The Good Girls

Tango

2011-08-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

You glide down the freeway with all your senses acutely altered. Everything looks the same, yet everything feels different.

She says I’m not sure, but to you she means it’s not promising, and it sounds like a bomb exploded somewhere inside of you, only blood does not flow and nobody could see the hole the blast has made. You are certain if a doctor says she’s not sure, it means the odds are good that you are doomed.

You argue with _______ (God, Buddha, Allah, …) that it is not fair after telling yourself this isn’t true, this couldn’t be true and finally accepting that it is true. You do everything consciously right. You eat right. You keep your weight on the right side of obese line. You hate smokers and you drink sparingly. You even walk your dog everyday, five times a week whenever time and mood allow it. There is nothing you could have done to make yourself healthier, and if there is, you are convinced they haven’t been invented yet.

How in vain it all is. There was certainly an inarguable reason for each of the knick knack, paper, souvenir, furniture, clothes, jewelry, key chain, and all of the “just in cases” that you have to keep, but you can no longer remember why. How you fumed over the neighbor’s dog doing its mud pie business on your lawn, but now you know there may be a chance you won’t be here to enjoy your lawn much longer. And the reason why you stopped talking to ________? You search high and low in your head, but a valid “why” could not be found anywhere. There was a plausible reason you went on trips with friends and thought your life was wonderful and somehow would stay wonderful. God has a different plan for you. It was just not the right time to reveal it to you yet. The noisy neighbor’s dog barking non-stop drove you crazy, but can no longer make you angry, only sad, because you may not have to suffer it much longer. The trees in the backyard will probably be here long after you are gone, and that day could be sooner than you know.

Maybe you did something punishable in God’s eye and now is the time to repent. You fight back tears and make resolutions. You will be more patient with your mom, who has the patience of a dictator. You will forgive your friend’s little faults here and there, because you are certainly not perfect yourself. You will let your loved ones know, despite the difficulty, how much you love them, and do it often. But you will do these only if God lets you live and the result turns out negative. You are not going to do any business in a cost ineffective way.

All these are going through your mind three hundred times a day, regardless what you do to distract, encourage, or mentally slapping yourself in the face to make it disappear. Some days you are at the bottom of the ride and every minute is a torture to endure. Some days you pick yourself up and tell yourself “I can fight it. So many people fought and won. So can I.” But a little voice at the back of your head says, at the same time, “Yeah, but so many people fought and lost, too!” So the cycle repeats like the big wheels in a carnival. Days lost meaning and loved ones stopped talking to you because you are acting weird. Be that way, you say to yourself, you guys are going to regret it when you find out I have a terminal disease! But it gives you little comfort, if any.

And the call comes when you least expect it--inside of a grocery store. She does not come straight out and say it. Instead, she asks how you feel, is everything okay, is the incision healing fine, etc, etc. You warn yourself “This can't be good. She is easing me into the bad news. Don’t cry. Don’t fall apart now.” while looking frantically around for something to hold on or sit down, but there isn’t any in the bacon and sausage section. You push the cart to the side and hide your face in front of the cold freezer, so nobody can see your devastated expression. After a hundred years of unbearable chitchat and pleasantries, she finally tells you the biopsy turns out to be benign, and she will see you in a year. At this point your stress level is at the highest, and, like an overstretched rubber band all of a sudden let loose, you just want to scream “This should be the first sentence you say, dumb ass!” -- already forgetting the “be more patient” promise you made earlier.

Looking back at the dark valley you just traversed, you still seem to be able to see the intertwined shadow of God and Lucifer. Not only they are constantly tangoing together, they are exceedingly more intimate than you had ever realized.

Wholesome Land

2011-06-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

"We get free parking at the hotel. We just need to tip the valet." Jesse reminded me.
Tip? Somehow the word triggered a wild thought, "Are they wearing G-strings?"
"Absolutely not!" Jesse used the tone that left me no wiggle room, but I couldn't stop. I went on, "Where am I going to stuff all those dollar bills then?"
"Do not talk like that when we're there. I will be so embarrassed." She rolled her eyes and shook her head at the same time. Since when she's the good girl?
"And no F word, no goddammit, no cussing while down there. Remember: we are going to the Bible Belt." She added.

I'm already not liking this pending trip much--not that I cuss often. I just don't want to walk on ice all the time while there. Sometimes my mouth has its own idea of what to blurt out aloud. Plus, it's 95 degrees there with 69% humidity, and this is only the beginning of June.

She also suggested a show we should see with the word "shepherd" in the title. I told her I wasn't going to travel two thousand miles to see a show of gospel music. The phrase "wholesome fun" sounds alarmingly unfun to me.

I gave another serious consideration to the dress I'm going to wear for the event: collarless, sleeveless summer dress with big flower-and-leaf design all over, and a neckline that doesn't really say "I'm a nice Catholic girl" either. I don't want to cause any heart attacks with it--one memorial is already too much. I could hear them whisper to each other now: Look at that woman from California! And look they all will, because I will have to sit up front to "man" the laptop and TV for the video showing.

Let them gasp, I decided. I'm doing this for Jesse, who told everyone to dress colorfully for the occasion since Wes, Missouri born and raised, loved color. The idea didn't go well with folks back in his hometown, who had a hard time understanding the concept of "celebration of life" in Jesse's email. They solemnly reminded her that this was a memorial, not a celebration.

We were going home when the G-string conversation occurred, after spending an afternoon at Monterey, where Wes' ashes were scattered. She took a panorama view with her video camera of the bench on which they often used to sit, the ocean waves crashing on the rocks, and the golf course; but the sun wasn't cooperating and not a single ray was beaming down when we got there. It was normal for Monterey, where it's always grey, cold and overcast, but we were hoping Wes would pull some strings up there and perform a small miracle.

To my relief, and sadness that followed, I didn't see any ashes among the ice plants by the bench. I always hear stories of wandering spirits that couldn't rest until their earthly remains are properly buried. What about spirits of cremated remains that are scattered about? How are they going to find peace? Do we imagine the unsettling souls because our own spirits need to be comforted after a loved one departed? I will make this the number one question to ask of the good folks at the Bible Belt.

Better get ready, Branson--California girls coming your way in two weeks. It's hard to predict which party will be more surprised.

* * *

You know you're not in California anymore when you see this sign at the entrance of the lady's room at Denver airport:

I shall hate to imagine what will be flying about in the event of a tornado attack.

But I do like the Gulliver's Travels inspired, cereal-bowl-and-donut shaped, mysterious airport construction:

Our hotel room overlooks the river that meanders around the city:

And I would enjoy the serene view even more if it wasn't 95 to 100 degrees outside everyday.

This bridge hides a dark history: Two black families moved into the city in the 50s. One of the men of the families was found hanging from the bridge one day. The other family moved out soon after. It hurts me in the chest every time I think about it. I'd like to think we have progressed admirably, if not quickly, since that time.

BBQ in Missouri style: Five different types of sauce and a whole roll of paper towels:

If a gun hanging in a holster won't make you work your hardest in the office, I don't know what will:

It was actually in someone's office.

Shoji Tabuchi's theater looks great at night outside:

But it's practically shabby comparing to it's restrooms inside:

You can literally entertain your most distinguished guests here.

Baldnobbers was the first show in Branson and the hillbillies were truly hilarious:

But if you ask anybody in Branson you will be told that they are Arkansans.

I found out later Wes's brothers were planning on putting on bucktooth and overalls to welcome us at the airport, simply because I had asked Jesse "Are they all hillbillies in Branson?" Too bad they didn't go with the plan, but the visual stayed.

In my opinion, this is Branson's most beautiful attraction--rocky landscape:

It's everywhere and it's free, thanks to the Ozark Mountains.

I'm glad to have a chance to meet Wes' family and friends, all cordial, funny and nice people. This is the house in which the brothers grew up:

Every one felt as if he/she knew Wes much better after the stories being told at the memorial. I will never forget the tales of his tenacity and excellence for sports, his rowdy teenage years (repeatedly wrecking his father's car, beer cans falling out of the car every time he opened the car door, etc.) his deep belly laughs, his Vietnam War enlistment, his love for animals (my dog would jump onto his lap from my arms if he was near) We all laughed and cried. Jesse said Wes was there with us, and I believed her.

We squeezed four shows, a boat ride, and an amusement park outing in addition to the preparation leading up to the memorial in the six-day travel. Jesse handled the grieving widow role fairly well despite breaking down during her turn of the speech.

Aside from a few stares, most people looked at me as if I were a normal human being. They are doing the best they can to be a diverse community and here's a great example:

You can get your Hispanic and Asian fix in one sitting.

The hotel valet asked me if he could go to California with me, not that I had some secret rendezvous with him (or anybody), but he couldn't stand the heat. He had my sympathy; and in case you're wondering--no, I didn't take him with me. It would've been scandalous for them.

After enduring Jesse's neurotic breakdowns, over-packed luggage, losing and finding stuff all over the place all of the time, irritability and constant threats to cry over the minutest affairs, I think we'll stick to short day-trip for now until I'm recovered from this one.

You will be proud to know that not once did I say the F or G or S word while in Branson. Not when anybody could hear me anyway.

(RIP, Wes.)

Remember me

2011-06-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

He turned the engine off and exhaled quietly. The day has been painfully long. He closed his eyes but couldn't get the faces out of his mind, some of them tearful. He rubbed his temples in futile attempt to ease the tension he felt all day.

They worked there just as long as, if not longer than, he did. Some asked him, "What am I going to do? This is the only income we have, and we have a house, the kids are still in school..." He lowered his head and said he was very sorry. They understood he was only performing his duty. The company wasn't profitable and this was the necessary next step. The despair in their eyes will haunt him for a very long time. It's hard to choose which side of the desk he'd rather be sitting.

But the day wasn't finished, and he wasn't sure if he was ready to go in and face a despair of his own.

He heard music, not the sound of TV, when he walked into the house. Is she back in the fog land, or did she just want something different tonight? He wasn't sure. He couldn't tell after the illness--not like before.

"Hi honey." He checked her face before kissing her. Was the short hesitation a sign of the onset of regression, or was it merely his imagination?

"Hi, how was your day?" She smiled her angelic smile and asked. He wondered if she remembered what he did for a living.

"It was unbelievably horrific. The layoff finally happened, and all day I had to tell people they didn't have a job anymore. You shoud've seen their faces." He poured a glass of Jack Daniel. Something stronger than wine was needed tonight.

"Layoff? Why?" She asked and immediately looked guilty bouncing back her glance at him. How could she recall? It has been two weeks since he told her about the state of the company and what could happen, but it might as well be a hundred years for her. It wasn't her fault, he wanted to tell her. It was the cursed bacteria that destroyed her brain a year ago. He didn't blame her, but he couldn't deal with it either. Not after a day like today. It's time.

He put the glass down and held her shoulders gently.

"Honey, I'm tired and I can't do this anymore. I tried, but I have my limits. And I hate to be the source of your unhappiness, or guilt. They eat me up inside. I think I need to spend the night at my parents'."

Her lips trembled, but not a word came out. How she begged heaven and earth to reverse the damages, but they both knew it was impossible. She couldn't blame him for leaving, and couldn't ask him if he would ever come back. She could see the weight on his back as he ascended the stairs, and feel the pain as deep as her own. The sad part is, by tomorrow, or day after that, she will be happy as can be. None of these will remain with her for long.

Her eternal bliss came with the price of his never ending Ground Hog Day.

The duffel bag sat on the bed and he next to it. He imagined this moment a few times before, when things became too happy and all so temporary, when he had to repeat things to her that he shouldn't have to--his favorite brand of cereal, TV show, or restaurant. At first it felt like a new romance that was fresh and exciting. It soon got old and tiresome. He held on for the love for her. He will forever love and remember her. He's not sure, though, how long she will remember him.

Remember him? He stood up suddenly. The doctor said she would have no short-term memory. Things and people that have been in her life for long period of time, such as since childhood, should be fine. So how could she still know who he was? Theirs was not a long-term love affair, and yet, she never forgot him, however doubtful he was at times. Did his effort finally pay off? Could it be that her love for him had found a way? He had taken it for granted that she would remember him, and she did. Maybe it's not his charm, but her love for him was stronger than he had realized.

The duffel bag went back to the closet, items emptied out. It won't be easy, he knew, but he loves her and she loves him. That's more than enough for him. If love can find its way to stay, so can he.

Are we there yet?

2011-04-24T12:27:00.000-07:00

Not unlike many inexperienced but imaginative people among us, my romance has come to an untimely end with much hard work, excitement, exhaustion, and finally, disappointment. My romance toward renovation, that is.

I was hoping for something that would stand out in a crowd, but resulted in something quite different. Here's what I meant:

Before the renovation I had high spirit and energy. I wanted something that's either a farmhouse despite the fact that my Yorkie was the only animal I owned, or a Cape Cod although I really have little idea what that looked like. My vision was roughly based on this:

or this:

The general idea was white cabinets and dark floor. I even picked out a beautiful granite countertop with swirl and movements that would make you go "Ahhh" when you walk into the room:

I soon found out those white cabinets I loved so much were out of my price range, unless I painted them myself. So was the granite. In the good name of conserving resources, this is what I ended up with: (Before)

and

and this is now:

and this:

The baseboards and trims are yet to be completed. Due to Easter Sunday the free helpers all of a sudden decided to be religious and refuse to work. The audacity of some people.

So instead of "Ahhh" now the granite just greets you with a "Blah," but I can live with that. From the five slaps of granite they cut to fit this kitchen, I probably saved a thousand dollars by downgrading the granite. I even sealed it myself.

Next project is to address the moisture problem that caused us much headache while installing Pergo. The side yard has accumulated years of dead leaves. While sweeping them up I pulled a number of interesting items from beneath, the most unusual one being a lawn chair.

I swept one-third of it and the waste bin was full. Two more weeks the leaves should be all gone.

Cape Cod-dians will probably be caught dead to have this remodeled style, which is not a style at all. But when you have to make compromises, you have to let go of style--a concept I've rediscovered accutely. As a reward to myself, maybe I will visit Cape Cod after all is done. I hope that will heal me from this hopeless renovation romance, which will be my first and last one.

Renovation is...still fun?

2011-04-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

My free laborers worked hard to remove the old cabinets. That saved me about $400.00 from the contractor's bill:

After hours of trying to remove the two layers of linoleum floor in the kitchen to no avail, our contractor told us it's best if we remove the particle board under it as well. Except for the entry way and the master bedroom, the whole house will have two layers of plywood basefloor. Just when we thought NOW the Pergo can go on it...not so fast. The moisture has caused the foundation to shift, and it's more severe than the home inspector had told me.

The real contractors had to come in and level the floor with shims:

and more shims:

Naturally, I had to ask for tiled bathroom floor. The baseboard underneath the linoleum is even worse than the kitchen:

A fan is working hard to dry the floor before the contractor can install the tiles. I don't think it's effective when I checked yesterday. We may have to pull the basefloor up and install a new one. You know what that means...$$$!

