whoa nellie

Today Trang took us (Trang's daughter LA, me, T, & VL) to her secret kid spot The Brunk Children's Museum of Immigration in nearby Andersonville. Like any great children's museum, it had really great interactive roleplay exhibits; in this case, of life in the old country, the journey to America, and life in America. Not to detract from the museum's Swedish mission nor to detract from the basic fun-ness of it, I must allow that it's a rather grandiose museum name that surpasses its subject by far since it focuses on a very specific segment of Swedish immigration in the 1800s. The museum acknowledges as much:

The Museum has a Swedish focus; however, the story of Swedish immigration parallels that of many other groups who left the old world behind and forged new lives in America.

Indeed, there was the almost universalized American romantic meme of immigrating to America in the 1800s-a least if one was a European settler and not an African slave or a Chinese coolie or a dispossessed Injun. That substantial historical context aside, there was definite wholesome, rustic charm to delight my girlish homesteading heart having grown up reading & watching Little House on the Prairie. Think roleplaying Laura Ingalls Wilder. Plus, who doesn't love kid-sized pinafores, cast iron stoves, coffee mills, and chamberpots? The wooden milking cow that one could actually milk was RAD. So Sweden farmhouse in the 1800s was lots of fun for the girls. They cooked us fish, made us coffee, and had lots and lots of kitchentime fun. Then we took the cruise ship to America, a quick journey really because the girls weren't interested in rowing or shuffleboard. And then onto pioneer America of the 1800s, where the little one room cabin was adorned with hand embroidered aphorism in cryptic Swedish, with Ikea furniture (I kid you not), and *real* animal pelts-ugh, it looked way cuter on the actual racoons and coyotes. There was a darling garden handmade with recycled/repurposed rubber tires, boxes, fabric. Tucked away in a corner in front of the emergency exit was a small life raft-a story symbol of the desperate third world refugee influx to Sweden. This display was marked DO NOT PLAY. Refugee boat stories are depressing and not to be roleplayed, apparently.

At any rate, I thought wouldn't it be great for VL & LA to have kid-sized dioramas of vietnamese life? Oh, or better yet, a children's museum that could really reflect the diversity of immigration experiences? To come over, one could chose the boat or an airplane or... climb a barbwire fence. And then Life in America could reflect more recent realities like uh, urban homesteading, public housing, section 8, refugee camps... While not without humanitarian precedent, this roleplaying idea quickly devolved. Perhaps like the fragile refugee life-raft diorama, some stories are not meant to be roleplayed...

How do we tell our stories to our children?