Susanna Houland and Maya Scott-Chung

00:05 My name is Maya Elena Scotch. Am I am 45 years old today's date is Friday April 15th, 2011. We're at Kaiser Elementary in Oakland, California. I am here with my friend and fellow parents at Kaiser Elementary.

00:27 My name is Susie Holland. My age is 47 years old I had it's Friday, April 15th 2011.

00:38 We are at Kaiser Elementary in Oakland, California, and I am here with my friends and parents fell parent at Kaiser Elementary.

00:48 So Susie, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and talk story about our families today.

00:56 So I'd like to start just by asking you about them how you came to be in the world, you know where you were born and about your family of origin.

01:07 I was born in Venice Italy.

01:11 I am the product of a 1960s family that had the Good Fortune of moving around the world.

01:21 And we traveled and lived in foreign countries and learn three different languages and I regard that as one of the biggest gifts my parents ever gave us.

01:32 And I carry that experience along with my nationality along with me. Although I am a naturalized at the moment. I still try to instill and pass on very much. Part of me to my time.

01:54 What are the three languages you speak and what are your memories of Italy and some of your early travels?

02:03 Well, my first language, my mother tongue is Italian. My second language is in which English just because I want to get was the first country that we came to it was the United States and that's the first language I learned and the third language is French because upon being transferred from the United States. We were transferred to France and there we stayed for a number of years.

02:34 A my best memories of those years were the travels were the traveling around different countries the

02:47 The beauty in learning different languages and finding the strength in yourself, even though you don't know a language is actually survive and dealing with big changes which made it very easy for me to deal with big changes in my life as they came later on in life and be the supporting wife that I can be to a husband who doesn't like change very much at all. So that that was invaluable and just the ability to be and feel as a citizen of the world rather than the citizen of one country, which I later found in life made me very selective a friend and there are few of us that have had the same experience. A lot of people in the United States think I am from a military family, which I am not.

03:48 But those that have had those kinds of experiences lived went to school and more for more than 6 months, but entire years at a time in different countries have a much wider appreciation of what the world is all about.

04:05 From anyting to philosophy to politics to religion and a much wider appreciation of the differences and acceptance of the differences.

04:18 I'd love to know more about that. I mean is someone I was also lucky to have traveled as a younger person and to have lived for two or three months at a time in a few other countries and I think it very profoundly affected me. Especially I was a 7 year old and lived in India for 3 months in a mushroom in the 70s when my mom went there because her glue died and I think it was just it was absolutely profound to be or not to be a white us American person also named Maya. I had a name that was very common and very sacred in India and was not part of my Scottish Irish American Heritage in and I think just sort of both experiencing the religious and spiritual and cultural values from kind of inside the ashram on the one hand while being very aware that I was also an outsider.

05:10 And I think being shorter and being an eye level with a lot of in a Beggar's on the streets who had leprosy and didn't have legs and just being eye-to-eye with a level of poverty and pain in the one level at the same time is experiencing incredible beauty and strength and resilience and

05:31 Wonderfulness tonight. I think they kind of holding those paradoxes. It's not even just contradiction. I think it's really Paradox within peoples and cultures has been a really quiet internal part of me that I really got you. So I'm curious with you like you you have a multilingual Multicultural internal heart and vision than what are some of the ways that you see that in yourself and also see some of the contrast to see within many people's perspectives in the United States.

06:03 Well, I think it started long ago because my perception started to identify those that were very much open to the international experience that we were all facing at the time and I was in junior high at the time. We had the ability to travel quite a bit while we were located in France. We travel to the south of France, but we did it in such a way that it was very slow and very deliberately made us appreciate what we went through and the places we went through in the people's we talked to even to just change exchange in that recipe.

06:49 And that was much different from the the the day-to-day life that we lived while we lived on in the suburbs of Paris. And at the same time we knew some of the friends that were embracing the international experience within their schools at the time. And those that instead came with a predetermined free imposed assessment of we are Americans and we are the greatest and I don't know who you are, but I'm not even learning your language. So those quickly those people we quickly Softail very quickly and were very frustrated and we're very angry about the whole experience but and and that taught us as a observers to dinner they were going about it the wrong way and it wasn't just Americans it where are their nationalities and it was interesting to see how those

07:48 Preconception were imposed on children and they came to school with those preconception and attitude in and views of the world and those instead that were left to experience the entire to really appreciate an experience the entire experience from the beginning from the most difficult to the most satisfying had a much more and longer lasting relationship Fennimore open view what the rest of the world was all about.