The cabinets arrived yesterday and was I surprised! The top cabinets are much larger than what the contractor told me. I hope the corners will agree with my forehead in the days to come:

Before the cabinets can be installed, the drain has to be moved to inside of the wall:

They told me that was the correct way. I wonder how the repair can be done should there be a leak in the future. After all, every drain in the house is leaking right now.

In the meanwhile, I'm travelling between the two cities almost everyday. The view is lovely on the hilly freeway:

and the delivery of my first-ever brand new refrigerator was exciting:

as much as when the first plank of floor was installed:

but the sadness is getting stronger each day with the project progressing along.

I will be relieved when I don't have to drive so much and have to make choices I've never done before on a daily basis, such as what color of cabinets go with what granite countertop, what's a flush mount and is it compatible with the current mount, should I get a single-hole faucet or a multi-hole, or simply forgo all the choices so far and go with a more affordable version, (It seems "compromise" is the word for me nowadays.) the endless tiresome hours spent wondering up and down the isles of HomeDepot and such, will hopefully soon be over, and my fingernails will be restored to their normal state when I stop biting them, or the knots in my stomach from all the anxiety of not knowing what I'm doing, will finally go away.

I will have one thing to worry then: my mother not liking any of the improvements I've made so far. That will be tomorrow's chore. I have to go and meet the workers there now.

Renovation is fun

2011-03-16T23:50:00.000-07:00

I'm a little exhausted, but just in case you're wondering: the house renovation is underway and so far I've had plenty of headaches.

I had my heart set on laminate floor, as I was told they last forever. Something dark like this would be nice:

Pretty, right? Naturally, it's on the very top of the price range and I just can't talk myself into it. To HomeDepot I will go tomorrow. They have a lot of choices in the $2.99 per square foot range, and I'm sure they will have something close to this one.

In the process of removing the old linoleum floor, we found this:

Under the not-so-great design of the lighter color, there is an ugly yellow old floor that they didn't bother to remove when putting in the new one. Must be a 70's original. Can you say BARF?

The base floor is a jungle of staples, and they have to be removed before the new floor can go in. I did it a while with bare hand and pliers. Not a good idea by the way:

The lighting is done, but now I'm wondering if I should move the sink to the other side of the room so the kitchen is open to the family room, thus the flow will look much nicer. In other words: flip the "L" shape horizontally. Good idea, but very bad for my wallet:

I may have to leave it as is and just have new cabinets, new counter top, and walk a few extra steps from the kitchen to the family room. We can all use some exercise, after all.

Lesson learned: Don't talk to the contractor on the kitchen layout. Had I talked to the designer at the cabinet store first I could have saved some money if I decided to move the sink.

The biggest headache is the cabinets. I know I like dark color floor, but I have absolutely no idea what kind of cabinets to get. My first love was off white (I was aiming for an old farmhouse look), and for some reason that's the most expensive cabinets I could get. Back to square one.

I may have to settle for something Lowe's. Sigh... (no offense to Lowe's employees)

Special thanks to my little helpers who worked for free--all in the name of trying to save a few dollars. See? No low-hanging jeans here:

I foresee a sleepless night with the indecision of cabinets coming. Ideas welcome!

REO for the Faint of Heart

2011-02-22T21:54:00.000-08:00

I was neither thrilled nor scared when the offer was accepted by the bank. The house needed a lot of work. The refrigerator was missing and the toilets didn’t work, among a long list of other things.

People tend to yank things they can haul away or break the ones they can’t when the bank tells them, shockingly, they have to go because they haven’t been paying the mortgage.

It was the thing we had to do, for the stairs will be impossible for mom to negotiate in the years to come, and all the half-way decent houses were out of our price range. I, on the other hand, had to suppress my tears whenever I thought about leaving the house and the city that have been my home for the past thirteen years.

I realized just now that I had lived like a gypsy until I moved to this city near the bay, and soon found out it was less expensive to buy this little house than to rent an apartment.

Things changed much downwardly after I read the inspection report. I called the agent and said I didn’t think I wanted the house anymore. It wasn’t painful to say it, because I didn’t fall in love.

Adding to the long list of repairs, the foundation was uneven from the moisture in the soil. The inspector said the problem was common--every house in that area had this problem and it was not anything serious.

Foundation lifting? Not serious?? I wasn’t going to buy into that. I wanted my deposit back.

He immediately came up with a great idea, which made me wonder why he didn’t say so earlier. I had my theory, or course. Anyway, his idea was to get repair quotes from two companies and submit an addendum to the bank. They might agree to credit the repair fee after the sale.

The bank was more than generous--they agreed to lower the selling price in the amount comparable to the foundation repair. That squashed my hope for skipping the deal and staying put for now.

With the same price I could buy two houses in Sacramento area. I can rent one out and, combined with the rent from the house I’m in right now, the income could be a big help for us. Mom said she could live in a townhouse with stairs, so we could afford one in this low-crime high-class area nearby and preserve my back from not having to maintain a house. Numerous scenarios ran through my mind during the ten-day “weasel” period I almost went mad. In the end though, I had to nip these ideas one by one.

Mom was thinking only the present. Her health will make climbing the stairs feel like conquerring Mt. Everest soon. The suburb of Sacramento is not suited for someone like her at all. The whole town probably has one Chinese restaurant. If you don’t like it, well, you just have to learn to love it. I’m not sure if I’m ready to listen to her constant complaint, giving that she likes to eat out so much.

So, with much dread and a trembling hand, I signed and released the contingency on the tenth day. Reluctantly, I will be moving to a strange city and living among strangers soon. The only relief is the tiring process of house hunting, that includes driving all over the places, the letdown after looking at the houses and their prices, the realtor who didn’t show up at the property because he simply forgot (and was promptly fired by me), or we couldn’t get in because the key didn’t work, or the renter changed the locks and refused to open the door so all the time and effort were wasted, or the strange remodeling work done to the house that made me think "WTH were they thinking," or the previous owner’s wife died in the house so I walked through the house with a repeated silent prayer, is behind me.

Now the new chapter begins--remodeling. I’ve heard that dealing with contractors is a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it.

Heaven Awaits

2011-02-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

My car is racing on the freeway the way my heart is. How can this be, I ask myself. They said he had six months, and that was no more than a month ago. They are doctors. They can’t be that off.

All these people driving on the freeway on a glorious 70-degree warm February day, probably off to do a variety of fun activities, taking full advantage of the unseasonal warm weather, makes me wonder if they know how ridiculous they look. It’s so bright out there I have to put the sunglasses on. It should be a happy day. You don’t die on a happy day. They shouldn't look so cheerful.

I pull up behind Lena’s car. She gets out and we hug each other. She comments on how fast I made it—I live three cities away. We both look like we missed something from our morning routine—either a shower or some makeup. I was working in the garage when I got the sad news. Shower will have to wait.

Jessie opens the door with glassy eyes and a surprised look. The hospice just left and the undertakers are on their way. Lena and I both decline the inquiry of seeing him. I don’t know about Lena, but I am a little scared. We don’t know what to do so we go outside and greet the dogs, who are going crazy from being blocked away in the backyard. We can’t go back in without the dogs squeezing through with us, so we have to go out the side door, circle back to the front door, and knock on the door to be let in. Jessie is talking to the undertakers and shakes her head at us. We are sufficiently embarrassed. We are supposed to comfort and support her, not adding to her burden, which is just what we end up doing.

We sit in the kitchen when they prepare the deceased for transport to the mortuary. She tells us how he was snoring all night last night and didn’t eat. He snored this morning as well. When she decided to wake him up and eat at nine o’clock or so, he was no longer breathing or having heartbeats. I take a look outside the bedroom door before they start the prep work, and his skin is in unnatural pale-yellow. His left arm freezes above his chest, reaching for something, it looks like. I wish with all my heart, and tell Jessie so, that he went peacefully; but I cannot fully convince myself. Nobody knows what happens in the last moment, and that scares me.

He is taken away in thick blanketed bag and a white car. A red rose is left on what once was his pillow. I say a silent sendoff to the gentle giant, whose three-hundred-and-eighty pound imposing physique has been ravaged to a mere one-eighty by cancer. Jessie wants breakfast—it has been a long morning and she hasn't eaten yet. We do our best to finish, but not quite successfully, all the pancakes, breads, eggs, butter and syrup. She packs up all the leftovers for the dogs, including the syrup, ignoring our advice of how bad it is for them, then back to her house.

The weather is too nice to sit inside, so the picnic table under the magnolia tree is where we sit and talk. Jessie has waves of emotions that come and go. They have been together for twenty-five years, with the last three and half fighting cancer. She wishes she had been home the day before, which would be their last day together while he was awake, when we assure her the goodbyes had been said, the love had been shared and understood, and there would have been nothing she could have done to make it better for him. We manage to add some humor to our conversation, at first tentatively, but soon freely, with Jessie being the leading lady.

When she talks about the problems of her dogs, and stops to ask her son who also has a dog: “You don’t have any anal gland problems, do you?” and we laugh until tears roll down our faces, that’s when I know. Heaven is great, but living is better. Jessie is sad and will be for a while, but she is strong, and she will be okay.

That’s what they mean by life goes on. The living has to find a way to continue.

(To Jessie, whose husband Wes passed away on 2/5/11 from throat cancer.)

Liang Zhu

2011-01-25T13:20:00.000-08:00

The red sedan swayed in hurried rhythms that told her the carriers were rushing. Unlike the usual wedding procession that was always led by musicians playing loudly with their suonas, this one was silenced by an unfortunate taboo.

They were headed to a graveyard.

Yingtai had barricaded herself in her room since the procession arrived this morning. If she had to marry someone she didn't know, with the only reason being he was from a rich family, then she would pay her respect to the man she had befriended, liked, then loved, for two years.

The bridegroom finally caved in, as the sun was tilting unmercifully toward the west.

Two years earlier, she had begged her father, who normally gave in to her pleading, to allow her to leave home and attend school. She was dissatisfied with home schooling, but boarding schools were for boys only. It was unheard of for a girl to leave home, disguise as a boy, and live among boys for such a long time. Sure, her maid Yinxin went with her as well, dressed as a young servant of hers, but the family's reputation would be greatly damaged if anybody ever learned a word about her endeavor.

Too much education would only do a girl harm—people believed. Perhaps there were plausible reasons for that…

This time, though, her tears could not change her father's mind. In fact, he lost his temper entirely when his daughter told him she had fallen in love with her classmate, and thus made the pre-determined wedding take on a sense of urgency. An educated daughter wouldn't hurt her chance of marrying well too much, but a daughter enamored another man? That was scandalous. He had to put his feet down.

Unlike her future husband, Shanbuo was poor. His family barely scraped enough to send him to school. He would probably be a teacher for some prosperous family. She didn't care. Everyday was filled with happiness when she was with him. She couldn't fathom life without him. They were best friends for two years, until the day before she left, urged by a letter from her father. That was when she finally told him what she really was. He was shocked, then realized why she was so different from all the other boys. He fell in love when she put her hair down, and behaved, for the first time, like a girl. They talked until day break.

He promised to send the matchmaker to her house as soon as possible. She arrived home only to find the matchmaker had been there, but was promptly turned down, for her father already selected a husband for her. She was broken by the news, but she died when the news of Shanbuo passed away three months later from a broken heart. That was when the world lost meaning to her.

Now the sedan stopped. Yinxin open the covering drape with a sad expression. Yingtai removed the jade bracelet from her wrist and put it in Yinxin's hand:

“You and I grew up together. We are like sisters. Take this as a present from me. My future mother-in-law may not want to keep you, so I want to give this to you now.”

“Young Miss, I can't take this.” Yinxin was alarmed. There were no tears on her young mistress' eyes as she had expected.

“Please accept it as a wedding present from me.” She insisted, then looked out. The procession stopped by a field that was filled with messy graves. She removed her red wedding dress to reveal the white mourning dress under it. Her red headdress was removed soon after the procession started its journey.

She found Shanbuo's grave with Yinxin's help. The faithful little maid had been the conduit between the young couple until the day he died.

She turned her face to the sky. No gods or fairris could save them. She had cried all the tears in the world and the world did not care, nor did it stop. She put down the flowers, fruits and incense, then she left the letter for her father behind the flowers. She begged him, for the last time, to forgive her. He didn't know what he did was killing her. How could he know?

She turned to look at Yinxin and smiled, then, with all the strength she had, crushed her head on the tombstone.

Yinxin's scream was dampened by the thunders from above. A butterfly seemed to come out from the grave. It fluttered closer and closer, then from Yingtai's lifeless body came another butterfly. Together they flew away. Together, they were forever to be.

(Liang Shanbuo and Zhu Yingtai were buried together, and a temple of Shanbuo was built in year 347. The legend is often referred to as The Butterfly Lovers.)

Laws of Harmony

2011-01-11T15:28:00.000-08:00

According to a not-so-pleasant but all-so-true research of late, many of us will face a non-existent retirement when it’s time for the corporate world to kick us in the derrière just when time is near for us to qualify for that pension, and get a “package,” as they so strategically called, that will last you a year or half.

We can forget the Social Security or Medicare. The experts keep telling us they both are going to evaporate by the time we need them. It’s best not to get our hopes up.

We have a few options to consider, excluding the following: 1. Buy a mega lottery winning ticket. Caution--this doesn’t work that well from my personal experiences. 2. Execute a bank robbery. This will provide free room and board in local penitentiary (if we make sure the camera catch our faces clearly) but not much else, and if we don’t plan it well it could backfire in the “getting ourselves killed by the security guard” scenario.

We can move to where the jobs are, work as if the universe is ending tomorrow, save every penny and live in the Scrooge style that Dickens described so well in his book. Most of us don’t find that remotely appealing though. Another problem is we don’t speak the language where the jobs are--being proud Americans and all.

What else can I do, you ask. Let’s see…

Move into a trailer and live off the proceed of your house--if you are blessed with owning a house instead of an upside down mortgage in the first place. Keep your fingers crossed that the market will be more lucrative by that time.

I understand your need to be with family when your health and income are both declining. It’s a viable solution that each day looks more like the only solution for many of us. For the benefit of everyone involved, I think a list of things we should practice now is in order.

1. Showing appreciation is unbecoming, so make sure you don’t do it. Or better yet, let them know it’s not appreciated with every chance you have.

Maybe your kin moved out of his/her big bedroom so that you can enjoy it, and prepared new furniture for your comfort. That was what they were supposed to do anyway.

Say nothing or murmur an inaudible “thanks” when getting breakfast-in-bedroom service as if a knife is placed next to your décolletage and you are saying it against your will.

If he/she thoughtlessly ordered cable TV for you, make sure you throw a temper tantrum because the remote is different and you have to learn the channels anew. How inconvenient it is for you.

2. Show him/her how much you like the home cooked meals by insisting on eating out every other day. Lecture them on how restaurant food is healthy because the customer’s health is indeed the utmost concern of every restaurant owner.

