I didn't see this day coming. I saw the arguments, the talking back, the defiance of pre-teen girls. I knew we'd fight about doing chores and why I had said no to their sleeping over with so and so. I thought I had to be prepared with answers and the platitudes for those occasions they would come to me in tears, overcome with disappointment, overwhelmed by the cruelty of the world. I was prepared to be uncool, with the generational uncoolness of being a middle-aged, somewhat over-the-hill mother. At least we were on a level playing field.

Until we walked out the Steiners' house today and Izzy said, "Mum, you're embarrassing."

Ouch!! Wait a minute! I've come around to accepting the fact that my kids will never think of me as young and lithe. I don't even mind that they think I'm mean. I can live with being out of touch. But an embarrassment? Someone just shoot me now.

And with that, you realise that the gains you thought you had made since you were that awkward teenager were fallacious. I was embarrassed then and I had good reason. So I really do rub people up the wrong way. I do laugh in that weird braying way that my mother used to criticise me for. My friends really are looking at me and thinking, god, she's loud. So, maybe it's not Alex who needs the social etiquette class after all but me.

Jamestown and Williamsburg. Two important towns in the formation of the United States that I never even heard of until about two weeks ago when Izzy picked a history project on American colonists and they popped up on my radar. My husband suggested we go to Williamsburg so she could see colonial life for herself.

It's like Disneyland for American history, a (Singaporean) friend described it to me. She's right. Some 85 per cent of the town has been preserved and restored -- much of it on the dime of John D Rockefeller -- and is now set up like a living history. The homes, shops, eateries and denizens of the historic area attempt to recreate life as it was circa 1775. There are also enactments -- some really excellent, like turncoat Benedict Arnold riding to town to tell the people they've been retaken by the British -- going on throughout the day.

About 9 miles across the James River is Jamestown, where 156 men women and children first came ashore in 1607 to set up England's first permanent colony in the New World. Jamestown no longer exists really, except as a recreation of that first permanent settlement (the first settlement, of course, was the lost colony in Roanoake, NC, which we visited in January). I found out that Jamestown (known as Powhatan then to the Indian tribes) was where the native maiden Pocahontas was abducted and married off to an Englishman. I was right about Disney!

I got a big kick out of our weekend in Virginia. In Singapore there are precious few relics left of the past and it was fun to see the hat tipped so courteously to it in a place like Williamsburg. Of course, in Europe, there would be no need for such elaborate machinations as people live with the past around them and very much alive in the present.

But in a country like America, which is always looking ahead (just like Singapore), I guess it takes effort to make sure that the past is not eradicated. Some of the re-imagining can be tacky (the Kings Arms Tavern has to serve Ye Olde Chicken Fingers alongside Colonial Game Pye) but for the most part it was professionally and respectfully done. The front and back doors of the Withe house (Withe was the first law professor of the College of William and Mary) are the originals, and it gives one goose bumps to turn the door knob to go inside and realise that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had done the same.

But while J and I really enjoyed the experience, the kids showed only the occasional glimmer of interest. Mostly they bellyached. I'm tired, I'm bored, it's too much walking, it's hot, you never let us do anything we want to.

Oh boy.

No amount of persuasion that this is after all where their history as Americans all began cut any ice with them. They are 21st century kids. Izzy can accept the importance of knowing one's roots -- until she gets tired anyway -- but Lexi was totally unmoved.

I just hope she gets the point of it some day. Of the two, she is also the one who whinges every - single - Monday - about having to study Chinese. She doesn't see the need to keep nurturing those other roots of hers, in Asia, unless it's for bak chor mee!

And that's the carrot I'll use to keep her anchored to Singapore. I am loath that they should lose their connections -- either to America or to Singapore -- so I am thinking that it might not be a bad idea to spend at least two months each year in Asia. If I had my way, I would make it the whole summer of three months but I guess they would want to see something of their friends in America during their vacation time. Though the truth is that many of their friends in Chapel Hill are not in town for the whole summer either.

But it would be a pity if Lexi and Izzy do not realise and appreciate what a heritage they have. The genteel university town of Williamsburg is as remote in appearance and climate as you can get from urban Singapore. That both had a part to play in my daughters' being is a blending that is uniquely theirs.