08:17 It also made us pariahs in our own schools because we knew so much in terms of it of just basic daily experience. We can speak three languages. We were it was very hard for us to return back to Italy went after our assignment in France. And I was I was the class clown amongst amongst some things but I was also the one that just challenged every teacher on their assumptions. And at the time in the Italian schools of religion was still a required 1 hour instruction and I were talking the late seventies now and

09:10 I buy that by that time I was in high school and I had experienced people of all religions. I was interested in all kinds of philosophy and I wasn't trying to get the local priest to actually knew how to do which was actually quite funny because every time he came up with an assumption or a decree of you know, based upon Catholic religion. What about the Buddha's? What are they do? What were they have in common with us, you know, and eventually just ask my mother to write a letter to dismiss me for the class cuz that was challenging him too much and he just didn't have the education or the understanding.

09:55 We've even part he just was there to teach the three LED those three pages from the Bible and that's it, you know, and that was very was very sad to see actually. But you know what that's an example of what we faced because on Sudden as people that traveled and experience had experienced different cultures different languages and different mores.

10:20 We were we were challenging to Any teacher that wanted to teach the curriculum and that could not or did not have the ability to think outside the box.

10:32 It's interesting. One of the things I always love looking at the origins of words in different cultures and I was really struck that prejudices prejudging and I really hear you saying that they eating people prejudge based on what they've learned and what they've experienced and I think that there is a way that I hear in NC from what you're saying of living inside questions and being curious and questioning and kind of approaching people and situations knowing that you don't know a lot and just walking in the world that way is

11:10 Is a very different way of walking the thinking that you're safe by rejecting everything. It's one of those things that I try to impart to my six-year-old which is difficult because it's 6 everything is black and white. It's just what they see is what they they don't put judgment on it, but they do see the difference and they do remark on the difference in part of my job as as a parent is to let him understand that maybe just maybe there's another side to whatever the situation that he's describing and a lot of it has to do with social interaction at this point in time and the year and

11:55 Sometimes the black and white supersedes his vision of black and white of the world is superseded because it's what he can actually wrap his head around and sometimes I can just see the little

12:10 Yeah, the little mechanism of working in his head. He's he's carving out of space for that question to be open and Revisited and it's actually quite wonderful to see.

12:26 It is really powerful to see our daughter is being raised trilingual. Also maybeck's mom is from Mexico and is Mexican and Chinese and we have known donor who is Chinese from Argentina. So she's learning Mandarin in Spanish and English in different ways. And so there's that part of her brain that is learning to know that an apple can be three different things and more you but you know, there's three, you know, there's probably almost infinite possibilities. It's a very different thing than just an apple can only be an apple and then it's really interesting Developmental and I'm curious to see when you talk about your job as a parent like I'm interested to see with her. Yes. She has a very very complex social.

13:16 Shoot her lived experience is NFC someone that has Chinese, you know, both Northern Chinese and Mandarin speaking and I'm cantonese-speaking, you know immigrant and born here Mexican and Argentinian Scottish Irish American Experience is culturally and to see how is she develops a language to understand how she articulate own horse clearance like for a long time. She thought that kids that were brown-haired were mixed Heritage always could so many of the kids in her class for multiracial Anixter to his kids and it was sort of like they had one black hair. And when you know blond or brown hair turned into his left hip I was just how she understood like everybody was done to hurt you. That's very excellent and very fascinating and around gender as well. I find it Luna, you know her the way she describes Maybach who she had done.

14:16 Daddy is at her daddy's a girl that looks like a boy and bad of course brought up lots of conversations with her classmates, but then they would like all my daddy's a boy who looks like a boy or my dad is a boy who kind of looks like a gummy like it really had people started questioning in ways that really didn't have to do with sexual orientation, but had to do with perception and internal external Jeff. It's it's it's great to comes up. What's up.