Disregard the excess twenty pounds you are carrying because losing weight is so not in vogue among older people.

Take twenty different supplements daily to counter any claims that you are not eating healthy.

3. While dining out, display your best table etiquette. This includes slurping all things remotely liquid, diving into your food as soon as you are served without regards to others, sticking your fork into other’s plate if the other person is unfortunately served before you, spreading your elbows wide so others won’t get to your food (or get to eat their own food), chewing with half of the food hanging on the side of your mouth, etc.

A little primal insecurity will only do others, especially those you are supposed to nurture, immensely good.

4. You never make a mistake, so insist on it until the sun goes down, or until the cows come home--whichever occurs the latest. Blame others for what you did or didn’t do. Remind them you are not a lunatic if you run out of excuses.

5. Good conversation skills are imperative in old age. Nothing says harmony more when you scorn, jeer, challenge or argue every time you want to say something. Complain about something they love each day, such as a pet. It works like a charm to draw people in. Close yourself off to others so they will stay in different quarter of the house.

6. Honesty is the best policy, especially when interacting with others. Deny, make up stories from mid air, change facts to serve your purpose. Scold others for getting the "facts" wrong. Do all of these to keep them on their toes. This will show them you still have a sharp mind.

7. Doorknobs and handles are for imbeciles. Slam, shut, and bang all you want, but never use them to close things properly. Loud noise makes jumpy people, and thus makes their hearts so much healthier.

8. Frugality serves everyone good, so save a square or two of the toilet paper after your “session” to show them your good sense. This serves especially well when combined with #2 above, because eating out is a great way to save money.

On second thought, maybe a trailer is a much better way to go for you and your family’s mental health concern. Keep in mind that these are in no way any implication of how my mother behaves, because she is perfect--see #4.

The Magpie Bridge

2010-12-27T09:10:00.000-08:00

She is the daughter of the great emperor of the heaven, and is blessed with divine skills of weaving. They live in the palatial dwellings among the clouds. She is loved by both of her parents just like a princess is and should. They call her Zhenoo--Weaving Maid.

The skies are hung with brightly colored silky hues of her weaving. The earth is covered with every color one can imagine. She weaves day and night, never stops to have fun, for the demand of change of season and skies are too many.

She does her duties happily and faithfully until a mysterious condition starts to worry her parents. She is sluggish in her weaving, and her eyebrows are locked in an unhappy knot. Her laughter is dimmed and her appetite has largely disappeared. The heaven’s guards have to report this to her father, who rules everything in heaven and on earth.

The emperor, with his endless wisdom of a ruler, thinks about this for a while and knows what is wrong with his daughter. He calls for her presence and asks her gently:

“Who is the young man you are occupying your heart with, my daughter?”

Her face turns pale with fright, but then turns to pink after realizing her secret is no longer a secret.

“Father, his name is Niulang--Cowherd Boy, who lives on the other side of the Milky Way,” she says, “but it is not easy for us to meet, for the Milky Way is vast.”

The great emperor is happy that his talented daughter finds a hardworking young man and orders a wedding to be prepared. He sends his daughter to cross the Milky Way with his strong imperial clouds to live with her new husband.

Being newlyweds, they both are literately on cloud nine, and the rest of the world disappears from their eyes. She stops weaving, and the skies and the earth look the same every day, day after day. He, at the same time, forgets about his herd and they are scattered all over the heaven. There is cow dung everywhere.

The emperor gets the report and is angry. This is not how they should behave, he thinks. He for a moment forgets that he, too, was a newlywed and forfeited his duties briefly.

He issues a harsh order for his daughter to return home immediately. They are to live on the opposite side of the Milky Way and to only see each other once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month. 1

The heartbroken lovers beg the emperor but could not make him change his mind. The order is given and is to be obeyed.

The effort to cross the Milky Way is too great, for their clouds are not as strong as the emperor’s. Thus the day of their rendezvous is even shorter from the long commute. Zhenoo’s tears touch deeply in the hearts of the magpies--the bird of happiness--so they conspire to help the lovers out.

On the seventh day of the seventh month, the magpies come together and form a bridge in the sky with their bodies. The young couple meets in the middle of the bridge to pour their hearts out to each other. For seven days the top of the magpies are bald from the steps of the lovers.

If you look carefully at the Hunter‘s constellation, you can see the carrying pole with a basket on each side in the sky. Niulang puts their two children in the baskets and carries them on his shoulder to meet their mother. 2

Young maidens have since been setting up altars in their backyard in midnight on the day of Niulang and Zhenoo’s yearly reunion, and pray for loving and faithful husbands for themselves. Surely their wishes will be granted from a pair of lovers who do not wish others to suffer the kind of heartaches they have.

(1. The Lunar seventh day of the seventh month is the Chinese Valentine’s Day. 2. In a male dominate country I guess it’s only normal that the man gets to keep the kids.)

Wired

2010-12-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

"I need to get into the crawl space. Where's the entrance?”

The goofy “cable guy” said. I thought he was joking. The serious one was already high on the ladder installing the dish while this one loitered around.

“Um, there isn't one.” I replied.

“What's that?” he pointed at the little "windows" at the base of the house and asked.

“Yeah, it looks like there is a crawl space, but you can't get into it.” I assured him.

He looked at me funny, but I put his suspicion to rest firmly: “I've lived here for thirteen years, and I have never seen an entrance to it.”

He went into the house and opened the storage space under the stairs.

"There's the entrance.” He pointed at the floor.

I looked down and, as if appeared solely by magic, a square-shaped dark seam on the floor mocked me with silent cracks.

It's true. You learn something new everyday.

Thank goodness I was small enough to crawl into the storage and pulled most of the stuff out so he could get down there. Then I cleared out the closet so he could climb into the attic and do his job.

I knew that entrance.

All the stuff had to go back to where they belonged and the dust had to be cleaned. These were not in the “cable guys” job descriptions. It would've saved me a lot of grieve had I known what was in store for me.

I was a little tired but excited after cleaning up all the mess. Time to reveal the surprise to mom.

“Look, ma. Now you have nine channels to watch instead of one. Merry Christmas!” I was so proud of myself. Her only activity--watching TV--would be a lot more interesting from now on.

Or so I thought.

I then tried to teach her how to use the new remote, and that was when things went downhill.

There were four buttons with which she needed to get herself familiarize.

On—you turn the TV on with it.

Off—as the name suggested, you turn the TV off with it.

Up—go up a channel.

Down—go down a channel.

Those, and remembering her channels start at 2050.

Simple enough, right?

She tried it a few times and couldn't get it right. She lost her patience promptly and told me she never watched those channels, she wanted her old channel back and to cancel the cable right away.

When will I ever learn? Why did I try to get her a comparable life here when I knew she was not the appreciative type, and would say anything when angry?

Two days later she wanted me to teach her again on the channels. By that time I lost my patience and good wills. I'm paying for the satellite channels, and somebody was going to watch them. She can stick with her one and only channel upstairs.

Unfortunately, She figured out how to switch back to air channels by watching me, and now watches her one channel on the big screen downstairs.

I think she did it just to aggravate me, which probably gave her certain degree of enjoyment, and she was succeeding.

It's amazing how, with the right amount of incentive, whether positive or negative, a person who couldn't do or learn anything can achieve the impossible.

The Long Way Home

2010-11-25T01:51:00.000-08:00

“I see lights. That must be San Francisco!” Mom pointed at the window excitedly.

“Ma, it was seven o’clock when we took off, and that was forty minutes ago.” I replied with a finger pointing at my watch. She knew it would be a two-and-half-hour flight.

She looked at me, then the window, then was quiet for a while.

Twenty minutes later, she saw lights again: “That must be San Francisco.”

This is going to be a very long flight, I thought to myself, and it will be the first and last time I am ever going to fly with her.

It was worse than traveling with a kid. At least you could tell the kid to be quiet.

I was a little tired. The day started early, since I woke up at five and couldn’t sleep anymore. There were still a lot to do before we had to leave.

I made five or six garbage runs. Mom’s friends were going to take everything away after we were gone, but I felt bad leaving too much junk, so I wanted to do the best I could to reduce their work.

It didn’t help with mom telling me, as usual, to take a break. I think she said that to make herself feel better, not knowing or caring who was going to finish all the work.

Then I had to cook for her friends who were kind enough to stop by. I cooked the traditional dumplings which, according to mom, was the thing to eat when leaving for a long journey. Thank goodness for frozen food.

It started to snow amid all the actions. I ran to the patio yelling snow, snow!

I was the only one who was so excited. They were probably all sick of the wintry scene.

We had the first unpleasant surprise when we arrived at the airport. The flight was delayed for two hours.

I didn’t buy their reason--weather. I’m from California, okay? We don’t have bad weather there. Find another excuse for your inefficiency.

We did the duty-free shopping. We had coffee. We did the restroom runs. Twice. We had some food. I pushed her wheelchair all over the place. The airline clerk was nowhere to be found, so I decided I didn’t need her. I am my mother’s keeper now.

After we finally sat down in our seats on the plane, but not before we had this near miss roller coaster slide down the tunnel, I heard the flight attendant telling a passenger it was bad weather that caused the long delay.

So much for the great California weather.

Three or four times of proclaiming we were over San Francisco later, mom finally got her wish. We were over the city, only we couldn’t land. There was a thing called air traffic jam and we were in it.

We circled twenty more minutes in the air. Mom complained that the pilot drove too slowly.

To top things off, the traffic on the ground was worse than that in the air. We probably waited half an hour for our ride to drive the two-minute distance from the cell phone area.

It was almost midnight when we reached home. A simple two-hour flight turned into an eleven-hour ordeal.

My little house had never looked nicer, and the licks from my little Yorkie had never felt sweeter before.

(Happy Thanksgiving everyone!)

House of Five Hundred Doors

2010-11-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

I know it’s late, but I have some questions that have been bothering me for quite some time, so I figure now is as good as any to ask you a few simple questions.

What‘s that? It’s one o’clock in the morning? Oh, I’m sure you don’t mind. After all, you and your family don’t go to bed that early. Don’t bother to argue. I hear you every night.

First question: why did you spend so much money to install five hundred doors in your unit? Regardless where you originally came from, you have to admit it’s rather peculiar. Every other step one takes in your unit requires a slam of a door. Every night, all night long. It’s obvious nobody in your unit understands how to “close” a door, but only how to shut the door with a bang.

If you don’t know how to properly close a door, I will have to ask you to remove four hundred ninety-nine of them from your unit immediately. You see, there’s only so much door banging one can endure in certain amount of time, and I’m tired of stabbing the ceilings with the mop handle. I will have to fix the ceilings if I damage them, and I won’t like that.

Second question: is everyone in your unit a sumo wrestler? Not only this causes an unpleasant mental image to one’s mind, the echo of your every step ripples through your floors / our ceilings sounds like a kong sounding from afar. And you guys walk a lot. All night, every night. Add this to the banging of the five hundred doors you installed before you moved in, and you have a symphony of beneath-the-penthouse nightmare.

For your own good I suggest you lose weight immediately. If you fall through the ceilings one day from a heart attack, which won’t be far judging from the sound of your steps and the vibration of the walls, I will have to bill you for the repair. I won’t like that either, especially if you’re in a hospital and I‘m risking not having the expenses recovered--if you get my drift.

One more question: is your child half monkey half horse? He/she is obviously very young, judging from the screaming and the little steps he/she takes when running. It may be a lovely sight for you, the parents, to have an undisciplined wild beast racing in the house, screaming while slamming those five hundred doors, but not for your neighbors downstairs. Trust me on this one.

Oh, anoter thing about the kid--going to bed at ten or eleven o’clock is way too late for a child that young. In fact, going to bed at twelve, one, or two o’clock in the morning is way too late for you, too. How you manage to get up in the morning and go to work is beyond me.

I haven’t had a good night sleep in I don’t know how long. My eyes are scratchy dry and my skin is breaking out. The noise coming from above is stressing me to the point that the mop handle feels too weak of a gesture. I’m also getting more wrinkles from lack of sleep and anger. I really don’t like that.

The fact that you live on the top floor may have given you some superiority complex. Here’s a surprise--you still have to be considerate to your neighbors. Paying a little more doesn’t give you the right to forfeit common courtesy. Even a real penthouse dweller like Donald Trump would agree with me. Besides, it’s only a four-story building. You’re not that higher up.

These nuisances may be commonly accepted where you came from. People may not have the right to complain--about anything. It may be the very reason you left that country and sought a better life here. Why else would you uproot your family, travel thousands of miles to a place where nothing is easy and no one is familiar? I get that.

I just have one thing to say to you and all the horn-honking, traffic-cutting mad drivers in this town: don’t make this country a duplicate of that country. There’s a saying (and I’m sure you’re familiar with it) goes something like this: taking off one’s pants to break wind.

It makes your thousand-mile move totally unnecessary if you insist on behaving the old way. You might as well stay where you were in the first place.

(Other than raining one hundred eighty days a year and the few little things mentioned above, it really is a nice little town to live here. No really.)

Skin Deep

2010-10-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

The box of glass plates removed from the display rack was heavy. Mr. Wong offered to lug it for Mrs. Liu, who was a tiny woman in her seventy’s. She was so tiny, in fact, that she had to shop her clothes in children’s department, then had them altered to fit her properly.

Mom’s display rack had some knickknacks only she found precious. The rest of us were happy to see it go--especially Mr. Wong, who was also our realtor.

I opened the front door for them. The cold air and grey skies reminded me again this was not California, and how I missed it.

Mr. Wong was supposed to hold the dolly that had the box of glass while Mrs. Liu and I unloaded the plates from the box to the back of her car.

He let go and the box fell, without my knowledge, behind my back, hitting my right heel.

I grabbed my heel and stopped breathing. They were shocked and asking me if I was alright. I couldn’t speak for a few seconds.

When the pain subsided I lifted the pant and found a piece of skin missing. Some blood was dripping and the heel around it already turned blue.

I assured them I was fine, but might need to put a Band Aid on it, and went back upstairs half limping.

Mom was either trying to call someone or playing her handheld toy. She asked me if I remember to take the keys back and I told her what happened.

She said, “You sure know how to pick a fine place to stand.” without once looking up.

I found a Band Aid and went to the bedroom.

Of all the arguments we had over throwing her possessions away, this comment hurt me the most.

It was understandable she was infuriated by my actions in the past two weeks, even though she knew they were the right actions, and she had no idea where to begin if I hadn‘t done it for her. I knew it must be hard to be parted with her worldly possessions and move eight hundred miles away.

She was not trying to be cold. I was expecting too much.

I was silly to think now that she was going to live with me, somehow I would get a loving mother that I never had.

Growing up with a pair of self-centered parents, I should know better. They both were buried in their own miseries that life, and themselves, had brought on. No one had doted on me since I was a child. I should know not to rely on anyone emotionally. I have finally learned to be happy.

