Orchid Fingers

I was reading at the breakfast table this morning with Hadassah after everyone else had already left for school and work.  My current book that I'm obsessively reading is Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother by Xinran.

Just happened to read a passage where the author described playing a copy me game with a stranger's child.  The writer and the child made "orchid fingers" at one another.  I had never seen or heard this phrase before.  Her footnote description left no doubt that I knew exactly what she was talking about.

Since Keziah, and now Hadassah too, started taking Chinese dance classes I've begun to learn much about the traditions and beauty of this art form.  So different in many ways from more familiar Western forms of dance like tap, jazz, and ballet.  Watching some of the older students of our instructor you see the importance placed on hand positions.  There is such grace and beauty within the dance just on how the arms and hands move.

So as I read the author's notes about how the fingers are spread open with the middle finger touching the thumb to form a closed circle, my own free hand formed the now familiar shape.  Watching me, Hadassah immediately formed orchid fingers with her hands and exclaimed, "DANCE!"

I know that it may not seem like much, but to me it is one of the many moments in our days when the mixed up worlds in our life collide.  My sweet little girl knows her birth culture.  Recognizes it.  Then, she names it with words from a language she has only been learning to speak for four months.

Okay, I admit it!  We are weird!  Several of my kiddos know bits and pieces of ASL.  Miranda is studying Spanish in school and is amazed at the bits and pieces I still remember.  Caleb, one of the homegrown, is in his third year of learning Mandarin Chinese at the high school and thinks this will be his major in college.  I've got one made in China girl who has lost much of her language, and the other one rapidly learning English.  Then one of the little boys talks of taking German when he gets to high school just so he can be different than everybody else in the family.  Languages, cultures, and traditions from around the globe mingle and mix into our every day life.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...laundry...UGH!