Our last week in the islands makes me feel slightly panicky at the thought I haven’t been around to see more family. When my Dad is here, we do the rounds and catch up with pretty much everyone on the island, so I’m covered.
With this trip, I’m flying solo from my dad, and thus the panic starts to set in, and with that my worry of offending someone, I wasn’t aware I was related to in the first place moves up a notch – this can happen easier than you think.
To be honest it’s never been that easy in my mind when it comes to my family dynamic…for starters, being mixed race comes with Ups and Downs. The Up’s side is that you fall into the category of “exotic”, 9 times out of ten, when people cant place you or have never “been” to your side of the world (but they hear it’s really beautiful, and “we’ve seen all of Lord of the Rings movies”), um you age well haha (FOI-Full Of It), but most importantly you have an assortment of cultures to delve into, which hopefully helps explain the multiple faceted slightly askew person that is you, or well, ME. The Down side for me is always looking for but never quite finding the similarities within both sides of my family, and how I fit in within two very different cultures…I am the white sheep in my Island side, and the black sheep in my white Anglo/Euro side.
Now lets face it, ive been living in the UK for a large chunk of my adult life (some of my 20’s and most of my 30’s) – you know the part that offers me ample opportunity to actually take a step back from myself to find out who I really am…which is all good and fine, but the UK generally is not where im going to tap into all those Island vibes I can tell you that much.
Im staunchly proud of my Island heritage, and find myself when around my family for long periods like this, scanning their faces looking for similarities. But, I must also accept that even if the physical similarities aren’t so apparent, we all have the same linage, I am part of them, and they are part of me. So below are “some” of my beautiful family…
Meitaki Aitutaki, Aere Ra for now!
WheresRu 