The Anthropologists' Daughter

My dad is an anthropologist.  His profession now is college dean, but he'll always be an anthropologist.  I'm a nurse and Amber is a director of a university office, but we'll always be anthropologists too, deep down. My mom is a retired speech pathologist, but after being with my dad for over 40 years (they started dating when they were sixteen...awwww!), she's pretty much an anthropologist too.  She's certainly logged enough hours on archaeological sites, organizing artifacts in the labs, and attending my dad's talks (both the formal and the impromptu ones that occur when he reads something interesting and just has to share...), to have some sort of honorary degree conferred.  Oddly enough, we have also discovered that some of our closest friends in adulthood were once anthropology majors way back when, too.

Playing in the dirt at one of my dad's archaeological sites.

Anthropology is more than a career, a college major, or a degree. It's a paradigm that has affected the way we see the world.  It's about recognizing humanity's connection to other living things, and how close we are to our evolutionary kin.  It's about recognizing people's connections to one another, celebrating our differences, but highlighting the many more ways in which we are all the same.  It's about accepting the fact that what your society, your religion, or even your parents tell you isn't any more "true" or "right" than what the society, religion, or parents of some child on the other side of the globe is telling him.

Some people are raised Baptist, or Jewish, or Italian, or even UGA Dawgs fan.  We all have something that underlies the core of our family identity. I don't know whether they planned it or not, but my parents raised me "anthropologist."  They taught me that religion helps people feel safe and comfortable in an unpredictable and sometimes scary world.  They taught me that people who do things or see things differently than we do aren't better or worse, they are just simply different.  They taught me that our culture shapes the way we see the world, whether we realize it or not.

Some of my favorite days of the year when I was a kid were the ones I spent tagging along to work with my dad.  Even at 9 years old, I was convinced given the right outfit and a stylishly carried purse, I could blend right in with his college students.  I'd sit in the front of the classroom and color in my notebook while my dad lectured.  I'd nod along as he told stories I'd heard before at the dinner table, and know the answers even before some of his students did.  We'd get Pepsi's and Hershey's with Almonds from the snack machines, and I'd marvel at the dusty books and artifacts lining his office walls during his office hours. We'd walk across campus, hand in hand, to the dining hall where we'd eat lunch with the other faculty members.  At the end of the day we'd drive the hour back home together in the blue Mustang, listening to Billy Joel or the soundtrack to Top Gun.  From a very young age, I was sold on being a lifelong learner, and these day trips to college life only cemented my plan to become an egghead.

My dad is dressed in traditional Balinese clothing for a lecture.
I have no excuse, this is just what I looked like in the late 1980's.

But life as an anthropologist's daughter came not only with day trips to college campuses, it came also with summer-long trips to the other side of the world.  I spent the summers after my 7th and 8th grade years in Tianjin, China.  My parents were teaching English to Chinese college professors who would soon be coming to the United States on foreign scholar exchanges, and I was along for the experience.  And what an experience it was.

Some of the officials from Tianjin Normal University, visiting  us in Ohio

Junior high can be a rough time for puny, smart girls with a penchant for glasses way too big for her face.  (Or, you know, so I've heard...) Elementary school is warm and safe, with only thirty kids per class and always at least one teacher looking for a pet.  Things in junior high get complicated.  Social orders are thrown into upheaval as the various elementary school cliques break apart and form anew.  A new super order of coolness is created.  Suddenly, everyone is whispering about which girls are wearing bras, and who's allowed to wear make-up.  Your gym clothes absolutely have to be carried in a blue plastic Gap bag. Status is measured by the number of tattered ski lift tickets on your J. Crew jacket zipper.  And if you don't know how to make those little knotted coils at the end of your Eastland's shoelaces, well, you might as well just go barefoot (Where the eff was THIS when I was in junior high?!  The internet solves everything.)

I'm not a big one for 'counting blessings', per se.  But among the fortuitous things that have shaped the very core of who I am, I rank spending my most angst-y, gangly, awkward pre-pubescent summers in China up there at the top.

My parents and I lived together in a dingy two-room dormitory suite.  I slept on a cot, all of our water had to be boiled, and the pillows were actually sacks of rice.  We rode borrowed one-speed bicycles everywhere.   I spent afternoons playing on old gymnastic parallel bars in a dusty field, and we ate in the dormitory dining room most nights.  It was not glamorous, but I loved every last minute of it  (Ok, the first night I cried.  But after that....every. last. minute.)

I also attended my parents' English classes, and served as an example of American youth.  Everyone was fascinated by me, and I was fascinated by them.  We visited their homes, shopped in their stores and markets, and enjoyed evening visits together to beautiful gardens and amusement parks.  I even tutored one of the college officials' son during the day, teaching him the English words for numbers and colors using my home made flashcards and lesson plans.  Although we did visit all of China's great historical sites and tourist attractions, this was not your typical tourist sightseeing trip.  This was cultural immersion at its best.  This was my chance to finally experience what my parents had been telling me all along.  At the core, we're all just people.  Our differences make us interesting, not weird or wrong.  Things are just things, and money certainly doesn't buy happiness.

With my sassy friend, Chen.
(note recurrent theme of my interesting outfit choices)

Neither Amber's job nor mine is likely to require us (and pay for us...) to head off to far flung corners of the globe anytime soon.  And, neither one of us is tasked with teaching college courses.  Although, I can't promise that yakking endlessly about things I'm passionate about ( e.g., nursing, women's health, health policy, public health) to a captive audience of young, malleable minds won't someday be a part of my career trajectory.  But, if we have any say in the matter (and, um, I'm pretty sure we do) education and travel will definitely be two of the cornerstones of our daughter's childhood.

Amber works on a large university campus, and we take full advantage of all the benefits that come with that.  From the university swim club, to the free cinema showings, to cultural and political events and lectures, and even the occasional college football game, we use that coveted staff ID of hers every chance we get.  We can't wait for our child to get to experience all those great things along with us.  Our daughter will also go to pre-school right on the campus where Amber works.  Amber will be able to visit whenever she wants throughout the day, and can also steal her away for some "Take Your Daughter to Work" time now and then.  I can't wait for our little one to marvel at the excitement of a college campus the way I once did (ok, let's be honest, "still do").

Travel is another thing that we can't wait to share with our child. Seeing the other side of the world changes you (for the better).  Amber's been to Italy, France, Switzerland, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  Besides China, I've also been to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Spain, and Borneo.  But lately, we haven't had a chance to travel much.  Life, and home ownership, and jobs tend to get in the way.  But when our child is old enough to enjoy it, we can't wait to get back on the travel horse.  We'd love to take her to Italy to see where Amber's family is from, and to meet some of her relatives who still live in Sicily.  I also can't wait to show her the rainforests of Central America, to teach her a few words of Spanish, and to introduce her to the haunting mystery of the little monkeys I used to chase through the forest.

Even though anthropology isn't a part of our careers anymore, it will always be a part of who we both are.  So yes, we too will raise our daughter "anthropologist".  College campuses and trips to far off lands are a part of that.  But, the most important part is the most basic part. It's the everyday things we'll do in little ways to teach her to appreciate (not judge) people, to acknowledge (not fear) difference, and to celebrate (not denigrate) uniqueness.  Because in the end, as my favorite childhood book about anthropologist Margaret Mead proclaimed, there is no greater value than simply understanding.

x's & o's,

Michelle