Within pages of opening ?If It?s Not One Thing, It?s Your Mother? by Julia Sweeney (familiar to me, and many, as a former star of ?Saturday Night Live? and the creator of the one-woman show and memoir ?God Said Ha!?), I felt like I?d made a new friend ? a funny, wry, so-cool-she-doesn?t-care-about-being-cool fellow parent with a voice I loved. I asked Julia for permission to share some of the book (it?s below) and I also asked her (among other things) what it?s like to see the world through her eyes.
Q.
Tell me about being someone who always finds the funny in things.
A.
I?m not sure I know why I do that. It?s just so much a part of me. I see the absurd in everything. In some ways my harder task is to make sure I take things seriously.
Q.
You mean, you see things ? even hard things ? as funny while you?re living them, not just later on?
A.
I just see the absurd in situations first. Even when I was diagnosed with cancer, I was laughing ? which I think you would probably say was denial, but I don?t think it?s denial. It?s not like I?m avoiding the seriousness of it. It?s just that the absurdity of whatever it is is just so potent in my mind.
Q.
When you adopted your daughter from China, you found that the orphanage had named her Mulan ? and this was not long after the Disney movie ?Mulan? appeared. As an adoptive parent of a Chinese daughter myself, I know how fraught the cultural question of how we name our girls can be ? how quickly did you see the absurd in that?
A.
It was like it was a joke that had been played on me. I was looking for the cameras. I was like, come on. Her name is not Mulan. And then part of me felt suspicious that they really had named her Mulan because of the movie. But the farther we get away from the movie, the better it is. Now we meet people who don?t even make the connection. But at the time?
There?s more about Mulan?s name (which is, of course, more than just about a name) in an excerpt from ?If It?s Not One Thing, It?s Your Mother? below. Julia Sweeney?s ability to see the absurd first and the seriousness second (but no less profoundly, although she wouldn?t say it herself) is what I so enjoyed in her writing ? enjoyed so much that I?ve asked her to do more. Starting in May, Julia Sweeney will become a regular (if sporadic, as befits her) contributor to Motherlode, appearing here to share her vision of the smaller absurdities of being a parent with us all.
Like the Movie
Julia Sweeney
The baby I was adopting was officially named Tian Mulan. Tian was the name of the town in which she was found, and was presumably from. This name was used as her ?family name.? Mulan was the name they?d given her at the orphanage. ?Mu? means strong in Chinese, and ?Lan? means beautiful. Even though I thought it was a lovely name, I couldn?t let her keep it. I worked in Hollywood. Mulan was a popular Disney animated film. People would think it was the only Chinese name I could think of. On the other hand, I didn?t want to dismiss this name. Maybe someone in the orphanage really did think, when they first saw her, ?strong? and ?beautiful.? I decided to make Mulan her middle name. Tara Mulan Sweeney. This is what I wrote on all the documents.
When Tara and I walked in the front door of my house ? just the two of us ? she walked in on her own. At 17 months old, she was walking. This dramatic ?threshold moment? was nothing like I thought it would be. I?d envisioned myself carrying an infant in a snuggly. I had truly acquired a person, and she entered her new home on her own two feet.
We went to a lot of parks. I?d lived in Los Angeles for 20 years and had never noticed children?s playgrounds. Suddenly with a toddler, they sprang out at me everywhere. People seem much more likely to approach you when you have a child, and that?s both a great and frightening thing. Once someone asked me at the park, ?Is her father Chinese?? And I said, ?Yeah. I think so. I mean, it sure seems like it.?
They would also go up to Tara and ask her for her name, and she just would stare at them blankly and say nothing. I would allow a short pause and then answer ?Tara? for her. One day when she was almost 3 years old, an elderly man leaned over and asked, ?What?s your name, little girl?? I said, ?Tara,? and simultaneously I heard my daughter say in a clear, loud voice, ?Mulan.? She looked at me with a frown, as if to say, ?You can call me Tara. But I answer to Mulan.?
I had to give it up. She was Mulan.
After that, I replied ?Mulan? when people asked her name.
Their faces would freeze in a smile and they?d say, ?You mean, like after the movie?? And I?d say in a gush, ?No, no. That was her name in China. I wanted to name her ? well, I did name her Tara, but . . . blah blah blah.? I soon tired of that song and dance and eventually just answered emphatically and slowly, ?Yes. After the movie.?
Once, a man asked me, ?Like after Moulin Rouge??
I didn?t get to name her in the end. All that frothy blather about the power of giving someone a name, about (read the following nasally, please) dictating the sounds that will emanate from other people?s mouths to identify my daughter, was all for naught. A pretty good introductory lesson in parenting, I think.
From ?If It?s Not One Thing, It?s Your Mother? by Julia Sweeney. Copyright ? 2013 by Julia Sweeney. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc, NY.
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