a little coffee

As I was leaving my art class Wednesday afternoon, one of the students stopped me. “Teacher! Teacher! I have this. My mother made it for you.”

From her bag, she produced a pair of knitted pink baby booties.

Disbelief sent me into instant giggles. I held the little things, so beautifully made I wished they were bigger so I could wear them, thinking what the fuck?

This was the perfect week to have received such a gift. In my other five classes, we’d been discussing marriage and family. (Remember, the art student’s English is too poor to handle any kind of discussion outside a couple sentences about what you like to do in your free time). By and large, Chinese still hold very traditional views of marriage and women. It seems pretty much understand that all the boys and girls will get married (and girls better to do it by their 30s or run the risk of being “shamed”) and procreate. I like to shock my students by telling them about “nontraditional” family life in the U.S. Things like cohabitation, married couples who don’t want children, single-parent families, the high rates of divorce (and multiple divorces), and homosexual marriage. And then I surprise them even more when I tell them I don’t know if I’ll ever get married (“But you have a boyfriend!” they say, to which I shrug and say, “so?”) and I certainly don’t know about kids.

It’s really amazing how amazed, how befuddled they are by “non-traditional” things like cohabitation and homosexual marriage. Many of them just don’t get it. If a student says homosexual marriage is “unreasonable” and you press them for why, “it’s tradition.” Press them further, and you get no where. At least I haven’t yet. One question that comes up constantly in every class is children. How can you have children, how can you make “the next generation” if you are homosexual? they ask. They’re not stupid, they know what adoption is but it doesn’t readily occur to many that people actually do adopt children– or that a gay person would even want a kid. And try explaining that a lesbian, a woman, after all, with her own functioning baby-making equipment, can physically have a baby. It’s a little awkward. As is reminding them that you don’t need to be married to be able to have children. It’s not like once you say your wedding vows a switch gets flipped that says, “OK! Baby-making time!” And yes, there are plenty of single mothers that decide never to marry.

Thinking of all this surely contributed to my surprised laughter as I gaped at the pastel pink booties. I thanked my student and told her, kind of as a reminder that I didn’t actually have a kid, that I couldn’t use these. I don’t think she understood this so I thanked her again, complimented her mother’s knitting talents and scurried out of the classroom, still chuckling. When that finally abated as I was walking across campus, I wondered if I should have reminded her that yes, I have a boyfriend, but we’re not getting married anytime soon. That neither one of us wants kids– at least not now. That yes, I’m a woman but that doesn’t mean I must make a baby. It’s been wearing on me, listening to smart, inquisitive students this week tell me how their society practically requires them to fulfill their woman-destiny by marrying and having a baby. And here I missed an opportunity to remind a few of them that not every woman wants to do that— and that that’s OK.