“You smell like Hawaii,” someone told me the other night.
I do not understand what that means. Hawaii is my home, sure, and I carry it around with me wherever I go, but I’ve never known anyone to notice it before without me pointing it out first. I have learned to blend in almost seamlessly with the mass of mainlanders that run through our school. At least, by now I would think that I do. My parents have always called me, if jokingly, a mainland child. I do not possess the normal mannerisms, accent, or taste in food as other children in the islands do. Really, the only way you would be able to tell that I am from the islands is the tone of my skin. And somehow even that is confused for other ethnicities. The broadness of my nose, hips, and feet sometimes do not tell of Hawaiian heritage, but of another one entirely. I am not sure which though-- Mexican? Black? What do you see when you look at me exactly? Because I am not either.
I am a mixed plate of features and languages and opinions that are sometimes coherent and other times not. Sometimes I forget who I am entirely, even though I can very clearly see myself in the mirror. It is hard to know who you really are when you don’t know your cultural background too well. This comic by Jem Yoshioka explains my feelings all too well. Despite the fact that I do not know or particularly relate to all five of my ethnicities, that certainly does not stop me from wondering what it would be like.
When I first arrived at UoP, there was a particular PACS class where we were asked to sit in the middle of the room at desks surrounded by other desks, almost socratic circle style. However, you were only asked to sit in the middle if you were multiethnic. It was extremely shocking to find that I, at first, was the only person sitting in the middle. And even then when someone joined me, and we were asked to list our ethnicities, they only had 2, whereas I had 5. I suddenly felt like I had come under this huge microscope, and all of my classmates were now inspecting me as this rare specimen from Hawaii that they just so happened to get their hands on. I felt desperate to disappear again and blend into the wall so that I would stop being seen as alien or strange in other people’s eyes.
But I always miss my home. I carry it with me when I attend Hawaii Club meetings, and when people talk about going there for spring break. I carry it under my skin and in my hair, coconut and sea salt mixed together under warm sunlight. I think of home and I bring it with me in my full lips and almond eyes and love of plate lunches. I hear “you smell like Hawaii” and suddenly I am home. Thank you for taking me home.