So why couldn’t I stop my tears?

Am I still trying to fill that void unconsciously no matter how hard I tried to ignore it consciously? I’m relatively smart and somewhat educated. I know a lost cause when I see one--most of the time.

What stubborn and unexplainable force possessed me to think if I looked hard enough I would find what I was missing?

Sometimes, some people are just skin deep. They are what you see.

Like Thunders to Ducks

2010-10-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

She must have been watching me. As soon as I finished the form she gestured “Can you do this for me, too?” while holding up her form.

I guessed it. I didn’t understand a thing uttered from her mouth. Thank goodness hand gestures are mostly universal. The smile didn’t hurt either.

I could see the plot she and her husband secretly came up when I was writing. “Look, she knows English! She can help us!” Two heads nodded eagerly.

I assumed they were a couple. I know her culture. She wouldn’t be traveling with a man who was not her husband. But wait, they had different last names...

Two different passports for a couple. Interesting… Maybe they were brother/sister whose life paths led them half a world apart. I have never met my uncles, aunts, and cousins from either side of my parents, except for the one uncle who fled to the island. The war tore the families apart.

“Do you have meat, poultry, or food with you?” He shook his head. I didn’t think he knew what poultry was.

“Do you have over ten thousand dollars with you?” He showed me his index finger and said slowly: “One thousand.”

That was five times of my cash on hand. No wonder she wore pure gold earrings and ring.

“Do you have any guns?” I formed a gun with my fingers and aimed it at him. He laughed and said no. This question never ceased to amaze me. Do they really expect me to say “yes” if I had a gun in my bag and somehow escaped the baggage screening?

I skipped the question about the farm. It would be too much work to explain a farm. The local agricultural bureau would have to be on guard without my help.

“Sign here.” I pointed the form and handed over my pen. They both signed. She thanked me in her dialect.

It appeared they wanted to stay quiet and subdue. They didn‘t get such luck from me. I opened the booklet and showed them the choices of snacks available for purchase. They smiled and nodded, then shook, their heads.

Our abilities of understanding each other fit the saying “like thunders to ducks” perfectly. We knew something was making a lot of noise, but had very little idea what was really happening.

This must be how my mother used to travel to see me. She always called me after she arrived home, describing the trip to me loudly. The flight was delayed. I met a person on the plane who spoke my language. My friend picked me up. I ate the sandwich you made for me. A woman at the customs questioned me on the jewelries I wore. Etc, etc.

I always thought it was silly to make a less-than-two-hour trip sounded like a big ordeal.

The couple made me see that it was a big deal for my mom. She couldn’t fill the customs form. She couldn’t order anything to eat or drink. Somebody had to help her. With a lot of patience while doing it.

My eyes welled up. I was full of gratitude to those strangers who helped my mom on the numerous flights she took. I now know why she was so excited when she got home safely.

I ordered a box of snacks and forced the couple to eat it with me.

Let them think I was a strange and crazy woman. I don’t care.

(I’m visiting my mom who broke her wrist recently. I will be mostly missing from the blog world for a while since there’s a lot to do.)

The Herder

2010-09-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

Tu-er looks at the fading sunlight and increases his pace. The sun is clinging on the silhouette of the mountains and slipping down unwillingly. The town behind him is swallowed up by the evening haze. As far as he could see there’s no smoke to indicate a village is near.

Curse that old man at the noodle stand, he thinks. The old man told him a village was within five miles and could be reached by dark. He was eager to get home after a month away from his family, so he took advantage of the sunlight and his strong legs.

Maybe he missed the turnoff. A fork taunted him a couple of miles ago. He followed the direction given to him to “keep going west” and now he’s not so sure. A sudden scream startles him and he jolts at the noise. A big bird dashes out of an elm tree, its dark wings flap a few times and disappears into the grey horizon. He exhales nervously.

A blister threatens him inside the hemp sole. Perhaps a night under a tree away from the element is the only way to sleep tonight. He surveys the landscape when he notices a vague shape in the dark. He focuses on it and a rush of joy washes all the anxiety away. It’s a small temple. He runs toward it with brave big steps.

He pushes the wooden door slowly. To his further delight it’s closed but not bolted. He calls out timidly, asking if he could spend the night, while crossing the foot-high thresh-hold carefully. A statue sitting behind an altar table greets him with wordless stern warning. The offering room appears endless in the dark air.

The cold incense burner and the empty tabletop tell him its abandoned state. He decides it’s a place safe enough to spend the night. He spreads out the cotton quilt he carries on his back and closes the door.

Few moments after he closes his eyes, it seems, a squeaky noise and a cold breeze on his face chase the slumber away. He sits up under the quilt with his heart pounding in his chest, his eyes searching wildly in the dark. The temple door is ajar. The pre-dawn moonlight casts a blurry streak on the floor. He must have slept through the night without bolting the door first. What a coward, he scolds himself, and stands up to close the door.

His hand freezes on the edge of the door. A group of people, their shapes can’t be made out with the moon hiding in the flowing clouds, are running toward him--toward the temple. The bobbing shadow alerts him he doesn’t have much time.

He had the misfortune of running into the bandits once, and he knows what will happen if they see him. With the fastest speed he wraps up his belongings and rolls under the altar table. The tables are covered with red table cover, a long table in the back and a short one in the front. To be safe he presses himself all the way to the back. The statue and the long altar table are set in an alcove and is the only safe place he could hide.

He stops breathing when they come inside.

Thud, thud, thud. Sounds like they jump in one by one. A man yells tiao, tiao...!

He doesn’t understand. As if the rest of them don’t know there is a thresh-hold and need instruction to jump over it. He listens on. The man chants for a while in words he couldn’t make sense of, with more of the thud, thud in the mix.

To his surprise, the noise quiets down shortly and the door is closed again. He could hear the man standing in front of the table praying to the god for a safe trip home, and the sound of the man putting his bedding down. Soon his snoring rattles the worship room. The rest of the group doesn’t make so much noise as breathing.

He slowly lifts a sliver of the table cover against his own warning. The man on the floor is sound asleep. He looks up slowly and could see a row of man-shaped objects lined up against the wall. They are wrapped in linen from head to toe, their eyes two black holes looking into the lifeless space in front of them.

It feels like a bomb exploded in his head and forced all the blood out. As he slowly slips to the floor and faints, he remembers the tale he once heard from the village elder.

The families of the traveling men died away from home sometimes didn’t have money to have their bodies shipped back home. They would pool their money together and hire a herder--a mysterious man with special and dark power to command the corps. They travel by night and sleep by day, and always by routes seldom traversed. The corps jump, not walk, while they travel. It was imperative, the elder said, not to disturb them if you bumped into them, or bad fortune would be upon you soon.

By the time Tu-er comes to, the herder and the corps are deep in their “sleep,” and the pearly grey outside is promising a good day ahead.

He doesn’t remember how he got out of the temple. Perhaps he crawled out, although his children and acquaintances will never hear that from him. He never risks traveling at night just to get more mileage in anymore.

(Corps Herder was a real profession and a lost art—according to the elders)

Cicada Song

2010-09-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

The sea of red petals of the phoenix trees paint every treetop to bright red, and set the heated July sky on fire. They seem to be particularly brazen in color this year.

Millions of cicadas join the summer march by singing their mating songs with all the force they can squeeze from their tiny bodies. They scream “Look at me--I’m here!” with their bug eyes and bulky dark bodies as if the world is ending tomorrow.

Everywhere she goes she can’t escape the loud reminder: graduation in two weeks.

Pearl puts her books and pens in the book bag one by one deliberately slow. She hopes she can catch a glance from Toni. In fact, she hopes for more than a glance, but she will be blissfully happy if it’s only a look or a smile from Toni.

Her face dims when she sees Toni’s back leaving the classroom. She does a quick scan just to make sure Leanne is not one of the girls leaving with her.

She’s not. Pearl feels relieved.

Leanne’s face is pretty and delicate. She attracts attention from everyone--especially Toni’s. Pearl doesn’t want to, but her heart feels as if it's filled with acid each time she sees them walking together, often laughing in a world where Pearl does not exist.

Look at me. I’m not pretty like Leanne, but I don’t ask for much either--Pearl quietly pleads. The day shines much brighter if Toni looks her way once or twice. She can’t tell anybody this secret. She doesn’t know how to explain.

How can she like a girl in that way? They don’t understand Toni. Toni is not just a girl. Her hair is cut to extra short. Her pleated skirt looks like it doesn’t belong, and is such a bother to her. She cuts her nails short and walks in large and square strides. She is something else disguised in a girl’s body. Something so different and dangerous that lures Pearl with an unfamiliar excitement.

The walk home is quiet and alone, as it is every day for Pearl. She says “baba” to the man sitting in the living room. He is watching TV and grunts an “um” to her, his eyes fixed on the TV. The three of them--her father, her step-mother, and her half brother--look like a happy family that needs no intruder. The woman and the young boy don’t pay any attention to her. They never do. She retreats to her room to finish her homework, her yearning for Toni continues in the small and muggy room.

The school held a sleepover in the gym once. She was assigned a spot next to Toni. She was so nervous and excited she could hardly talk or sleep. Her head was next to Toni’s, but she couldn’t look into Toni’s smiling eyes. To cover her shyness, she turned her back and pretended to be sleeping. What she would do to revise that day! She would talk all night with the one person she adores the most. She would find out all about her, and find a way to let her know how she thinks about her every day.

Her shyness must have looked like cold indifference to Toni. Pearl realizes it now with a permanent stab in her heart. She missed the only chance she had. She watches helplessly when Toni and Leanne get closer each day.

The final days and exams come and gone in the speed of a tropical storm. Everyone is exchanging address and phone number. The yearbooks are signed over and over. Toni writes “wishing you a bright and successful future” on Pearl’s. It’s painfully routine and polite.

The graduation ceremony flashes through before Pearl, or anyone else, is ready. Auld Lang Sine is still ringing in their ears when they find themselves out of the hall. The girls wave good-bye to their classmates with tearful eyes, promising against life’s onslaught to keep in touch, and junior high is over.

The cicadas still sing on every treetop. The moment they stop singing is the moment they die. The phoenix trees still burn up the sky every summer, proclaiming their passion to few who notice. Pearl knows she is the only person in the world who knows the cicadas are calling out to Toni, but she will never see Toni again.

(Phoenix tree is called flame tree here)

Follow

2010-08-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

I shortened the leash and said “heel” before crossing the intersection. Coco tightened the leash right on cue as if I just gave her the command to run.

I’ve been walking and training her to heel for about a year and half now. I don’t know what her problem is. She knows to “wait” when I say so, just not “heel.” I can’t say she’s not smart, since she never misunderstands “breakfast” or “dinner.” Or the Chinese version of “come brush your teeth.”

I’m convinced a bilingual dog can’t be a dumb dog.

Yet she acted in complete surprise every time I yanked her back after the command “heel” and her subsequent running. I would tell her she was a little stinker for trying to flee from me. Maybe that’s where I did wrong. Maybe "little stinker" sounds like "good job" in Yorkie lingo.

I saw the couple on the other side before crossing the street. At first glance they looked like strangers who happened to be walking on the same side of the street. He walked a good forty feet ahead of her and seemed not at all concerned that she was about to cross the street by herself. He didn’t stop or look back, just kept on walking.

Coco and I kept our distance behind them. She had dark hair fashioned into a simple bun. It was the only part of her that didn’t say “old.” She was short and walked with a little lopsided stride in her chubby physique. He, on the other hand, was tall and agile. The distance between them made me somehow want to yell at him.

They were from the same mysterious country from the far away land of which I knew very little. Must be arranged marriage--I mused to myself. Suddenly he made a blunt one-eighty and I yelled silently--yay, he did care!

He passed her without a word or even a glance, and turned back a few feet afterward. In the meanwhile she didn’t miss a beat--just kept on walking behind him.

I was getting annoyed, despite the fact that I knew I shouldn’t. I was from the same kind of society where men walked around as if they were sent down here in golden sedan carried by God himself. I had enough of that that I didn’t want to see it here. I sometimes would get stuck in the doorway with another man from my hometown, who clearly was not familiar with the concept of “ladies first,” and I would go out of my way to ignore him and resist the urge to apologize.

They had to learn and I was accelerating their assimilation process by giving them their first lesson.

It was also annoying that “love” did not exist to us. If we were awkward adults with no clue how to show affection, it’s because we were raised where love was a hushed word, a taboo. It’s a shameful emotion that should be ignored at all costs.

Parents showed their love by scolding and putting their children down in front of others. Criticism equates adoration in their minds. They get away with it because parents command complete filial piety, one of the first words I looked up in the dictionary soon after I came here, upon their children; and because there’s no such thing as “therapy.” We had nobody to blame for our problems.

Love is to be assumed, and not expressed, between husband and wife, or lovers. My friend once told me she loved her husband, and her mother said she talked like an idiot. Did she have no shame, she wondered about her daughter.

Having a full stomach, on the other hand, is of utmost concern of ours. We greet each other not with “how are you” but “have you eaten yet,” or the latter follows the prior immediately after. Regardless your answer, we will proceed to force-feed you until your mid section is about to explode. It took me years to forgo the habit of taking food with me when going on car rides with my friend. She shared the peculiar behavior with her other friends, and they had a good laugh. I didn’t understand why it was funny just as they didn’t understand my need to feed her.

Had she known where I was coming from, she would’ve asked “Where are the chicken wings?” instead.

The couple made a turn and parted way with us. He stopped and looked back until she almost caught up before making the turn. They didn’t share a word throughout the walk, and yet there was an air they silently exuded that was so comforting. They stuck together through so many decades, and in all likelihood will be fulfilling “’til death do us part” part of the union. I watched their backs, lanky and nimble versus short and wobbly, trotting away from me for a few seconds. I wasn’t so annoyed anymore.

Coco looked at them and realized that wasn't the path we were taking. Not anytime soon anyway. We continued on our usual route home. It must've started drizzling, as my cheeks were getting misty.

Promise

2010-08-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

Collin’s touch jolts me back from the murky abyss. I look into his blue eyes and I could tell he’s a little worried.

“Are you all right, darling?”

“Yes. It’s nice to be relaxed at last.” I put on a smile behind the sun glasses. I have loved this man for so long, and deceived him for so long, that I must keep the act going.

Until I find a way, if the possibility is not as bleak as it seems right now, to show him the truth without hurting him or the family.

“I know what you mean. I should thank you for planning this family vacation. The cruise is perfect so far.” He sits down next to me and looks out the horizon with a satisfied sigh, holding my hand in his. It’s not hard to make him happy, but he said “so far” as if he had some foretelling inkling.

Is he also gentle and loving like Collin? It’s been thirty years and my memory is a bit fuzzy of his face.

I remember kissing Collin good-bye and watching him drive away as if it were yesterday. I ran upstairs and cried behind closed door all night. He was going to college and it was our last day together for a long while.