14:44 Wonderful to see but so that's that's my that's my background that and so that's what I bring into our family. I think that because we were white and heterosexual we're off often enough in post superimpose the idea of of you know to your mom and dad and two kids and our family is so far away from that. It's not even funny. First of all Ozzie and Harriet probably had children in their twenties. We had our children our first child in our forties, which is much more in line to the area. We live in

15:27 And I look around at the parents in my classroom and I don't feel out of place at all. Even if we actually had a second child right now. I don't think if we were to feel out of place at all either it was a long arduous Road for us to be to have a child not because of physical reasons, but although there were some minor physical reasons, but mostly because we felt completely unprepared we were in our twenties and most of our friends would say, well, you know by 25, we have to be married and buy 32 you have to have children and butt and they had a plan and my husband I would just look at each other and go.

16:16 Where is it written? I mean, is there a rule that did we miss a class somewhere? Then? We're just not ready to be parents. And I really embrace the idea that we are parents what we were commonly turn late-term parents, but it has come with so much better Joy's I do not feel threatened to my marriage. I don't have to make I didn't have to make the choice that my mother had to make for example of keeping up a brand new marriage and have brand new tile in their arms and figuring out what that was all about.

16:56 And be in finding and find her way through those pressures. I had you know, we had 15 years of marriage. We work really hard during those years and we were dicks. That's the best way I can explain it that we were we were two incomes. No kids and we dropped on his dreads at the drop of a hat. We would go somewhere do something take a take go off and and we could afford it because we had very good jobs and ours life. Now as a family is completely different. We are mostly an income. I'm on the verge of finding a new job by choice of because of where we are in life right now. I have chosen not to return to work full time.

17:56 It is a choice that I made God didn't make lightly but I felt that it was much more important for me to be part of my son's life while he was in school and for his school time, then it was for me to feel guilty and putting in 80 hours a week of work.

18:16 And made feel guilty because they didn't see my face that day.

18:19 And that was that. What those were tough choices to make financially and otherwise

18:27 We are the epitome of the sandwich generation and not only the sandwich generation as identify mostly are in general right now as people who have kids who are either in junior high school and older parents. We are at a different level altogether. We have a young child and older parents and the two will collide very soon because wanted one side is declining faster and the other cuz side is ramping up faster every year so

19:11 Because we are right there in the sandwich generation.

19:16 We also face so weird face as far as a family we faced issues of elderly care. We faced issue of animal care. We faced issue a financial soundness in this area was very hard to find places to live and when we decided to actually purchase a house because we could afford it at the time we couldn't afford it really it was a time when the real estate was really booming and the only place we could really afford it was if we pooled our money together between myself and my sister.

19:56 So our house is now composed of a full-time working vice-president and that would be my sister her two dogs who have the run of the house. They're not small to big.

20:16 My mother who travels on and off and ironically I told her this the other day as a matter fact isn't it? Ironic that after all the times we asked you for your dog when we were young hear you are taking care of two and traveling for just that Express reason taking care of two dogs. I find it ironic don't you and so she travels back and forth from her house in Washington state and stays with us a long periods of time while my sister travels and helps me take care of the dogs.

20:56 And I have my husband and my son and we all live in the same house.

21:06 We consider my mother as part of the family immediate family that lives in the house because she's there so often no for such long periods of time. So it means that I have some elder care to take care of. I have to tiptoe around her abilities to do some things take care of her diabetes to some extent make sure that they're I follow certain schedules and took her to certain diets in the house.

21:37 And yet I have to make sure that everybody around my son knows who's in charge of his education and that everybody can reprimand him on just about anything. It is not their job. It is my job to do that. And so to make everybody aware that that's the situation makes it a very delicate situation. Sometimes my husband works very hard because he works for a company that uses a law firm Billings business model. And so

22:18 Billings are based on how long you are the office and therefore he puts in the extra time.

22:26 I think you would like to go back to where it where we were.

22:30 But has understand that that's not really feasible. Because if we were both working full-time, which we were when my my son was really young it created too much friction amongst us and although it gave us Financial Freedom to some extent.

22:54 It made it did it one of us was always putting extra time in that created friction for there a one place or the other and it's very hard to divide a family in this day and age and saying you don't bite my meeting is more important than your meeting and when I made my decision not to go back to work after I was laid off the next job would not be a full-time job was made with a full realization that financially it was going to be a little bit tougher.

