattening, apparently, but good. This is progress, since at the beginning of my visit, mom said, "so you basically don't eat anything." It's easier to understand how one can give up cheese when you understand how many amazing non-dairy foods there are out there.

***
At the airport last night, I was able to read some until a small child started climbing behind my chair and basically screaming in my ear. I gave his mother a dirty look and moved. She did seem horrified and tried to get her kid to calm down, but he kept terrorizing the entire lounge. You appreciate the relief when, upon boarding, I saw that family sitting a good number of rows in front of my seat. There weren't that many passengers--it was a very small plane, and it wasn't a full flight--but the first people to board were taking their time getting out of the way, to the point that the flight attendant made an announcement basically asking everyone to move their @$$es. Between the size of the plane, and the turbulence, the flight took me back to one of the overnight buses we took in Panama--specifically the one back to Panama City from David. I'd managed to get some sleep, but Jay was up all night. The over-air-conditioning didn't help.