We will see each other soon, he promised. Christmas will be here before you realize it. You know I love you, Alina. I am doing this for us, for our future. We will get married as soon as I’m done with the school. Wait for me, Alina.

I held Collin close to me that day while silently fighting a war inside me. He was gifted and disciplined. The future for him was bright and the college was the right thing to do. He said he wouldn’t look at other girls, and I trusted him. He never did the entire senior year we were together. I would wait for him for as long as it took. Other boys didn’t exist in my eyes.

He was also leaving early to start working at the college. It would be selfish if I told him I was pregnant. I knew he would’ve stopped his life to be with me. The thought of whether or not to tell him had tormented me for months. I lost weight instead of gaining it. Now it was too late to either tell him or to terminate it. There was only one option left. I had to beg my parents to keep it a secret. They finally caved in to my tears.

They tore my heart apart when they took my baby away. I was not allowed to hold him. They said it was for my own good. I glared at his face through tears for five seconds and tried hard to sear his image in my mind. They said it was better to give him up for adoption than otherwise. They said this as if they had no hearts and could feel no pain. The physical pain was minute comparing to the heartaches, which took years to heal. I learned to harden my heart each time I saw a baby, or heard a lullaby. I even drew up a sketch of a lovely woman holding my baby with a smile on her face in my mind, then pushed the sketch deep into the back and told myself he would be fine.

Collin held my face and said I had changed, but wasn’t sure how, the first time he came back for the holiday break. I hid my face in his collar and just said I missed him so much. He believed the tears were over his absence, and he loved me more. I learned to live with that lie, too.

The only thing I could remember now is he had Collin’s dark hair. Time has buried the little wrinkled face and the nine-month dark period in a place I seldom visited. Just when I started to think my life was perfect, that the darkness had finally left me, I got a letter from the agency.

Your son wanted to contact you, it said; he's waiting for your decision.

His first letter was enclosed. It was short and polite. He’s in the States half a globe away from me and somehow he found me. He talked about his life and work there, but very little about his childhood. The omission spoke louder than words. My heart sank. The promise that he would be with a good family was not kept. The sketch I made up for him was another lie burned up in smoke.

I’d love to meet you, he said. Is he punishing me by not saying he grew up in a loving family, or that he didn’t blame me? How could I tell him I did marry his father and have a great family, only he’s not included? Will he understand I didn't try to find him because I didn't think I had the right to disturb him? How could I tell Collin he had another son he never knew, because I gave him to strangers?

Me, the person he thanked many times for making his life complete, had carried this cancerous secret with me for thirty years. Our lives are built not on rocks, it seems, but in the sands, and now the tides are coming in. How, in trying to do the unselfish thing, did I manage to fail my family and my first born?

The shimmering ocean stays silent, but stares me back with an enticing promise. The promise of peace, at last.

Point Siege

2010-08-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

The river shines a million diamonds under the September sun. Donald doesn’t stop like he used to, but walks with his eyes looking straight ahead.

He used to think the river as a big, beautiful woman loving and nurturing her children with her ample bosom and comforting arms. With her soft throaty voice she sings them to sleep at night.

The hurricane changed it into a savage sea monster. It unleashed its claws and swept away houses with people in them. His roof was blown away and his possessions were stewed in muddy water. In one day he lost everything. He can't bear the sight of the river now.

He heard the police had set up an evacuation center at “The Point”--a small town spared by the hurricane and flood. He hopes they have food there. He's getting hungry after walking several hours on foot.

This town makes him uncomfortable. He saw a few glances behind the curtain along the way. Plantation style houses with summer blossoms and wrought iron fences can make a postcard ashamed, yet he feels he is being watched with unwelcoming eyes.

Some trees are lying on the street blocking his way. They are arranged not by wind, but by human hands. He looks around. Going back to bypass it will take too long. He's losing energy under the inferno heat. He bends down to remove the trees.

* * *

Robbie sees him passing his house and gets his shotgun out. He calls the boys and tells them where the guy is heading. The boys say they will be there soon. They are going to get him this time.

We set up the barricades to give you warnings, he says to himself, not my fault if you’re too dumb to get it. This town is special. We take good care of our properties, and we are not going to let some looters ruin it. Hurricane or not, you people are not welcome here. The sheriff told me they didn’t have enough people to maintain order. Do what you have to and leave them by the side walk, he said.

Robbie pats his shotgun proudly. He's grateful he had the smarts to get it at the first sight of the drones of those people flooding in to the center. No low lives like them are going to destroy our town by stealing or looting. We'll show them who’s in charge here.

* * *

The sound of the blast bounces off the water and ripples away slowly. Donald feels the pain in his neck, arms and back before falling to the ground. Two or three guys with guns pointing at him looking from above, their silhouettes big against the blue sky blocking the sunshine. He doesn't feel the heat anymore.

“We got you, nigger. We got you!” Robbie says. Donald sees anger in his eyes, but more than that, he sees fear glittering behind it. I know that fear, he wants to say. He had felt it many times before--every time he passed a man like him.

Wild Ginger

2010-07-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

shifu - abbess
nigu - buddhist nun
miao - buddhist temple

The hills glistened under the slanted golden sun. Her hand-tucked canvas shoes and long wide sleeves, sweeping along grasses scented with dewy drops, were wet. She brushed her long hair aside along with the sweat on her forehead and drew in deeply the cold mountain air.

She had collected enough fire woods for the day and filled the giant urn in the kitchen with spring water. Shifu told her to fetch one more thing for the ceremony tonight, and she was told to do this chore by herself.

Others had described the shape and scent to her before. It’s pure white in color, they said, and they bloom in summer with dancing petals. She missed the season when she came to the miao to stay last year. She was broken then, lost her sight for life.

Shifu and other nigus nursed her back to health in their quiet and gentle ways. She gradually understood from shifu’s wise eyes that life could be simple; that heartaches could be buried.

She realized she wanted to be one of them when she was healed. The tip of her hair danced in the gentle breeze and tickled her face, her neck. Waye used to do that. She pushed the thought out of her mind.

Not today, she thought, today I need to be pure and empty. The bothersome hair will be gone forever, much like her thoughts of earthly connection. Her fingers wrapped the hair around but she was concentrating on purging her thoughts and didn’t notice.

You will know when you find it, they said. The scent is divine, there’s nothing like it! That’s why we offer it to Buddha.

She followed the turn of the road and there it was: behind the big tree in the shade, some white flowers swayed in the air. The blade shaped green leaves bounced under filtered sun light. Her hands reached out to touch the petals and the aroma seized her.

Waye’s head was buried in her hair and he whispered: “You smell like heaven.. ” She felt Waye’s arms around her and she caressed her arms achingly. Her memories were battered with horrible fragments. There was blood all over her. She remembered screaming his name, his head draped lifelessly on the steering wheel. People were shouting and pulling her away from the car, from him. She couldn't stop screaming.

They told her she was lucky to have survived, but she didn’t know how to live without Waye. Her mother took her to this miao as a last attempt to pull her back to life. Almost a year later she decided to join the women. Her head would be shaved clean, a symbol of cutting tie with the rest of the world, and her scalp would be burned with incense for spiritual cleansing. All pains would be gone for good.

Her face was wet with tears and her arms full with white wild ginger flowers. She had lost the sense of time sitting under the tree. Fresh tears kept flowing down and she let them come out freely. She was no longer lost. Her heart hurt for the first time in a year.

Shifu saw her face when she walked into the miao and knew--the broken child was repaired. She carefully put the flowers in the vase in front of Buddha’s statue and turned to face shifu.

“They smelled so...” she began to say, but words failed her and her voice cracked.

“I know.” shifu said, her eyes calm with foreboding wisdom. “ Your bag is packed and ready in your room.” she said, gently and lovingly, “Go now. Go and have a wonderful life.”

Hair Therapy

2010-07-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

The shop was sparse when I walked in. A woman sat me down and asked what I wanted. I didn’t remember her but I was not surprised. Their turnover rate must be astronomical, and the quality of their work remains not improved.

I don’t do the $50.00 haircut. I tried, but nobody ever said “Wow. Your hair looks gorgeous!” to me.
I told myself if nobody could tell the difference, it makes no difference where I get the cut.

I don’t do Lancome or Estee Lauder brand for skincare either, but only because my skin broke out miserably every time I did. I’m more than happy to save some money there, too. Drugstore brand works great in that aspect.

My mother has a good analogy for that. She told me I was born with a body fit for a royal family (that means not very strong and needs pampering), but a fate proper for a poor peasant (that's pretty self-explanatory).

Thanks, mom.

I do draw the line at Supercuts. They butchered my hair so bad once that I looked like a man. Actually, more like a woman who would prefer a female lover.

“Your hair is wavy.” The hairdresser commented.

My hair is straight, but she would hear none of it. She pointed at the back of my head, where a few strands of hair were posing in an acrobatic twist.

“Yes, it IS wavy.” I said.

She had the scissors, so I let her win. My decades of experience with my own hair merely meant she knew better than me.

I looked around the shop when she did the cutting. I’ve learned long ago they had their own minds on how you should look. It’s beneficial for my own mental health if I indulge their artistic expressions freely.

A man walked in. He was short with dark skin, but pleasant at first glance for the smile he was sporting. He looked around and proclaimed happily, “Ah, there you are—hiding in the back!”

A woman stood up and greeted him. She was his favorite, obviously. She had a knit top on, and her torso was squeezed into three sections above her waist, in Michelin Tire logo guy style.

I soon found out she was his victim, not favorite. He talked non stop all the time while she cut his hair. I tried to tune him out, but he was only two seats down. At one time I heard him asking her if she knew the difference between smart and intelligent, then proceeded to explain the difference. She murmured mindless “uh hum” every now and then while trimming. Maybe she had a good reason to be hiding in the back.

He was either in love with her, or had a bad case of superiority complex. Either way it was an urban tragedy. She struck me as the type who would value earthly pleasure more than intellectual enlightening, with which he was so eager to impart.

He had better come up with a better strategy if he wanted this to go anywhere. I would suggest lots of dining out and leisure drives in his luxury car if he had one.

As for the complex, he’s on his own. My arms weren’t long enough to reach over and slap him out of it.

She said something to her coworkers in a foreign language after he left. I had a pretty good idea what that might be. Following is just one of many possibilities:

“WTH was that? He should pay me double for putting up with all his crap!”

A haircut is not only a fun and relaxing event, it can also be therapeutic at times.

Last Train for Home

2010-06-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

She moved a little closer to the edge after sitting there for a while. The stomach ache gnawed at her now and then. She ignored it. The pain became easier to endure after some practice.

The locomotive in the distant dark cried a muffled woo-woo. She listened and remembered sitting in one a few months ago. How hopeful and bright-eyed she was.

Momma, wait for my letter--she had said to her mother. I will save every penny I make and send them to you. You will be able to buy meat and new fabrics for the family. We will have a much better life after I get there. They say everything is better at the factory. Money, meals, and new dorms. Oh, I can't wait to get there.

She remembered eating dry bread on the train. Her mother saved all she could to make the flat bread for her trip. She couldn't afford to buy anything during the trip. They spent all they had to get her the train ticket.

Momma, they took my ID card the first day I got here. I couldn't go home without it.

They took most of my wages, too. They said it was for security's sake. I soon realized it was for their security, not mine. It was the way to make sure we would stay there forever.

There was plenty of work. Too much work. And we weren't allowed to say no. It seemed the back-orders never stopped flooding in. The kids in "The Beautiful Country" are so lucky. These gadgets we make day and night couldn't fill their demand. They must have so much money.

We didn't have time to rest on days at a time. Often we didn't have time to eat. I had to swallow my rice so fast, soon my stomach started to ache. They wouldn't let me go to the hospital. They would deduct my wages for missing work, they said. So I pushed the pain away and worked.

At night my dorm-mates could hear my pain even though I tried to hide it. The dorms were big rooms with curtain dividers between rows of beds. Ah May was my neighbor. She was worried for me, but there was little she could do to help. She smuggled rice mush for me when she could--it helped ease my pain a bit. My line supervisor was not happy with me. He said I worked too slow. That meant deduction on my wages.

I'm so tired, momma. I feel dizzy. I hadn't slept for two days now. The orders must be filled, so nobody could rest until they were done. I complained to the head of the union once, and I learned not to do it again. The company's manager reprimanded me in front of all my dorm-mates for complaining. I was so naive. I didn't know the union leader reported to him.

We have fifteen minutes for dinner, then we have to go back to work. I snuck up here because it's quiet and peaceful. I'm tired and dizzy, but I'm not hungry. Momma, I really don't want to go back to the factory. I don't know how much longer I could endure the dreadful place and endless work. I don't care if they take my wages. I just want to sleep.

She moved again but wavered and lost her balance. The last thing she saw was the concrete-covered ground rushing up to meet her.

The woman a thousand miles away heard the soft whistle of a train passing by the village. She wondered when her daughter would be home again. Her last letter was more than a month ago. Is she alright? The low and sad whistle made her eyes watery.

She didn't know her daughter had already started her journey home.

(To the twelve workers committed suicide at Foxconn. 'The Beautiful Country' in Chinese means U.S.A.)

Grounded

2010-06-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

Go away, I whisper to myself. Please...just go away.

But no. The little girl and her little dog get closer. The bouncy, featherless, naked dog looks into the viny grass where I thought was a good hiding place.

I back up a little when its little brown nose gets close, praying that they don't see me.

"There it is!" The little girl shrieks.

Qua! Qua! Mom is very mad at this--they are getting too close to me. She jumps around yelling with all her force. Soon dad joins her. I could see from under the grass that they both are jumping up and down, and the screaming is almost deafening.

I know they are worried sick, but all this noise is not helping with my hiding.

A woman with another little dog appears from behind a door. At lease this dog has long hair and doesn't look obscenely naked. Something tells me I should move, and fast.

I jump out of the viny grass when the little girl is not looking in my direction, and hop with all the strength I can summon to get away.

The shoulder hurts when I hop, but the other side of the courtyard looks safer than here.

The little dog, the little girl, the woman with the little dog in her arms, all follow me as if I was putting on a magic show. Mom and dad follow me from above--never stop yelling for a second.

This is aggravating. Why couldn't these people just leave me alone? Thank goodness the bushes and grass are coming up. With one last hop I dive into the grass.

The woman disappears and reappears without the little dog, and her hands are covered with something thick. She tries to grab me. I dodge and sidestep in the grass so she can't reach me. I show her my sharp beak and imitate mom's screaming when her hands are upon me. That scares her and makes her stop. She disappears.

A guy appears from nowhere and tries the same thing. I scare him away the same way I did with the woman. All this hopping around trying to stay away from them is hurting me even more.

I survived the night before on unsuspecting bugs and dew drops on the grass. I'm sure I can manage if they will just let me be.

Mom and dad still jump from branch to branch, screaming at the top of their lungs. Qua! Qua! Her voice is getting coarse, but she doesn't stop.