23:32 And

23:36 But by the same token, I just don't see myself being a full-time worker and hiring a nanny to pick up my son Wednesday 1 for example the school finishes early. It's it's I just don't see that. I want to be there.

23:52 It's important. I want to be a participant in the school life which being out of work has allowed me to do much more than I would be even part-time but

24:06 It allows me to be participant in the school part of the school site Council attending board meetings. Although I'm not on the board of the of the PTA and the participant in this very soft tough economic time for schools.

24:22 So yes, we are white and yes, we are two incomes to some extent we are we do have one child. We don't have to.

24:35 That will depend on all of Nature and compromises but it's

24:46 So far away from Ozzie and Harriet.

24:50 That I can't you know all we spent all this time. Just driving how we are not in Harriet, you know, and that makes me understand a lot.

25:01 What some of my friends are going through?

25:05 Some of them are in the same situation. They may not have a sister that lives in the same household or shares the burden of the household. That's we do but still it's it's they are going through very similar situations and when one day I spoke with with with my friends and I said, do you feel like part of the sandwich generation half of them said no, and I said to take care of your mom. Yeah. Do you take her to doctor's appointments or your dad or both of them or stop by their house on a regular basis and you're part of the sandwich generation, you know.

25:46 I do. I think it's really you know, it's it's an interesting thing because you know, I think all of our culture is originally at end of the nuclear family is a very kind of historical better very new contract internet really came out of industrialism and came out of urbanization. And it's it's I find it really ironic. He's a lot of this to do dominant political discourse that the idea that marriage has always been like a, you know, it is seen with instead of you know, a very very narrow, you know, mostly, you know, Christian u.s. American religious context. It's like explains the vast majority of the world and the time immemorial family structures have changed in relationship to whatever was happening geographically and politically and socially and culturally and stuff it.

26:38 The contract is very much a marketing a very clever 1950s 30s and 40s movie and marketing contract. That's what it was. It was a very clever image that was put up there and it was at of appealing image during sometime and young times of War and what not. But you know, I think the the best part of being a sandwich generation is that I get to know parts of my mom's life that

27:15 What that are absolutely incredible we have times in the past couple years had the chance to actually talk about her life as a young girl.

27:29 And when people talk in this country about the war and referring back to World War II it is so far away from what my mom describes her life was because she was in the thick of it. You know, she was under the fascists. She went to school Under the Fascism and Mussolini and her you know, she talks about saving families that were in her school with Jewish of Jewish descent and hiding them in their basement bring them food and putting them on the boat and the her to her father. Although in the fascist are made staved innumerable families and put them on the boat in the middle of the night and save them, you know, and and so hurt I my idea of war is completely different from most Americans when they talk even later generation.

28:29 If they've had a chance to talk to their fathers or grandfathers because she actually lived it. She lives the the no food. No sugar no flour there, you know no soap times and it when you turn around and you look and you can go down to the store.

28:54 Pick up.

28:56 A soap a piece of soap is nowadays. It's very interesting to me. So

29:04 That's that... Part of the sandwich generation has been actually wonderful. I don't think it's always going to be that way. But I have learned so much about her side of the family and what she remembers of my father's side of the family and how they lived in what, you know, the intricacies of family relations during those times those hard times and had to pass on to my son because that is part of his heritage.

29:46 As much as I would like my husband to pass on his side of the family to my son as well.

29:57 So I know that you lived in a lot of places, but I don't actually know about your cultural and ethnic backgrounds in your family. And your husband says well, so was is your mom Italian I've Italian to send my mother's side.

30:23 My grandfather was from the south of Italy.

30:28 They were from a very wealthy family and he was supposed to be he had an arranged marriage from which she left ran away from home.

30:40 And was disowned.

30:43 And he ran to he ran away to the Northwest Northeast part of Italy just where the world war was starting and his idea was to come to America.

30:57 And he said he met my grandmother my mother and my grandmother.

31:03 I lived in polar which is part of the Eastern Peninsula and at the time was part of Italy is now I think part of Croatia.

