She peered out at me from under a Shinto headdress, dark eyes glistening against the pale backdrop of her face. She gazed down at me without blinking, her lips the color of ... actually, she had no lips. Hello Kitty has no lips. And here she was, dressed in a traditional Japanese bride’s costume. Yours for only $5.99 at McDonald’s -- not just any Mickey D’s, but Mickey D’s in Maui. I ordered my Breakfast Combo -- Portuguese Sausage, Eggs and Rice -- and my Hello Kitty doll, and could barely contain my joy.Ahh, yes. The feeling of coming home, only better. Hawaii is like a crossroads, the birthplace of Asian America. I am thinking all of this as I watch my four-year-old son splashing in the pool. “I love Hawaii!” exclaims Miles, wearing his new swimsuit with built-in floats, “swimming” unfettered for the first time in his life. His joy is so genuine, I wish I could just bottle it up for him to use whenever he needs it in the future. Alas, I have not figured out how to do that ... but I have finally figured out how to work the camcorder, so I settle on videotaping his joy for future reference.
I love Hawaii, too. I realized during this trip that Hawaii brings me a sense of freedom as well, a feeling of instantly being “normal.” It’s the little things, really. Like taking your shoes off when you enter a house, even before you read the signs asking you to take off your shoes. Like going to Costco and finding industrial sized packages of li hing mui, nori, dried cuttlefish, and a book called, The Musubi Man, where a ball of rice gets chased around the island as he yells, “Run, run, fas’ as you can, you no can catch me, I’m the Musubi Man!” Like going to the McDonald’s, where you can order local food like the Chicken Katsu Mini-Plate Lunch Meal or a Portugese Sausage, Eggs and Rice breakfast meal, asking for some shoyu and getting it -- without having to explain that “shoyu" means “soy sauce.” And where Hello Kitty wedding couples come dressed in traditional Japanese, Korean, and Chinese costumes.
And it’s the big things, too. Like noticing that the news desk is anchored by two Asian Americans. And, not just two Asian Americans, but two Asian American men. This is unheard of anywhere else in the country, I’m sure. We have grown to expect maybe one Connie Chung-type female anchor on many newscasts, and perhaps a few Asian American men out in the field, but never have I seen two Asian American men on a news broadcast at the same time. As if that’s not enough, they are covering such topics as the U.S. submarine collision with a Japanese fishing boat, and the landing of a U.S. spyplane in China. And nobody’s questioning their loyalties, even though they have last names that are Japanese and Chinese. They cover another big story, the teachers’ strike -- where the professors from the University of Hawaii are on the picket lines just as the elementary school teachers in the Upcountry -- and I notice that all the union leaders, all the teachers, and even the governor (the “bad guy” in this stand-off) are all Asian American. And, they're wearing aloha shirts, not suits and ties, because that’s what you wear to work on Friday -- “aloha Friday” -- in Hawaii. (Oh, and you thought “casual Friday” was a mainland concept?)
Coming home to a place where I’ve never lived, where Asians are the mainstream.
I indulge for a week in this fantasy, where I can feel like I am part of the empowered, and the foods I was raised on are part of the local vocabulary, even if their origins are Japanese. When it’s finally time to head home, I pack up my Hello Kitty dolls -- one Korean, one Chinese, and one Japanese -- hoping to someday be able to buy them at the Mickey D’s down the street. A few weeks after we get home, our neighborhood McDonald’s has their Hello Kitty promotion -- “the crew” Hello Kitty wedding dolls, all decked out in their McDonald’s uniforms. On their wedding day. Sigh. I guess I’ll have to plan another trip to Maui ... for Hello Kitty, and my own sense of home.
This is a flashback post circa 2001 -- something I wrote before this blog existed.