I'm sorry, mom. I didn't mean to make you worry. The worm looked so good and I wanted to show you how strong I was. I didn't see the short tree next to it until too late. I miss our warm and safe home up there. I want to go back, but I don't know when I will be able to fly again. My chest hurts each time the thought occurs.

The woman tells the man she called the animal services. I hope they are less annoying than these people and dogs. I can't get a minute of rest when they are around.

All of a sudden they don't worry me that much anymore.

From the corner of my eyes I could see a steel-gray cat quietly approaching. Mom told me before: it is one of the most dangerous things I should watch for when out hunting for worms.

I'm scared. From the screaming noise made by mom and dad, I know they are, too. I hope I can survive tonight.

When Good Girl Gone Bad...

2010-06-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

I am ashamed to say that I have been a bad girl lately.

I have been a little depressed after the visit to my mom's. We are now in a holding pattern as she couldn't decide whether to move in with me or not. Regardless of her decision some significant challenges will present themselves for sure. The fact that Parkinson's could be genetically passed down didn't help either, so I escaped to the imaginary land of stories. I piled up the awards I was given, awesome blogs that I should have mentioned and passed the awards forward, and buried my head in the sand for the past few months.

That's what I meant by "good girl gone bad." I hope you weren't expecting something else.

There are other reasons for my postponement. Each time I recieve an award it's incredibly humbling for me. Someone thinks my blog is not only worth reading, but worthy of an award! I am forever grateful for being able to make the journey to the wonderland, and take you with me for the ride.

The pressure of passing down the award is another reason. All I can say is there are too many great blogs/writers out there and not enough awards to go around. All the blogs I'm following are wonderful and worth your visit.

Here are the awards I stored away and now is the time to say thanks:

http://sarah-writerinmaking.blogspot.com/

Sarah just finished her 250-page book, so I should say Sarah, a writer is born!

http://reallifeinaminute.blogspot.com/

Sandra is a former math teacher. Alas, she has moved on to other things in life. I hope someday she'll revive her blog to document the progress in her artistic pursuit.

http://ubergrumpy.blogspot.com/

He combines the Englishman's humor with the most, eh hum, interesting, pictures on his blog.

http://tgoette-sophisticatedlunacy.blogspot.com/

Tom's lunacy can be related to many, and particularly, me.

http://sarah-writerinmaking.blogspot.com/

Back to Sarah again. I find her life in Canada as a student very interesting and her writing introspective. I'm sure you will, too.

Thank you all for thinking of me. I have an award for you as well. (see below for the fireworks one)

Some awards have rules to follow and some don't. I can't remember which is which, so I'm making up my own. I'm listing some of the wonderful blogs here for you to check them out. The blog owners below can grab any awards above and do whatever they want:

Hunter has a way with words and is working on a novel. That's how you can tell who a serious writer is. http://timecrook.blogspot.com/

Bruce's columnist style writing is always insightful and powerful. I won't be surprised if he's secretly working for Boston Globe or New York Times. http://brucecoltin.blogspot.com/

Tina's supernatural stories send chills down your spine. She, too, is working on a novel--her second one. http://www.thecleanwhitepage.com/

Charlene finds lessons even in life's most difficult chapters. Her blog is always uplifting and inspirational. http://www.beamingbalance.com/

Lou is a talented writer. I think she is also working on a novel--another real writer in the making. http://livewritedream.blogspot.com/

Judie makes breathtakingly beautiful arts of various mediums. Her feelings come through in her words and just as touching. http://rogueartistsspeak.blogspot.com/

Kitty's stories make you laugh, cry, and laugh some more. Her life in UK will hook you on the first read. http://kittymoore.blogspot.com/

Angie is another artist with an uncommon medium: pyrography. It's a slow but interesting progress. http://angierea-originalpyrographicart.blogspot.com/

Robyn has the worst luck in dating, but that makes great blogging material for us. I hope her bad luck continues...just kidding Robyn. http://rawknrobynsgoneblogwild.blogspot.com/

I know I missed quite a few great bloggers out there, so here is an award I made in case you're visiting:

To all the followers and all the blogs I'm following--You are all awesome!

Sacrifice

2010-05-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

How long had it been? She couldn't remember. Her eyes were blurry and her throat was dry. Slowly she picked herself up from the floor, holding on to the wall that once was a door.

She tried to clear her throat, but the only sound it made was a scratchy echo rippled in the vast room. She looked around with a cold smile.

The walls were painted with deities to guide and welcome the pharaoh's arrival. The scripts next to them depicted what a great king he was. All the figurings, jewelries, furniture and everything else they thought the pharaoh would need in his afterlife was provided, richly decorated with glittering gold and priceless gems. The garnet ring whispered to her under the torch light with its crimson curse.

She grabbed the ring and threw it against the door with a desparate roar.

Her parents were more than relieved when she was picked by the pharaoh's court. They could barely feed the family of seven. Now she could take care of the family for a change.

And she did. The pharaoh was charmed by her gift of singing and dancing. She was showered with jewelries, presents and servants, and most of all, the pharaoh's frequent visit to her chamber. She sent most of the favors home.

"Papa, put these away for me please." She said. Her papa understood the unspoken words, and kept the small stash for her. The family was well fed now, but she was afraid of her position in the pharaoh's court. She couldn't give him a son, a tragedy saddened them both, but his love for her never wavered. It was his wife's jealous look that worried her the most.

Being the pharaoh's favorite woman, she imagined a quiet and secluded life after his passing. After all, he was quite a bit older than her. Although he promised to take care of her, she knew her fate would be uncertain once her protector was gone. Still, she had prayed to the gods that she would be sent home by the queen to live out the rest of her life.

She laughed. A tear slid down her cheek and she didn't wipe it away. She didn't suspect a thing when the queen told her to dress up for the funeral. We need to look our best for the pharaoh's journey, she said.

She was in the middle of the prayers when she suddenly realized her voice sounded hollow in the room. She looked up and saw the last of sunlight before the stone door slowly closed out the world behind it. She ran to it screaming, "No! Have mercy, My Lady!"

The queen's voice coldly replied, "Thank you for volunteering your companion, Amarna. We are grateful for your sacrifice." With that, the door was sealed forever.

The air felt cool and heavy in her chest. There wasn’t much time left. She found a hairpin in the jewelry chest and started carving on the wall. She and her family would be long gone when someone saw this—if it would be seen at all. Her only hope was her story would be told, and her name would be remembered.

Her malachite-green eye shadows were smeared with black eyeliners by tears, but nobody would witness it. She would leave the gold and turquoise necklace, bracelets and headdress on her, so one day people will have a clue as who she was from her remains.

I may not have an afterlife for the lack of a proper burial, but my name will live forever--she promised herself.

(A trip to the Egyptian museum inspired my wild imagination.)

Veil of the Night

2010-05-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

I adjust the paper bag in my hand before opening the door to the living room. Not because I have anything to hide. I hope for her sake she knows how to behave by now. It's easier if she doesn't see the wine right away.

She comes over with a smile and says 'hi honey.' I peck her cheek just light enough to keep her on her toes. It tells her to watch out and leave me alone. Sure enough, her smile becomes somewhat uncertain. A subtle cloud arises between us just the way I wanted.

I suppress a chuckle with pursed lips. It's the oldest trick on earth--the best defense is an early offense. She is weak as usual to counter my game plan.

The kids stand half way on the stairs and say hi to me before quietly going back to their homework. I stop and listen for a while--it is quiet upstairs as usual. They know the rule: no TV before finishing their homework. I will not have a noisy house when I come home, and this assures it stay that way.

They are good kids--if you think getting good grades at school and not rowdy like other teenagers are good. I make sure they understand where they are in my eyes. When she showed me the daughter's report card with all As, I reminded her that she was not in the special program for gifted kids. She got quiet.

Don't even try to imply I am stupid because I didn't finish college. I easily proved to the three of them I was smarter than any of them. Now they tip-toe around me just as I expected.

It is even easier with the boy. He is a happy little guy with short memory span. There is no lacking of words or opportunities to put him in his place. "Dumb-ass" seems to quiet him down fast enough.

I provide this home for them, and I make sure they appreciate it and worship me properly. I need them to show that nobody is more superior to me.

She is cooking something in the kitchen. I walk in there and take a silent look into the pan. I walk out with a glass and a bottle opener. This will no doubt make her doubt her own cooking and leave me further alone.

I listen to the soft chatters between her and the kids in the kitchen while quietly nursing my White Zin in the living room. I know she glanced at my direction a few times, wondering what was wrong. Just the way I wanted her to feel.

I might open a second bottle if the moods fit me. This should teach her a lasting lesson.

She had the nerve to challenge me to stop drinking. For a whole month! I told her I could stop any time I wanted, and I took up her challenge successfully for two weeks. That should be more than enough to prove that I didn't have a problem. I saw no point in continuing it. So what if I drink a bottle or two after work? It's not a big deal, and it irks me that she thinks it is. It's the reward I deserve after a day in the office.

The best way to make her stop challenging me is to turn the table on her. I did it for years, on many people. I knew it would work, and it did not disappoint. I took over control on everything within a month.

The old man's face slowly surfaces as I start the first glass. The anger I felt when he raised his fist to my mother, the shame I felt when he called me names, and the worst of all: the fear and powerlessness he made me feel every time he had a drunken rage. I take a big gulp from the glass to dampen the nameless anger rising inside.

I swore I would never feel that way again--by anyone. I make sure she knows I have no problem raising my fist to her--the way I did to the one before her. I am, after-all, three times her weight. I could break her with two fingers. She knows very well that I am a real man. Too bad the old man isn't here, but she and the kids are.

It is getting late. The house is quiet. They know I don't like laughter or noise. The old man's face starts to fade as the White Zin goes down in the bottle. I think I will open another one just to make sure he vanishes completely.

When I go up there she has better be ready. The king of the night will take whatever he pleases.

E. O. E.

2010-05-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

“Guess what I found out?”

Sharla and I became friends after working several months together, and we talked once in a while after I left.

“What?” Her tone of voice piqued my curiosity; although I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to find out. I braced myself for the suspense.

“Judy, one of the new hires, is the sister of the other team lead – Pam.”

The forgotten rage flooded back with a vengeance. So many questions were suddenly answered.

QHF was one of the major energy companies in this state. The interview for the contract job had gone well with two supervisors, and I didn’t mind the long commute too much. It was a nice change to trade driving with reading on the train.

However, the job itself left much to be desired. Of each and every step in the project management process, an approval was required. Project assistants spent most of their days sending out, chasing after, and archiving these approvals. Whoever designed this process must have lived in the 19th century and stayed there. I watched with dread each time I glanced at their enormous spreadsheet used just to keep track of the status of all the approvals.

Thank heavens I didn’t have to do that. The manager whose work I was supporting decided not to manage her program, which was entirely different from other projects, with this cumbersome process. I did have to spend a lot of time converting spreadsheet data into a project plan in the beginning, and run intricate reports weekly, but I would do anything not to chase the approval papers daily.

The same manager also fought with two other groups to have me on her projects full-time. I was working on her projects on a part-time basis, and she was quite happy with my work. She looked intimidating, and most people shied away from working with her. I was able to look past her serious exterior and got along with her amicably -- much to my co-workers’ amazement.

I had dealt with HR department of both large and small companies long enough to ignore the first two emails encouraging us to apply for the new position. Besides, some contract jobs I had lasted longer than some of my “real" jobs, and I had become accustomed to certain degree of freedom that came with contract josb. The second email was forwarded by my reporting supervisor with blind copies to anonymous recipients.

One morning my reporting supervisor came to my desk asking me to apply. I thought about it for a long time, then decided not to let her feel snubbed. It was a public company. Surely they would follow the laws, right?

I went through two rounds of interview. They went well. One day a man from HR called and asked for my pay rate. He indicated that he was working on an offer for me and needed that information. I was excited and started to plan my near future in the following few weeks. The job wasn’t ideal, but it provided a starting point, not to mention some sense of security that would be nice to have.

Instead of an offer letter, I received a “Thanks but no thanks” email from HR two weeks later. They had decided on a “more qualified candidate.” I saw the subsequent announcement email with the new hires’ qualifications listed. Four out of five new hires didn't have either the degree or the related work experiences required. At least two out of five didn’t have better qualifications than I did - Judy was one of them. The HR was working on my offer when they called. What happened between then and now?

I had no ways or means to fight with a team of corporate lawyers, who were paid for the sole purpose of defending the company’s interests. I talked to the sympathetic but powerless manager who I worked with, and did the only thing I could -- I left and never went back. I felt bad for leaving, but not as bad as the indication that I was unfit for the job, regardless how well it was working out for all parties involved, so they had to hire those less qualified people to fill the positions.

After I left, I was told the contractor who replaced me was so underqualified that her co-worker refused to train her. The comment I heard was "I don't have all day to train her on the basic skills she should have." She got the job because her half-sister worked there. That was not as bad, though, as the news I just heard from Sharla now.

I wonder what kind of connections the other four had.

For a few weeks I had really thought an enormous company with state-wide offices and employees would follow the laws and practice fair hiring. I was so pathetically wrong.

Next time I see the fine print on a company’s job site that says “We Are an Equal Opportunity Employer” I will be laughing so hard that my sides will split open. I will probably need medical attention, but it will be completely worth it.

Lost

2010-04-29T13:52:00.000-07:00

Screens of bamboos stood on guard on one side of the dirt road. Rice grasses swayed like sheets of green silk fluffed by a gentle and invisible hand on the other side of the road. I turned and looked at the other end of the road, only to find the same country scene. Panic, not serenity, hit me in an afternoon filled with pre-storm damp heat.

The seed of decades of nightmare had just been planted. It was the worst kind any kid could have--I was lost.

The singing rehearsal at the radio station had gone well, and we were told to come back the next day. A group of my classmates chosen by the teacher walked together toward the little village settlement while chatting, laughing and teasing. The head of the class was among us, and I was the target of his constant teasing. It must have been puppy love they so lovingly named it. I didn't feel much of the loving to be frank; but then, I was only in second grade.

I made the turn and walked away from the group. He yelled at me over and over: "No, Sarah. This is the way home! Not that one!" I refused to listen, thinking he was teasing me again, and I wasn't going to fall for that.

Now I desperately wanted to reverse that bad decision.

There was not a soul in sight. I had traversed the roads forever and no matter which way I turned, they all seemed familiar at first, and turned into another wrong direction shortly. I was both tired and anxious. My parents would think I was stupid not to follow the group. Worse yet, it was getting dark.

A small house sitting a few yards off the dirt road with a window that glowed warm amber light drew me closer to it. Either my pacing up and down or my sobbing, although I don't remember crying, caught the attention of a man and he walked out of the house. It wasn't difficult to see that I was miserably lost. He invited me into his house.

He had a wife and a little girl close to my age. We might have been going to the same school, but I didn't know her. I didn't refuse the dinner, but I couldn't eat much either. The reaction from my parents worried me the most. I asked them to take me home after dinner, but it started to pour and didn't want to stop. Finally they said I should spend the night there and they would take me home in the morning. There were no streetlights in country side, and nobody owned a car.