31:16 And she was of Czechoslovakian and German descent. She had married previously with one child and she was separated because at the time in the 19 in the early nineteen hundreds you weren't allowed to do to have divorce and in most Catholic country. Italy being one of them.

31:42 So she was annulled she was separated and then an old and he. Husband took her child with her back to Czechoslovakia.

31:54 And then she met my grandfather and they had four children.

32:03 One of which died of typhoid in during the war?

32:09 Typhoid fever and he was he became he became part of the army and he was an officer in the Army became part of the Italian Army. So when the fascist came into after World War 1 when the passage came to power he had no choice he had a family to support and he became an officer in the fascist Army.

32:38 And so that was my side of my my my my mother side. My dad's side on the other hand is all mixed. My grandmother was the child of a Italian and migrated to Egypt.

32:58 She had two children. I'm not quite sure what the issue was on how she either lost it was abandoned at the time. She had twins my grandmother being part of one of the twins and she couldn't support them and she literally gave her chilled gave one child the male child of the twins to a priesthood Monastery and he became a Les father and he taught Jim for the rest of his life at that school College of Saint Mark Alexandria, and he gave my grandmother to a very wealthy Italian family.

33:43 As their daughter

33:47 Which created all kinds of issues later on in life, but and so she became part of this large for a wealthy family that traveled and Knew by the time she was a grown woman she spoke.

34:03 She spoke English German French Portuguese Spanish

34:10 Greek

34:13 I think Persian to

34:15 And she she lived in Trieste and that made mostly my family hails from Trieste. Italy and Trieste was the the entry of the austro-hungarian Empire and as such anything and everything came as of it was and still is a very International City open to International.

34:45 An international view of the world because they were the entry of anything and everything that went into the S train in Europe are and she married into a family of very wealthy exporters in Trieste.

35:02 Just never thought his very well and eventually the my grandfather left her when she was very young and she had my father as a single top and he she supported him.

35:17 And was a working woman when there were no working women.

35:22 She supported him and her by herself by working and working through the War and what not.

35:32 And so that's my side of the family does the name Tariq which is my maiden name means in Hungarian was told this by one of my teachers one-year turmeric in the Hungarian or Romanian means coming from Turkey.

35:54 But we know that our side of the family settled in Trieste with Napoleon when Napoleon retreated out of Russia.

36:06 So that's the background to the family. So weird from all over we're from all over.

36:17 One of the things that sells talking to me about the way you tell your story. It says a lot about how you understand family and the connections of family as you know so much about the story the stories of your grandparents in your great-grandparents and that the movement and even children that died and stuff like that. And I think that that is true for many cultures within United States culture, but it's not a tot or supported value system. I think they kind of go back and know that and it's obvious that it's something really deep within you.

36:53 It's it's certainly a oral history that I certainly embraced and have inquire more and more of my mother especially now because when the one I had the time and she has the ability to remember still most of this and so I found out you know in the in the past year to all about my grandfather her father who had ran away and had been disowned about all his brothers and sisters. There's a whole contingent of his family that nobody knows anything about and they don't know who we are because his father and mother disowned them disowned him and refused to help them with one exception.

37:40 And that was his mother during World War II would send care packages to him for his children because they were they had lots of land in the south of Italy and they were very rich landowners basically and they had Olive Groves and farms and all kinds of things. So she would send care package just got only knows how she managed to get them there.

38:08 And apparently my grandfather.

38:11 Who did not want to have anything to do with him from the family of disowned him?

38:17 Threw away the very first care package that ever came to the house to the apartment in Trieste and my mother and my grandmother was a very Savvy and very high should I say I'm exactly you know, where her milk toast with butter looked around the apartment had three small children nothing to feed them and intercept managed to intercept the packages and never tell him that she would would accept them. But she would intercept them. She had managed a way of Interest have them intercept and deliver somewhere else and then she would go to this neighbor and get and they had some sugar some flower some Basics that they are some oil, you know, olive oil in the middle of War. Are you kidding me? You know, and so my mother remembers all of these things and so

39:17 They're all about her. And I've asked about my grandmother's sister's who lived in Trieste and what did they do and what you know, I always thought when I was young I was introduced to them and I remember them and I remember there was some sort of

