Integration, disappointment

This weekend, while Omaha and I were at the grocery store, I passed by three women who clearly represented three generations of the same family. The eldest and the middle were chattering back and forth in one of those bouncy south-Asian accents such as Vietnamese or Cambodian. The conversation got heated, and the eldest walked off in a huff.

Then the youngest, an ordinary-looking teenager, turned and said, "Mom, what were you and Grandma talking about?"

This reminded me of Nick Gillespie's appearance on O'Reilly, where he pointed out that by the third generation almost no immigrant children speak the language of their grandparents' home country, and their attachment to it, whatever it may be, is given distance by that lack of common language.

On the other hand, I was also with the kids at a playground the other day, andit was time to head home. We were going over to a friend's house to have dinner, and they had fresh strawberries. "Come on, kids. It's time to go get strawberries."

This little boy, maybe five, was standing next to Yamaraashi-chan as I said it, and he said, "What are strawberries?"

Oy.

"We recommend you take your daughter to the ER..."

This morning, as I was settling down to work, I got a call from Kouryou-chan's school. "Hi," said the voice on the other end of the phone. "I have your little girl next to me and, she can tell you the story of how it happened, but it seems she has a bead stuck up her nose. We recommend that you come get her and take her to the ER to have it removed."

Oh, lovely. So I get in the car and hurtle down to the school, where Omaha has already arrived. We get in the car. There's a little bit of blood dripping down Kouryou's nose; she apparently tried to get it out herself with a pair of tweezers. She's miserable, and terrified. "I'm scared they're going to have to cut my nose off to get it out!"

We assured her that no such thing will happen; we know of at least two other kids in Kouryou's age group who've done similar things and both of them still have their noses. So we get to the ER where the triage nurse takes us in and reassure her that she's going to be fine, and then we get checked in.

And then we wait. And wait. And wait some more. Kouryou curls up in our laps as lunchtime approaches, complaining that she's hungry and scared. Finally, we get admitted. The nurse checks her again, and looks up her nose with a flashlight and sure enough, there it is.

And we wait some more. The doctor is a busy man today. Finally he arrives. He had a great bedside manner and was very good with Kouryou. After explaining what he's going to do, pulls a small flexible scoop out of his pocket and in less than a minute, without much squirming, the bead comes out.

What a disaster. Kouryou-chan was much better after all that. We went home and had lunch.