Multicultural Multiracial Multiethnic Multi Everything

This is going to be another year of working on organizing family photos and information from 1972-2021. Yup. I started working on the photobooks 2 years ago and it's still ongoing. However, there's a photo that brought back a lovely memory for me.

It's a photo from 1982. We were planning a birthday party for our daughter, Tiffany.

We lived in the Chicagoland area back then in a multicultural/multiracial/multiethnic neighborhood that was perfect for us. When we bought our home we didn't know the joke that it was called the Island of Gentiles in the Sea of Jerusalem. It was winter when we moved in and I was a little worried when I heard of that reference. It was only our second year of living in Chicago. I'd never been out of state from Hawaii like Art. I'd heard of racism in the news. I'd heard of bigotry but hadn't experienced it... yet. So yes, I was worried.

When the older couple across the street came to greet us, I wondered how they would accept or not accept us. I needn't have worried. They became our first friends and even took up the role of protectors. He was a retired colonel and told us their Catholic parochial school even accepted Muslims. I didn't tell him then that we were actually Buddhists. When we needed to get to the hospital in the middle of the night for the birth of our son, Mrs. M was the one who came to stay with our daughter, Tiffany.

We quickly ended up with the most wonderful friends who were Irish Catholic, Jewish, Black, Asian, everything. Our children went to a Catholic pre-school, a Presbyterian pre-school and public school. They attended services/celebrations in Catholic and Presbyterian churches. They went to lots of bar and bat mitzvahs.

One family (from Israel) who we particularly loved invited us to all their family celebrations. At the bar mitzvah for their son (who was also our kids' babysitter) we tasted the most wonderful cake and told them how much we enjoyed it. Their daughter, Pazit worked for the Jewish bakery and was happy to order a cake for Tiffany's birthday.

When we went to pick up the cake, Pazit was shocked. She'd ordered the same sort of flavor cake as the one from her brother's bar mitzvah, but instead of flowers or girlish decoration, there was a giant Star of David. She was trying to explain what happened to the baker and was at such a loss for words that she told them to just look at us and look at the cake!

It was pretty hilarious and rather than having them redo the decoration, we chose to keep it. The other party invitees who were Jewish absolutely loved it. Those children who were not Jewish probably didn't understand the fun of it.

But all in all... seeing this photo just brought back these awesome memories.