I was going to share the bed with their daughter. Just when I was getting ready for bed I heard the faint shouting of my name outside. I jumped up and said: "That's my dad!"

They opened the door and called out to him. There was my father, drenched with water but relieved to see me. He thanked the kind family after scolding me for getting lost, and then we were on our way home.

The dirt road outside had turned into an endless mud path. I was riding on his back, holding on to his neck with both of my arms. It was a surreal feeling forever etched in my memory, as my father seldom held me. I saw the water drops beading down his neck, not sure if they were rain or sweat. I felt guilty for causing so much trouble. I was ashamed for being dumb enough to get lost. However, beneath all those feelings I was also a little happy. It was one of the rare moments I felt loved by him.

My parents complained to the teacher and promptly ended my singing career next day. It made me feel like the biggest idiot in the world. It was many years later that I finally could relate to the anger my parents must have felt. I still blame the boy for my inability to sing karaoke today.

Perhaps I should thank the boy instead. Perhaps, just for a moment, panic also hit my father--thinking I was forever lost. Perhaps he held me a little closer to his heart because of it.

Happy Earth Day

2010-04-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day!

Crossing

2010-04-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

"Hi sweetie. I miss you...”

He touches the glass cover gently. She smiles at him with her warm eyes that are forever frozen on the glossy paper. He took the picture in their last trip together. Her silver mane glows softly against the blue Tuscany sky.

The golden rays of the setting sun make her eyes glisten, as if saying to him, "I miss you, too, darling. Are you taking care of yourself? Have you eaten yet?"

Eaten? He tries to remember, but nothing comes to mind. He doesn't remember much these days. Days and nights seem to roll into one long silent movie, in it him the only actor. He doesn't feel hungry either. Food tastes bland and feels pointless nowadays. He lives for one goal: To be with his sweetie.

She continues from inside the frame and with the tone of a silver bell, “The time is almost here. Did you take care of the business like I reminded you last time, darling?”

“I did, sweetie. I can’t wait for the time to come. We will never be apart again.” He answers gently. His crinkled fingers trace her face like feathers. His eyes twinkle for a second over the thought of holding her once again.

The phone rings bluntly. He thinks it sounds like Jack, their son, so he decides not to get up from the couch.

"Dad? Are you there?" It's Julie, their daughter.

"It's time for dinner, dad, and don't forget your medication." She continues. So he hasn't had dinner. There’s a note in the kitchen somewhere telling him what medication to take after what meal. He’s tired of all the medications he has to take everyday.

"I'll call you later, dad." Julie hangs up with a little worry in her voice.

Julie comes by once a month to sort things out for him, and calls everyday to make sure he’s okay. She has a husband and three kids and her plate is really full.

Jack used to be a good kid. After his fall lately though, Jack and his wife Kate have been pushing him to move to the senior home. He knows what they want—the house, and the ease of their conscience. He doesn’t blame them. He doesn’t want to be a burden if he could help it. Jack calls once a week and each time he asks for a decision.

He doesn’t have one. Not one that Jack wanted to hear anyway.

He doesn’t want to tell him that the house goes to Julie, who has recently lost her job. Jack and Kate will just have to be understanding and make do with their two incomes. Hopefully his small savings will make them less resentful after he's gone.

He always had the mental image of growing old with his wife, but fate has a different plan for him.

“It’s better this way, sweetie. I know now.” He says lovingly to the smile in the picture frame. “It’s not much fun growing old alone. I hate to think this would be what you had to go through if I went first.”

All affairs are in order. He checks his letter to the kids and feels completely calm. I’m ready, sweetie. It’s been long enough. I want to be with you and it’s time. I have waited so long. I don’t want to spend another day without you.

* * *

The woman opens the door and yells, “Mr. Stafford , are you home? It’s Wednesday—the cleaning day.”

The house feels hollow and cold. She looks around and sees the framed picture on the couch. She picks it up and puts it back on the coffee table.

“Strange. I always thought the picture had only Mrs. Stafford in it…“ She shrugs to herself and proceeds to the kitchen, calling “Mr. Stafford?”

The elderly couple in the picture smiles silently and happily, their silhouette forever frozen in the frame.

(Artwork done by Emily Tai)

In Her Shoe

2010-04-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

The leaves on the ash trees outside the window rustle gently in the morning breeze. It’s too early for the ocean on the horizon to show off its turquoise shimmers, but you know it’s there. The cool, damp air and the waves of salty sea kelp smell constantly remind her of it.

It’s still new and strange to her. She grew up on a tropical island where the beach and the sea water were always warm and welcoming. Here, you can barely put your feet in the edge of the water before you have to hastily retreat and wipe the beads off of them. Frigid water does not spell welcome to her since her first attempt.

Tara’s unhappy and disapproving face comes back to her. She gets up to refill her tea mug, trying unsuccessfully to fill her head with a different image. She tells herself it's only a dream.

Tara--always the sentimental and considerate girl of the two who was the carbon copy of her own image. They are completely identical in looks and yet opposite in every other way. Tara loved small animals, while she thinks they are too much of a bother. Tara loved poems and sunset, while she couldn’t understand why.

A walk on the beach with Matt the third day after she arrived changed her mind. With Matt’s big and warm hand holding hers, the sunset at the end of the ocean looked mesmerizing in spite of the cold wind. That must have been what Tara meant, she thought to herself. Love changes everything to the brighter, better, and prettier perception. For the first time romance didn’t feel like a laughable idea.

She didn’t come here to fall in love--she argues with herself. She came with a promise to Tara. Matt was so happy to see her that words were lost in his embrace. She smiled and didn’t deny when he called out, “Tara!” and the masquerade was on. It’s too late to go back now. Tara’s tearful and fervor words still ring in her ears: Promise you will go there and tell him in person. Promise you will make sure he’s all right. I’m all he has, Darla. Don’t let his heart break.

Tara died the day they took her to the hospital. They never found out who hit her with what kind of car. She was exhausted after comforting her parents and taking care of the funeral. All she could remember was Tara’s last words when life was rapidly pulling out from her, so she made the journey. She knew Matt before she met him. Tara loved him with all she had, and it showed in the letters she wrote to Darla. Matt is not perfect, she wrote, but he is perfect for me. Darla remembered thinking to herself “I’ll give it six months” in her usual lighthearted and sarcastic way.

The sixth month never came. Tara’s vacation in her hometown turned into a bottomless nightmare, with renewed grief greeting her everyday. Darla grieved for Tara’s death, and for the happiness Tara lost. Falling in love with Matt was completely unexpected.

Did you hear that, Tara? I didn’t do this on purpose. I just couldn’t hurt him with your death. I didn’t have a choice. I see what you saw in him. He loves you without reservation. He nurses me patiently so I could gain the weight back, of which I blamed on the heat and the long journey. He made it so easy to love him. The only thing to do was to kill Darla, and that’s what I did.

“Morning.” Matt kisses her from behind and wraps his arms around her. He buries his face in the dip of her collarbone and whispers, “Did I tell you I love you?”

She closes her eyes and says, “I love you, too, Matt.”

(Happy Easter Everyone!)

The Visit - Part 8

2010-03-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

(About ten years ago mom went back to her home town and reunited with her remaining family. The temple in the background used to be her elementary school. It has always been a temple.)

I woke up in a quiet house and started bawling. I’m leaving tomorrow and mom will be on her own again. I’m worried sick to think she has to do everything herself in her frail condition. There’s a limit how much friends can help, and mom hates to bother her friends. I can’t move here for a couple of reasons. It’s hard for her to move in with me for a couple of reasons. I felt gutted with no feasible solutions in sight.

We talked about it after mom got up. We both thought the senior home would be the last resort. Moving in with me would be the best way to go. I will go back and get things in order. I may have to sell my house and get a ground level unit to accommodate her mobility issues. I’ll have to think about the financial part of it. I felt a little better.

I made mom practice the buttons on the new radio we bought yesterday. She got frustrated by the buttons last night that she lost temper and wanted to return it. I assured her new gadgets nowadays were all alike--they are getting more and more complicated. Besides, this is the only model they have that plays cassettes. The only thing to do is to be patient (a real challenge for mom) and practice.

I encouraged her to do the exercise recommended by the therapist. She said she’d been exercising for forty years and look at her now. She’d rather die, she said. She does the bicycle pedaling everyday for forty-five minutes, but sits in front of the TV for the rest of the day. The stomach exercise is the most important one--it helps her stand steadily and upright, thus reduces her risk of falling. I’ll have to call her twice a day: once in the morning to remind her about the stomach exercise, over which she will no doubt have a fit, and once before bedtime to check on her.

I counted the capsules and tablets she takes everyday. There are fourteen bottles and about forty pills a day. Only one of them was prescribed by her doctor. All the others are either vitamins or supplements with magical powers. I worried about her vitamin A intake, which exceeded daily allowance by about one thousand eight hundred MCG. She told me she’d been taking it for years, and my worries were complete nonsense. I read all the effects of vitamin A overdose to her. She finally agreed to reduce the dosage by half. Maybe the one about hair loss got her attention.

Mom asked me if there were doctors in my area. I said why no, we use voodoo rituals to cure diseases. Surprisingly, she didn’t get mad. I felt bad for being a smart aleck.

The lawyer turned out to be a disappointment. She neglected to tell us a couple of things, and the fee subsequently increased to over one thousand dollars. Mom said forget it unhappily, then she got up and left. We forgot to ask if we owe the lawyer any fees for the tiny amount of work she had done so far. Mom didn’t think we owe her anything.

I’m still torn by the question of where she should live. The best choice for her is to stay here, but that means I have to somehow find work in her area so I will be readily available to her. I hate making decisions.

* * *

The taxi was a little late. Several times mom wanted to go back and call the company. I didn’t remind her with the fact that she didn’t speak a word of English. I stopped her each time and told her I had hours to kill at the airport, so five minutes was nothing.

She stayed at the building entrance as I ran out in the rain to the taxi. We waved briefly and the taxi pulled her out of my sight. I talked to the driver nonstop so I wouldn’t start crying again. I found out his original country, his educational and work background, and his near future plans.

There are choices to be made and none of them is easy. The best one seems to be for mom to stay in her house and for me to go there. That means I have to give up my life as I knew. Am I ready for it? I lost count of the times I cried during this visit. I will likely lose count of the times we fight over little things if we live together.

The minute houses laid out in neat square patches below the clouds. I looked at the picturesque land below and wondered how much sorrow filled how many houses down there. I used to think the view from the airplane windows were magnificently beautiful. I know now there are untold stories, some gut wrenchingly sad, are being played out as I write.

The Visit - Part 7

2010-03-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

We decided to attend the sisterhood worship on Tuesday. More than one person at church told me how impatient and stubborn mom was. I was a little embarrassed at mom’s commenting on people’s age and looks. I guess there’s no other meaningful topics for people over eighty to discuss? But when another woman joined mom and they used the words such as “really ugly” "how shameful” “so appalling” and “why do we hire a cripple (for a minister)” I really wanted to scream. We were in a church for God’s sake!

Mom gets very angry if I say anything about it. She didn’t think there’s anything wrong with it regardless how many times I reminded her. I knew she was upset as the “eleven” lines appeared between her brows. The fact that she uses a cane does not stop her from calling others “cripple.” I’m not sure if I should be angry or laughing.

Lunch was served at church after the sisterhood worship. I got a plate of food for mom. She got soup, dessert, water for herself. When it comes to food mom doesn’t share, wait, or care about others. I think it rooted from her childhood when she first went through famine, then had to eat among bombing and running to shelters. If you didn’t eat fast, you didn’t eat. I don’t understand why she couldn’t outgrow it after sixty years of living in peace time. This is also the reason she couldn’t lose weight. She eats way too fast and too much--as if Japanese soldiers were about to march in any minute now.

I thought we should drive by the senior facility to check out the branch of mom’s bank. She flat out refused it when I mentioned it before church--for no obvious reason. A couple of days before she insisted on there was no such thing; that the one branch she banks with was the only branch they had. Equally, for no obvious reason, she decided to go after church, but not before telling me I didn’t know how to read a map when I was checking the route. She had never been able to read a map or tell directions.

It was a good thing that I apologized to most of her friends about her temper and her verbal assaults, and it was a good thing that they all knew about it and seemed to be pretty understanding. It was an extremely good thing that most of her friends were from the church.

We found the bank and went in to see if they had anybody speaks her language. Thank heavens they did. The drawback is the bank is located on a busy street. Driving and parking may be problematic for her.

If mom doesn’t pass the driver’s test in July, she will have to use her transport card. So far she prefers to stay in her own house, which is completely understandable. Senior housing will be option 2. Me calling her everyday will be essential, and not an option anymore.

A neighbor lives upstairs came check on mom after dinner. She saw mom’s car parked in the same position for days and got worried. She didn’t know I had been driving. Apparently mom’s parking skill is also well known.

The Visit - Part 6

2010-03-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

We looked high and low for the house purchase contract and title for the lawyer’s appointment later today. She had a copy in the envelop marked “House purchase papers” but she thought that was the wrong one, so we looked for an hour. Then we were told that that was the paper we needed.

I found a prayer notebook on the bookshelf. Out of curiosity I flipped through it. She wrote down her morning and evening prayers on it. They were for her favorite political party, her health, her temperament, her friends. But among her three children, only my half brother’s name appeared frequently. I didn’t see my name or my sister’s.

I asked her why. She played her senile card and pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about.

I was hurt for an hour or so, then I went into her room where she started writing down things I should do after she passes. I wrote on a piece of paper: “Don’t worry, mom. I will try my best to find my brother and give him whatever you want to give him after you‘re gone. If necessary I will go back to Taiwan to do this. Your daughter.”

She obviously worries a lot about him but doesn’t want to admit it. I figure that’s the least I could do to calm her mind. I’d like to think she still remembers me in her prayers. She just didn’t write it down.

Today is the first day of meal delivery. She called to ask where the food was around 12 o’clock. I told her the window was between 11:00 to 1:00, but she never had any patience and still doesn’t. I was still cooking some spinach when she wolfed down her meal, and asked me to change the delivery to three times a week.

We went and got the doctor to sign the form so she could apply for discount transportation. We also visited the lawyer referred by her friend and the papers will be ready on Wednesday. Another fruitful day.

The Visit - Part 5

2010-03-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

It’s the senior’s worship day today (Saturday). I met and greeted a lot of elderly people in church, where everybody knew mom. An elderly gentleman came to chat next to us, who were sitting down. All of a sudden, and to my utter horror, mom reached out and slipped half of her hand into the gentleman’s pant zipper saying, “Hey, you forgot to zip up!” I slapped her hand without thinking and at the same time yelled, “Don’t touch that!”

For a second our roles completely reversed. Not that I ever did what she did when I was a kid.

