There was a book I loved as a kid called Amelia’s Notebook. The book itself was formatted like a composition book that school kids use, and it’s basically the very mundane diary of an average 10-year-old girl. Besides the actual diary entries, it was also filled with sketches, mementos, and funny diagrams to add extra commentary. Amelia has an older sister named Cleo (who is absolutely not allowed to read the notebook), a teacher named Ms. Rooney, and a couple of best friends, Leah and Nadia.
Amelia was just an average girl, but I think I loved the mundaneness of her life because my own childhood definitely wasn’t. On my 10th birthday, I was living in the Philippines with my mom, sister, aunts, uncles, and cousins in a sort of gated residential complex, in a part of the country that was prone to monsoons. (Dad was still in the picture at that point, but he was on Army deployment.) They all prepared a feast for my birthday party at my aunt’s house, but it rained that day… to the point of flooding the whole first floor. But as with Filipino families and their parties, the show had to go on (except karaoke, which had to be postponed). So everyone scrambled to put all the electronics on the second floor of the house, stack whatever was stackable, and then eat while standing in knee-deep water.
Flash floods like that are typical for that area and life goes on, even through the rain. In fact, some of the neighbors sailed by on their canoes on their way to get groceries. For them, it was just Tuesday.
I might be thinking a lot about childhood things because I’m in the process of creating a schedule that gives me time to write and publish kids’ books. But also, and most importantly… my sister is pregnant and I’m gonna be an auntie! (Which gives me even more motivation to get these books done.) While thinking through what “auntie support” will look like (probably babysitting and storytime), it also hit me… my parents are gonna be grandparents. So I’m thinking about generational lines, and how strange and wonderful it was to have two very different people who lived 10,000 miles away from each other meet in the exact middle (Hawaii) and bring two girls into the world who will forever straddle their parents’ two cultures.
I’ve always loved that my dad balances out being manly (military experience, currently a truck driver, loves old cars) with being a misunderstood creative weirdo who’s dreamed of being a writer. (He’s also an enneagram 4 personality.) I wasn’t always close to my mom, but I am a lot more now since the pandemic. She’s the boisterous, extroverted, life of the party, and is also extremely practical and the hardest-working person I’ve ever known. My parents aren’t perfect people at all, but I’m glad to be a mix of those two different people.
But anyway, I’m excited to have this new little person being born later this year, and I’m already excited for who they’re going to become.
0 comments