Tribes and Go U NU

My friend DJ had his birthday party in Chicago this weekend. DJ is Taiwanese-American, but doesn't feel Taiwanese or American. Actually, he wrote an essay about his confusion about which is his tribe in Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck. He grew up in my white, middle class, Midwestern neighborhood where ethnic diversity meant Scots, Irish and Anglos. In my high school graduating class of six hundred, you could count the people of color on two hands. DJ was one of them. He wrote about that he doesn't really know what it means to be Chinese, but nor does he feel white. It wasn't until he got out of college that he made friends with Asians. And then he married an African-American.

I never thought of DJ as an outsider, but it doesn't matter what I think. I think of the old SNL skit where Eddie Murphy puts on white face, calls himself Mr. White, and sees how he is treated as a white guy in the world. He gets a free newspaper and bankers give him money for free, which only happens to people like Trump and George Bush. (Actually not Trump. American bankers think he is a bad business guy; hence, Trump's involvement with the Russian mob. I digress.)

I have a friend here who is Indian who just moved to Seattle. If he wants to make friends, it is easy. All he has to do is show up at a cricket game or hang out at ex-pat events for Indians and boom, he can have a bunch of friends, just that.

For someone who looks like every other goldfish in the bowl, it is harder to find my tribe when the whole place looks exactly like me. Everyone is my tribe, and no one is. That may be the whitest, whiniest thing anyone has ever said, but I have never been to surprise parties on buses like Eddie Murphy imagined.

I can't really complain because I have friends. I have lots of friends, but I have to work to get them. I don't have them because I have a cultural or other affinity group. I am not even really ethnic. My maternal grandparents are from Italy and my dad's family has been in the U.S. since the 1860's, so where does that put me? Who is like me besides sixty percent of America? I don't want to be like sixty percent of America. I don't have a massive extended family I can go whine to, to cry to, to have them pick me up, that I both love and hate. I want a tribe, and group of people who will have my back and then I can have theirs.

This past weekend, I was at my friend DJ's birthday party in Chicago where I met Iris. She was a spitfire about four feet tall and about sixty years old. In the conversation, it came up that I went to Northwestern.

"I don't like going out with my Northwestern friends," she said. "They all know about 700 people from Northwestern and they run into all of them when they go out."

I thought about this. At first it made me kind of sad because if I still lived in Chicago, I might have 700 extra friends. Now, I live two thousand miles from Evanston, and yet these people are still part of my tribe, even if I didn't know them way back when.

Clarissa, Jessica and Sasha--three women all from NU who have snuck into my life in Seattle. Sasha has a kid in Wilderness therapy, the same program and same team as the Boy but they missed each other by a few weeks. When Sasha found me on FaceBook, she connected with me and we talked for hours. I hadn't seen or heard from her since graduation. I know Clarissa from the Boy's soccer team. She has been cheering me on about my person life: define what you want, without a face. I told her I hate complaining about my life, that I sound like a seventh grade girl with all of my "he saids-she saids."

"No," she said. "You need to talk about his stuff. If you don't, that is when things will go bad." She said something more eloquent, but I was so touched I don't remember her exact words. She not only wanted to listen to my bullshit, but she was encouraging me to talk about it more. And Jessica reminds me that it is okay to be miserable right now. This is a hard time with the Boy off to therapy so he doesn't kill himself or succumb to addiction.

And there is it--my tribe, or at least one important slice: the women of NU who treat me like their sister. They support me and gently push me and are helping me grow. They have my back and tell me that I am okay and I believe them. Isn't that what a tribe is for?