It’s one thing to tell your kids that you chose a great spot to raise them; it’s another thing entirely when your opinion is confirmed by an external source, someone new not just to Plainsboro, but to the United States. Seeing your home through someone else’s eyes opens your own to the wonders and joys that we usually take for granted.
Our guest was Mimi, younger sister of Molly’s best friend from college, who stayed with us this past weekend, passing through on her way to Maine for a month to study for the SAT and practice English with her host family. Mimi is from Morocco, a country that is still very much behind the times in the way it treats its women. Equal opportunities in jobs and education are not exactly abounding. But luckily for these sisters, their father is an English teacher, progressive in his views of the world and his daughters’ places in it, which is why he has sent both to the United States to study and open doors of opportunity they never would have in their homeland.
It’s easy to impress someone for whom everything is new. Mimi’s grand American adventure started in New York, where she met up with her sister, Najwa, Katie, and Molly for a sister double date. She had literally developed blisters on her feet from walking through the streets of New York the entire day, and then in the evening, all four of them met up for dinner and a show — Wicked — something that is still very much a special treat for our family, but for the girls from Morocco, something literally out of this world. While Najwa flew home to Morocco, Mimi was treated to a ride on New Jersey Transit to Princeton Junction.
Katie and Molly had work obligations, so I stepped in as host the next day, finally doing something I hadn’t done all summer, but had to because we had a guest. Isn’t that the way it works? We headed to the shore, 45 minutes to Belmar. How many people can boast that they live so close to some of the world’s finest shoreline?
Mimi gaped at the sights and sounds as we walked along the water and sat in the sand. We did a lot of people watching, and then our obligatory visit to Strollo’s for her first encounter with Italian ice. We watched the raising of the bridge to let the boats sail under, and even that held a fascination for me that I had never appreciated before. Such an event is mostly an annoyance because the traffic backs up, people honk their horns, and express their displeasure at the interruption of their beach time.
But watching the drama through Mimi’s eyes was like watching a Technicolor movie unfold in front of us — the deep blue ripples of the water, the majestic cut of the watercraft, the irate faces of the drivers waiting in traffic, the curiosity of onlookers, the bright, dripping sweetness of Italian ice melting in the sun even before hitting your tongue — the sights, sounds and smells were even more vivid to me because I was experiencing them alongside a first-timer.
Mimi is applying for college in America, and like any student with great grades and even greater aspirations, Princeton would be a dream come true, so we spent the next morning exploring the university.
Typically Princeton is not so much a destination for us, but a place that we drive through to get somewhere else. But not this time. I showed Mimi the chapel and we admired the gorgeous stained glass windows, and rubbed our fingers along the etchings on the wall. We entered the sanctum of the Firestone Library and marveled at the ancient books with their bindings intact, and answered the call of the kid-friendly furniture in the Cotsen Children’s Library to rest our feet for a while. There was a new exhibition of American watercolors at the university’s art museum: world-class art just a stone’s throw away from home.
You really can experience a country through its flavors, and so after Italian ice at the shore, we ate our way through Bent Spoon at Palmer Square, Pinkberry at Quakerbridge Mall, and Thomas Sweet on Nassau Street — not all on the same day.
There was only one sour note in our time together, and it had nothing to do with our family, but everything to do with our country’s culture and world view. Mimi had opened up a college questionnaire and was stumped by the second question. Molly was stumped and so was I.
The application asked Mimi to check the box that she identified with most: white, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander, black or African-American, and Latino. She was stuck because she didn’t consider herself to belong to any of those groups. As a Muslim woman from North Africa, there literally was no place on the page for her. White, though the closest, was uncomfortable.
She had told us of her experience in her country, where often, as a woman, she was starved for her brain to be fed, to be treated with respect for her abilities and intellect. Sometimes, she felt, there was no place at the table for her in Morocco, and now, here, on an application to study in the most progressive country on earth, she was feeling left out as well. I told her we would find the silver lining in this conundrum with two courses of action: first, to notify the school of their egregious omission, and then, to write her application essay on this absolutely perfect topic that had just dropped into her lap.
Mimi, welcome to America, where you can turn adversity into opportunity, where a cloud can have a rainbow lining, just like the Italian ice we enjoyed at the shore. In helping you open your eyes to new experiences, you opened our eyes too, and for that, we thank you.
