I Made So Many Mistakes!

My kids, my dad, and a Japanese student who stayed with us — more than once!

Northeastern Vermont probably doesn’t seem like a place to start meeting Asians. But St. Johnsbury Academy, where my kids went to high school, not only has an enduring exchange program with a Japanese high school — it also teaches Japanese as a classroom course.

Single mom freelancing and balancing all I could, I finally bought a little house by a lake in 1992, the day before I turned 40 and the autumn of my first son’s high school entry. By Thanksgiving, we’d fallen into the pattern that would hold for years to come: My kids brought home smart, engaging Asian friends who couldn’t exactly “go home for the weekend” — or even a holiday break — to families on the other side of the world.

It should be simple enough, right? More mac and cheese in the pot; more burgers; some extra packets of ramen noodles and plenty of rice. And sleeping bags, and everyone willing to take turns in the one small bathroom. (Lots of towels to air out.) I’d hosted kids’ sleepovers before.

But I didn’t know half of what I’d need to know — and I made mistakes!!

The first one I really felt bad about happened in the car, taking one of the Japanese boys back to the school at the end of his two weeks in America. How hard we’d all had to work to communicate! His scraps of English, our smaller ones of Japanese, lots of sign language and flipping the pages of…