Perception

For several months now, QQ has been adamant about pointing out her mama and daddy to every stranger she meets. It's her MO. She is a social animal, and loves to meet and interact with new people, but first she needs to identify and point to each of us before continuing with any acquaintance.

Naturally, it makes our hearts glad each and every time she does it.

She also, however, has the occasional habit of identifying her mama and/or daddy in random photographs...photographs featuring other people...usually celebrities. She has in the past identified both Steve McQueen and Antoine de Saint-Exupery as "daddy". She has also identified both Anne Curry and John Singer Sargent's "Madame X" as "mommy".

So it was with a great deal of interest, on a recent day at home, that I noticed her identify Molly Ringwald and Michael Schoeffling of Sixteen Candles as "mommy and daddy".

I had to ask her twice, just to make sure I was getting it right. Because, I mean, I have a hard time seeing how either of us resemble either of those characters. But she was adamant. She reiterated. She was sure. It was mommy and daddy in this picture.

This is especially curious since she has had possession of this card since her first weeks home from China. It was a "singing card" that I gave to my husband, probably for an anniversary, before QQ came home. Once here, she showed an immediate interest in "singing cards" (the Dumbo card she liked to play with made me cry several times a day during her first few months home...some of you may remember the "Baby Mine" debacle). She has played the Sixteen Candles card so many times that she wore out the recording. Then (as you can see) she chewed a piece out of the corner.

So it was interesting that, after so many months of hard use, she suddenly saw her mommy and her daddy in this picture.

On a very different level, this identification touches the teen or tweenager in both me and M. I think anyone who grew up in the eighties must identify with this now-iconic image. So yes, the geek in me has to admit that I am tickled pink that our daughter identifies us with these two characters, at this particular moment in the film. On a more rational level, I also thinks it speaks well for her perception of our relationship. The fact that she identifies us with the ne plus ultra of teenage romantic fantasy speaks well for our level of connection, don't you think?