Multiracial

Japanese should not forget that America is a multiracial nation.

After ten o'clock in the morning on the 4th of March of 2022, on Lulu Island, on my way to the pizzeria, I took the long route through the school playground and field, and I sat in the little gazebo, as I gazed at the grey-sky vista. After lunchtime, sunny then, I went to the cafe for iced black tea. There were old Russian men, perhaps with a bit of Hun or other Mongoloid ancestry. A handsome medium-height dark-haired bearded man in army-green pants was waiting in line. Like engraved or sculpted through his light sweater in light grey were his nipples and tight muscles. At my table, a brown student seated himself to eat a black box of sushi with chopsticks and drink a red can of black cola. There were many multiracial students standing around.

In the morning of the 5th of March of 2022, I ate at the pizzeria and drank iced black tea at the cafe, where Rob with now long brown hair, with a black sweater and orange worker pants, entered to greet me and Don, sitting at separate tables. A brown man in a white T-shirt and sleeveless black vest came to get coffee, his muscular arms writhing. I spent a minute in the woods. As I approached my house, I waved to Derek my Filipino neighbour in a green tracksuit, his mesomorphic silhouette showing. In the sunny afternoon, going back to the pizzeria, I saw, on the other side of the main road, a whole Jewish family with children, all wearing Sabbath synagogue attire. I waved to Gurpreet the Sikh at the gasoline station. At the pizzeria's front, a thickset bicyclist in black parked and locked his bicycle. I ate a pizza slice and drank a cold diet cola. Northbound, homebound, I could see the snowcapped mountains. Near my home, I waved to my Fijian multiracial neighbours, the grandson Darius and his grandmother Moli, whose name meant "orange" in Fijian.

On the 11th of March of 2022, a grey morning, I was at the Lulu Island pizzeria, as three vendors, two South Asians and the Filipina, Rose, were busy making orders behind the counter. I had a Hawaiian slice and iced tea. Then, I went to the grocery store looking for dried anchovies, but there was none, according to the two Filipina workers there, so I bought instead five packets of frozen crab-flavoured wild pollock, or kamaboko, and a bag of frozen sole fillets. Then, I went to the cafe, where there was a long line. In front of me was a big boy in shorts, his meaty legs showing. A stocky man in a grey T-shirt and black track pants came in and out. An old man was reading an old book about the ice-hockey player Wayne Gretzky. Drinking my black iced tea, I sat near a table of a Bosnian couple, speaking Bosnian. The cafe music was multilingual, and I could hear Mexican lyrics,"Llorando, llorando, llorando": "Crying, crying, crying." An old man who was a regular before and had moved to White Rock gave me a little KitKat chocolate bar, wrapped in red paper. In the afternoon, I returned to the packed pizzeria to enjoy a pesto cheese slice and iced black diet cola. I could not sit in my usual corner. There were multiracial girl students, with expensive bubble teas. Outside near the greengrocery, white students walked by, saying, "We rather have salvation from suffering." It was drizzling.

On the 31st of March of 2022, morning, for a change from my pizzeria habit, I went straight to the cafe, where I drank iced black tea and ate barbecue potato chips. I saw Lizbeth, the Mexican ex-barista, and I asked her how her dance classes were going. She taught Dance Feet and Zumba, founded in Colombia. At the sandwich shop, I ate a tuna sandwich with black olives and drank black coffee. There were two muscular brown labourers ordering. In the afternoon, I ate two pizza pieces with a diet cola at the pizzeria. There were many multiracial customers, like an anthropological rainbow.

As a white European-American woman who had grown up in the United States, Donna Jackson was not prepared for the reactions that she and her Japanese-American husband encountered when they began their multiracial family a decade ago.

My neighbours, the Wongs, who are multiracial from Fiji, seem intimidated by, and simultaneously jealous of, Latinate culture. Once a British colony, Fiji was never a "donkey" as was my homeland, the Philippines. I suspect that many Anglophones with less than a university education still squirm at long acrolectal Greco-Latin words in English, and they try to settle in their basilectal Anglo-Saxon speech. Tangentially, I much admire French-influenced paradises like Tahiti and Mayotte. Maybe, the Wongs should learn Dutch.

The nature of the Germanic-Mediterranean dichotomy of English vocabulary seems still a novelty for many people, including my neighbours, the Wongs, who are multiracial from Fiji, once a British colony. The more educated an Anglophone is, the more acrolectal Mediterranean is the vocabulary. The less educated an Anglophone is, the more basilectal Germanic is the vocabulary. The late inventor, Buckminster Fuller, was very experimental in his English writing, as he concocted new-fangled words from Mediterranean and Germanic roots. He thought that using words only found in the dictionary was like living in a prison.

Native Fijians are Melanesians, a kind of Australoid people, but they speak a Malayo-Polynesian language, perhaps adopted anciently from islander neighbours who were not Melanesians. My neighbours, the Wongs, who are multiracial from Fiji, know a bit of Fijian. They like learning English, but I say to them, "Your Fijian is much more beautiful!"

I walked again. Around 15:00, I found myself in Tim Hortons café again, this time for an Earl Grey tea with oat milk. At first, in the hall, there were only I at one corner and a lively olive-skinned black-haired man sitting at another corner. The sunshine bathed the hall through the bay windows. Then, a threesome African family sat and ate, then left. Some multiracial kids came to sit and read printed books. A familiar big-bodied Japanoid came in, holding a big plastic jug with dark purplish juice liquid inside. He ordered a pinkish red slush drink, and he sat a table in front of me. He was wearing a brown checkered jacket, green shirt, and blue jeans. He carried a big green sack. He plugged earphones into his ears.