The story of me being Canadian

"You're Canadian?" read the one line e-mail my friend from Qingdao shot me last week.

(He had invited our girls to a July 4th party at the English book store he manages in QD, and I had sent back regrets.)

I could sense an inkling of incredulousness, as I sent the message to the trash. I'll explain it to him when we get back, I thought a little wearily... what I have been explaining my whole life:

my dad is Canadian

my mum is American

we grew up (mostly) in the US, but my parents moved back to Canada when I was in college, and, since I was under 21 I qualified for Canadian citizenship.

When I was growing up my Dad had a green card, paid US taxes, and seemed like any other American bloke, except that he couldn't vote. (Which must have, at some points in the 80s and 90s felt like a blessing.)

Today my three sibs and I are are stretched out across four countries. I have a sister in the US, a sister here in Canada, and a brother living in Japan.

It felt cumbersome to explain the details when I was a child. And awkward. We lived largely in the mid-western United States, in agrarian societies with little mobility. (I married a man who had grown up in the same county both of his parents had.)

But sometimes I use it as a crutch. Nobody ever says, "Don't be the ugly Canadian," when traveling abroad, they way they say, "Don't be the ugly American." Because, Canadians are by-and-large easy going, and well-liked internationally. When a strong anti-French sentiment was sweeping China (pre-Olympics, during the torch relay across Europe), taxi drivers would routinely ask if I was French. I would tell them I wasn't, and then for good measure toss in, "I'm Canadian." When a large group of Iraqi men cornered us in a public garden in Shanghai, in the waning months of W's presidency I whispered loudly to Mr Johnson, "Just tell them we're Canadian."

Since moving abroad, however, I realized that the quandary of my citizenship, and my parents' situation was not all that unique. My kids have friends with dual citizenships and multiple passports. I now have lots of friends who have spouses from other countries.

At least my parents both spoke English. I have many friends who don't share a same first language as their spouse. Some rely on English for their common language within their marriage and family, even if English is not a their mother tongue. I think of how often communication between the sexes is often convoluted, and think how it must be even more so when the language is yet another barrier. Yet somehow it works.

I often overhear my kids explaining where they fit in this way:

We are Americans, but we live in China

or sometimes they say:
Wo men shi Meiguo ren, dan shi wo me zhu zai Zhongguo

我们美国，但是我们在中国住

And then I wonder, will they someday feel like all the explaining is cumbersome and awkward? or is it simply now part of the routine?