core

There’s this photo of the cousins that we took during the summer of fourth grade. My mom's side of the family  rented a beach house on the Outer Banks and every time I see this photo, I can’t help but smile. I’m sitting in the center of the group, ultra-tan from a week spent playing in the waves and soaking up the sun. Dark black hair and surrounded by my blonde, blue-eyed family. 

 

Growing up, I told people that I was like my dad because we both had dark hair and my sister was like my mom because they both had blonde hair. It wasn't like my adoption was a secret—it was just that it was never a big deal to me that I didn't look like my family. Though, my parents did everything they could to teach me about my heritage. There was a section of our family bookshelf in the living room lined with Chinese stories. I remember laying on my stomach on our green carpet, thumbing through picture books that taught me about my home country. The Frizz showed me how to use chopsticks when the bus made a stop in ancient China, I Love You Like Crazycakes explained the journey my parents took on an airplane to get me, my dad and I were instructed by picture book on how to count to shí every night before bed.

 

But it's never felt like my own. Your blood, what makes you, you, is not really you. You is the you that grew up on cartwheels in the backyard, staging Christmas concerts with your cousins, crying into the carpet after losing another round of UNO, making up silly dance routines with your sister, the you that shrieks and laughs and skips and feels sad sometimes.

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I have never prescribed to the ideal of staking a claim on a cultural affiliation. No culture has ever felt like mine. What I do feel, though, is a draw towards understanding and re-learning about what I can do for my family. How to be a better daughter, granddaughter, relation, person. I may not look like my family, but there are other ways to inherit. 

 

Be it blood or kin, we inherit something from each other through this connective tissue of environment, upbringing, attitude. Roots, in a sense, but not ones that are cemented. Roots, like vines, entanglements. Routes that we take to get to one another.