39:34 Strife between these adults, but I never could understand what this drive was all about and in our discussions with my asking my mother how what was that all about my mother explained it to me and so, you know, it was about obviously about money about who could help take care of their parents at the time and how her grandmother my great-grandmother travel between her daughters houses and eventually

40:08 Voluntarily went to what was called the sanitarium but it was an old folks home basically, but it was state-run and it's all open to everybody in Italy and she submitted herself there at the age of

40:30 Must have been sixty or seventy by herself. It was towards the end of the war and or right after the end of the war and she stayed there for a very long time. I never saw her. I took pictures of her when she turned a hundred and she died at a hundred and 506 something like that. So I saw pictures of her but I never could see her because they wouldn't allow children. So when my mom would go see her she never brought us or brought us to the entry and we have to wait for her at the entry because they wouldn't allow children and for very good reasons, you know and at the time and but there's all this connection to all these people, you know, I met the sister that they knew existed in Czechoslovakia. I remember her coming during the Communist Aaron's in the seventies and late 60s and trap, you know, if she finally managed to actual

41:30 Get a pass out of Czechoslovakia for a week.

41:35 And the only request you made of anybody's that not to ask about politics. They were so afraid they were being taped or things were said about that, you know would be brought up to their lives when they went back home, but you know it we have all these far-flung.

41:55 Relatives and we know the details of their lives as much as they know a little bit of ours.

42:02 And yet part of our family we don't know what else I don't think they know there's a there's a whole contingent of the family. That's South in the south of Italy in Puglia.

42:13 That has absolutely no idea.

42:19 That the product of the brother that was disowned of the six or seven brothers and sisters had children of their own and they had children now, you know, we are at the great-great-grandchild stage now with Marco and

42:33 And sure enough here we are.

42:40 I'm curious as we're closing, you know, obviously stories and understanding history is really important to you. And I'm I'm wondering as you talked about how important being a parent is and your role as a parent. How can you see us bring some of those values and some of these processes around oral history into our children's lives more in school?

43:02 I think we need to make a connection to the older generation because they have valuable experiences. I think we need to make a connection to some of the older generation in Oakland to come and be part of the school or as make one of the things I really like when we were looking at schools last year was Peralta and Peralta has a I don't know where they call it. You call it a deal or whatever an agreement. Let's call it with one of the neighboring or nearby retirement homes where by the children go to the retirement home to be companions to help to 2 to understand the older generation and be compassionate and for the older generation.

44:02 Those are mobile to come to the school and talk about their experiences.

44:08 It's invaluable. It's absolutely invaluable the we grow up often times, especially in these modern times.

44:19 Thinking that our lives are what they are and we only become curious much later. I was brought up in an environment where at the dinner table. Will you be used to talk about my mother and my dad's experiences and how they met and what was their courtship all about and you know to this day I still find little nuggets of details that she's never told us before, you know, or you never told us before when she was still married to my father but she does tell she tells me now and so that oral tradition is important and it's something that I definitely want to impart to my to my to my to my son. He's young yet. He doesn't know what to ask yet, but it's coming it's coming coming right around the corner.

45:12 USA close at that's something that would be a beautiful thing to be able to leave him with storycorps actually is his if it's something that we both have younger children here and hopefully we'll be here for hell. You know, I I know that it's we're lucky to have an Administration and teachers that are really overall really open to new ideas and I'll be beautiful. May I imagine my daughter is going up because I've been working with toy car for a little over a year. She uses storycorps as a verb. She says Mommy can we sit down and storycorps? And I think that is so beautiful. It's so beautiful that she

45:51 Is learning students interviewed my partner the other day and it's like it's becoming kind of automatic to her. She sees me doing it and I do it a lot and different contacts and I think what an incredible thing to be a six-year-old into already have that kind of listening ear and the desire to do that in the end. I'm going to be such a wonderful wonderful skills and marketable skills as well for kids to be learning that really early as well as just in the same way that we are his parents getting to know each other like we have all these places think it was fun. There was this that's really interesting. I've been thinking about doing storycorps actually myself and trying to figure out how I could actually convince my mother to come and do a storycorps on a particular subject.

46:44 Do you know but well I can look up there. I guess someone think so much.