the pomegranate tiger

I was a banana and I didn't know it. This realization came to me when I was about twelve or thirteen. I was blithely living my life full of the usual pre-teen angst, pre-pubescent teen-idol crushes and general fuzzy-headedness of that age.For the most part, I thought I was just like my friends. But I wasn't. I wrote the above for a prompt at First 50 Words . It got me thinking about how long it took me to realize my own banana-ness. Banana: An Asian person who acts like they are white. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. I had never heard banana used this way until I was in university where, thankfully, I was exposed to a much broader experience. I was raised in a WASP community. In my graduating class of approximately five hundred, fewer than a dozen were non-white. I can probably name them now: Ellen, Nirmal, Linda, Bob, Bev, Doug, Ed, Chuck, Sonny, and another Ellen. I always knew something was off – the snickered racial slurs, the outright snubbing by cer...

One of the benefits of maturing is learning how to handle disagreements without getting fuming mad. It's not that I don't get annoyed or angry; it's that I can let it go much easier. There were times, not so long ago, that if I disagreed with someone and knew in my heart of hearts that they were wrong, I was convinced it was my duty; nay, my moral obligation to show them the error of their ways. In retrospect, I don't think it had much to do with proving them wrong. It was more about proving that I was right. I still remember a discussion - slash – argument with a good friend in college. It was about – are you ready for this? – how winds are named (e.g. westerly, southerly, etc.). My friend said winds were named for the direction in which they blew. In other words, she said a wind blowing from the east towards the west would be called a Westerly. I knew she was wrong because I distinctly remembered my Geography 12 teacher drilling it into us that winds are na...

At eighteen, I thought I had things figured out. In reality, I was clueless. My plan was to go to university, graduate with a degree in nursing, then spend the next few years working on the S.S. HOPE, a peacetime hospital ship that brought healthcare and education programs to countries around the world. Little did I know it would make its last voyage the year I graduated. It ends up it didn't really matter. I met my husband-to-be while in university and we married the year I graduated. Since then, my life has taken all sorts of twists and turns. I’m a romantic idealist at heart, but I’m pragmatic when it comes to everyday life. I tend to carry on, no matter what happens. I figure, there’s not much choice – sit and mope - or live life. Yet, it would’ve been helpful to know at a younger age that there’s no such thing as life going according to “plan”. Life is messy. I think it’s a disservice to young people (to me, young is anyone under 30) when we give them the illusion they can p...

naive: Marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience I've been insulted and called various unflattering things in my life, as one does if you've been around long enough and choose to participate in society. But two terms that have been used in a disparaging way towards me have always been a puzzlement: 'naive' and 'idealistic'. The first because I know I'm not naive, and the second because I don't see idealism as being negative. Actually, these two terms often seem to go together. For example, "You're too naive and idealistic." Or, "How can you be so naive? It'll never work. You're too idealistic." (Other terms that get thrown my way are Pollyanna, goody-two-shoes, soft-headed, do-gooder, etc., etc.) I'm one of those people who think, on the one hand, that the world is going to hell and that we'll probably nuke ourselves out of existence. But, on the other hand, still care abou...