The gentleman laughed and said not to worry, that he and mom had known each other for a long time. Then he zipped up in front of us. I thought to myself yeah, I’m sure you’ll be happy if anyone wants to touch your “you know what.“ For some reason his hand on mom’s shoulder, while moving and rubbing it, irritated me immensely.

I thought about it some more and I think I know why.

Chinese do not touch. The older ones, that is. Mom barely hugged me when she first saw me in two years. Actually, it was more like she endured my hug to her. He was an old man, so he should know better than that. This was borderline molestation!

Mom made arrangement to meet with a realtor friend at a McDonald after church. I showed my stubborn side by refusing to eat there. We got into our separate cars and went to a different place to eat. I’ll have the word “idiot” tattooed on my forehead before I put any junk food in my body when I’m in a town with fine Chinese cuisine everywhere. Did I mention mom was stubborn, too?

The realtor friend answered some questions we had about mom’s property. I think we need to meet a lawyer on Monday. He will arrange that. Friendship here is often hinged on mutual business interests. He had sold a townhouse to mom during her relocation fever. It’s kind of like the clownfish and the sea anemone.

Highlight of the day: mom commented on how her sixty-eight-year old friend looked younger than me. She must be a very special friend.

The Visit - Part 4

2010-03-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

The bather is coming today (Friday). Mom asked me to first cancel it, then to change the time yesterday. I asked for the phone number but she didn’t have it. The bather will call before coming over, which is of course too late to change anything. She couldn’t give me a reason why she wanted to change it though. She decided to bathe herself, so I helped.

We left for the Red Cross before the bather called. I hope she didn’t get worried and call mom’s emergency contact, whoever that may be.

Before we left, we decided to have an argument first. Her “nice temper” made a guest appearance.

“Where’s the 2008 tax return paper?” She asked.
“It’s on the coffee table.” I picked it up and handed her the envelop.
“It’s important paper. I need to give this to Michelle to do my tax this year.”
“Mom, it’s the 2008 tax. It’s already done.”
“How could it be done? I haven’t given her the paper yet.”
“You need to give her 2009 paper to do the tax, not 2008.”
“Nonsense! This is 2010. We do the tax for 2009, so we need the paper from 2008.”
“What? Nooo….” I was baffled by her logic. Did they change the tax rules when I wasn’t paying attention?
“What do you mean no? That’s how it’s done every year!” She was irritated. Her brows were arched high and her look said “you’re an idiot” to me.
“No, you get the 2009…”
“Don’t tell me no!” She refused to listen and raised her voice.
“Mom! This is 2010, you need the income statements from 2009 to do the tax.”

We went through this chronological intrigue several times. Each time she got angrier and louder. Finally she said, “But how can I do the tax? I don’t have the papers!” As if that was the point of our “discussion.”

“That’s why we went to the social services yesterday--to request the duplicates.” How could she not remember? We did this less than 24 hours ago.

She looked at me and, for a second, I thought she was going to argue again, but somehow she decided otherwise. I went inside to change. When I was walking away I heard her murmuring to herself “2009, 2008...?”

Red Cross told us we needed a doctor’s referral to rent a walker. Naturally we didn’t have it. I did get a list where we could purchase one and we decided to get one instead. We found the store and their walkers looked very nice--if “nice” is a proper word to describe walkers. She told the salesman it was too expensive and we left empty handed. I apologized to the salesman, but I couldn’t fault her for being price weary. Truth is, I’m the same way--I see it as a virtue. We went to a discount store and came home with a cheaper walker. I put it together and she tried it out in the house. She seemed happy with it, but it felt sturdy and that was most important.

We looked through her piles of pictures. To some I said yew! I don’t like that person. She lectured me on how we shouldn’t hate, because Christians aren’t supposed to hate. This came from a person who stopped talking to her own brother when he was alive, or to his family who are alive, or to her own two other kids?

Right now I’m tempted to get a job and move here so she doesn’t have to leave her house, or live among strangers. I also know this is the overwhelming emotion I’m experiencing. Getting along will be a challenge in the long run. I probably won’t be able to find work here for quite some time. And just like her, I like my town very much.

On the other hand, how many years does she have left? I may never have a second chance, and the thought of it brings on a feeling that begs for a new word for “awful.”

The Visit - Part 3

2010-03-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

We set out to get her missing papers needed for this year’s tax return straighten out by paying a visit to the local social services. I suspect she had received, and misplaced, these papers, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. It would be a lot easier to request duplicates. I got the directions from the internet because she had no clue where it was. We got there and she said she had been there before to get her passport. I said why didn’t you tell me this, she said she didn’t know it was a government’s building.…

We put in the request and went home, but not before making a detour to the Red Cross to rent a walker--she was not supposed to use a cane according to the health consultant. They were closed. Upon finding out they only worked half a day each day, I wondered out loud if I should get a job there.

We tried again to look for the missing 2008 tax returns. She said she put them away with specific care. I think it must be the Murphy’s law. She found a stack of letters from me, dating from my school years. I read in amazement how detailed I wrote her about my life, most of them I have forgotten or would rather forget. It appeared that I have always been a wordy kid on paper. Is that why I have a blog?

There was one in which I complained about how she hurt my feelings with her careless and constant criticism. This was last year when I figured I was finally old enough to tell her how I felt. I regretted sending it right afterwards. Here came the chance for redemption--I threw it away while she wasn‘t looking.

I had just thrown her letters to me out while getting the room ready for her. In my defense, her letters were all very short and non emotional. I saw how she didn’t express positive feelings, verbally or otherwise, was inline with her upbringing. Sometimes I wished she had a different upbringing.

I spotted a big envelop with “08 tax” on it and opened it. Viola! Instead of the regular envelop she has been using for tax papers, she used a different one for this particular year for no particular reason. Mystery solved. I called the health consultant and gave her the information.

The meals delivery services called me back. I set her up for lunch delivery starting next Monday. I think I will get the phone shopping service for her as well. She will get a phone call once a week to get her grocery list, and someone will buy and deliver the grocery to her.

It was a fruitful day. Now we need to make a decision on the facility. Not surprisingly, she’s having second thought.

(I'm visiting my mom to take care of things needed at this time. As a result I have limited time to read or comment on my beloved blogs. All should resume to normal in another week.)

The Visit - Part 2

2010-03-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

The next day I called and left a message with the meal delivery service to get things started. She had driven up to a sidewalk once, so it would be in everybody’s interest if she doesn’t drive at all, or as little as possible. Right now she had to go out and eat everyday. She couldn’t stand or lift her arms too long after the fall. Her arms that once could’ve smacked me from here to China are no longer able to lift more than five pounds.

Nobody called back. A friend of hers insisted on treating us lunch. I was surprised to find the quality of food served there was much better than that in my town. Maybe I should move here and find a job here instead. Her friends told me how stubborn and independent mom was. I thanked them repeatedly for taking care of her in my absence. I don’t have such friends. Not that many anyway.

We took care of business at her bank on the third day so if anything happens to her…I avoid thinking any further.

Someone she knew at the bank suggested a senior facility for us to check out. This friend even went so far as to summon her friend, Mr. M, to go with us after work, as his father is a resident there and as luck would have it, Mr. M was going to visit him today. We were excited. Mom liked this town very much and was reluctant to move in with me, who lives nine hundred miles away with no grocery stores in walking distance.

She used guilt trip once to tell me she ‘had no choice but to move here’ to imply it was my fault that she now lived so far away, at which time I had to remind her that she decided to move here to be close to her brother’s family (with whom she no longer talks to) and I actually asked her not to move.

We had lunch and made a visit to the health consultant, who was a very nice and extremely helpful lady. She cleared up a lot of questions for us--namely me, and was glad to hear the bathe assistance was helpful to mom. All we need now is to find her 2008 tax return papers and inform her which facility mom likes the best. She will put mom on the waiting list as soon as she has those information.

Mom’s navigational skills led us to a different city instead of home. I tried to turn back but ended on a different highway instead. We visited my uncle’s grave since we were in the neighborhood, albeit completely accidental. She wasn’t going to take me here when I asked earlier, so I was glad we got lost.

Her grave site was in the same cemetery. A Wang’s family on her right. I found out they were her friends and they bought the lots together. I said some silent monologue to my uncle. The ground was covered with pale pink petals from a nearby cherry tree, and more were flying in the wind, teasing in my hair. Going home was much better this time--this is the only out-of-town route she knows how to travel and find her way home.

The sun was still out at five o’clock but the wind was cutting like cold blades. We waited on the sidewalk for her friend to pick us up to the senior facility. I kept moving so the cold wouldn’t get me. She sat on the stone wall as standing was too much for her. The doctor said she might have Parkinson’s disease, but she doesn’t shake. Her brother, the one we visited earlier, died from the same illness. It doesn’t look good for me.

The facility was a hit. It was clean, spacious, and overlooked a river. About thirty percent of their residents were from her country, so it’s possible she could make friends if she controls her temper. She said she had nice temper. I said no you don’t, and immediately wished I hadn‘t said so. Too late. She got mad and yelled at me.

I looked through the pamphlets for seniors needing assistance after dinner and the tears came out without warning. I cleaned myself up and went back to the pamphlets of walkers, wheelchairs, resource lists and happy pictures of seniors with smiling family members. The tears came out again. A few more times of this and I gave up. I couldn’t read a word through pools of water.

The Visit - Part 1

2010-03-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

She sat on the short stone wall by the sidewalk, head bowed and back slumped forward. I waved at her and told the driver to stop. She slowly got up and walked over. With the help of a cane, she approached the cab and raised her cane at the driver.

I panicked for a moment. The deep creases between her brows made her look irritated, and I wasn’t sure if they were from habits or an indication of her mood. Was she going to smash the window with her cane? Was she mad at me for not picking up the phone this morning?

I didn’t have to answer the phone to know the instructions from her:

It’s time to get up! Don’t miss the plane! for the first call and It’s time to leave. The plane isn‘t going to wait for you! for the second call. Apparently I’m still three years old to her.

“Left, left!” she said/yelled.
The driver said, “Should I go up more?” He was intimidated by the cane, too.

I said no and got out of the cab. She strolled over to the side where I was sitting and practically yelled, “This is not the entrance! Tell him to go up more!”

I hugged her and said it’s okay--I traveled light. She calmed down a little, but she wasn’t excited to see me as I had imagined. I got teary eyed on the plane for nothing.

She shrunk a lot. The cane was new to me, and it was hard for me to see. Not that long ago--or so it felt--she was taller and stronger than I was. She wore high heels that I had trouble walking in. Now her head was barely up to my chin, her back perpetually hunched over, and she looked as if she might fall anytime even with a cane. High heels belonged to the dreams of yesteryear. Her body felt small in my arms although she still weighed more than me.

Age had her beat and there was evidence from her head to her toe.

I haven’t been to this house before. She moved about half a dozen times in ten years, twice within the same complex. She had trouble making decision, and it changed easily once it had been made. She packed and unpacked everything herself, and the sore muscles didn’t stop her from doing it again in a year or two. I got tired just from hearing these words: I’m moving--here’s the new address.

I was given a tour in the small house and her complaint of having to throw away tons of stuff. I have a small house, so she had to make the sacrifice if we were going to live together. Besides, they were mostly junk anyway. But I won’t tell her that.

I couldn’t sleep the first night. There were a lot to do, but that wasn’t why I lost sleep.

Family Emendation

2010-03-10T17:31:00.000-08:00

I don't remember when it started, but the feeling is growing so strong I wish I could smother it with my hands. Moments like now, when she yells from upstairs for me to take the kids to school because she is running late, make it worse.

I get up at the same time. I get ready in less than twenty minutes. Why does she need so much time to be ready for work? She seems to be lagging lately. She used to be cute. But look at her waistline, her skin, even her bosom now. Nothing is the same after our two kids. Sometimes I hate to walk by her side. People must think we are an unlikely couple.

My stomach churns with the familiar irritation. I control it by taking in a couple of long breaths. Be calm, I tell myself. It will be a different world soon.

"I have a meeting!" I yell back. I don't, but a change of plan is not allowed today. I have a perfect plan and I don't want any more delay.

"You do?" She comes down and looks at me funny. I hate it when she questions me, and she knows it.

"Marie..." I use the old trick of sighing impatiently. She avoids argument more often than not.

"I'll do it. Go before you're late." She gives in as I expected.

"Get up earlier tomorrow." There will be no tomorrow, but she doesn't need to know. There is a tinge of guilt when I said it, but the plan is set and I'm not going to deviate. Anna is waiting.

"And don't forget to take care of that throat of yours." I shout before closing the door behind me. That makes me sound like a good husband, while driving a lasting impression to help my plan. I pull away from the house. Goodbye, Marie--hopefully for the last time.

Anna and I will be perfect together. My groin tingles at the thought of her tan, firm body. She will never let herself go like Marie did. She loves me. Better yet, she worships me. Who, except for Marie, wouldn't? The nurses secretly call me the sexiest doctor in the hospital. I have to wade through the pheromone every time I pass their station. The giggles on their lips, the lust in their eyes all tell me they want me. I take it all in and I want more. I make sure to flash them a devastating smile upon leaving. It drives them crazy.

It's only natural Anna and I ended up together. We look divine as a couple. Soon we can be a couple in public. I can't wait to wrap her in my arms and press her to her bed. Unlike Marie, she is always ready for conquer.

* * *

Roland seems a little irate today. I'm not sure what I did wrong. All I asked was if he could take the kids to school, since I worked late last night and had some trouble falling asleep. My sore throat seems to be worse this morning.

I know what people say. They say it to my face sometimes. You're a doctor's wife; you don't need to work. I can't seem to make them understand money is not the reason for me to work. It helps, since the house is too big and the cars too expensive, but Roland had to have them. I'm a doctor, he said. We can't drive cheap cars.

I sensed his change when I had our first baby. I asked him to rinse out the bowl I just ate dinner with after my mother left. "You want me to wash it?" He looked incredulous: "I'm a doctor!" With that, he left the room. I cried all night.

He wasn't like this when I met him. He worked hard at school and as an intern. It was that work ethic and the determination attracted me to him. He wasn't so vain about his looks back then either. Along the road of building a career, he allowed the title to shadow his destination.

What happened to us? He seems to be more and more irritated toward me for no obvious reasons. I take care of the kids and the house. I don't complain because I love my work. It provides challenge and satisfaction no other tasks could compare. I only wish Roland could help out a little more.

The nurses flirt with him, I know. I notice how much he enjoys it, too. He won't cheat on me. We have two kids and they are important to him. He loves the boys. Too bad, Anna. Don't think I don't notice how you look at Roland every time he stops by our station. He will never leave me for a younger woman. He loves his family.

I was lost in my thoughts when Jason mumbled: "Mom, I don't feel good." I reach to the back seat and feel his forehead. He feels normal. It's the younger child syndrome. His brother won the spelling contest at school yesterday. He must feel left out with all the attention going to his brother. I search in my purse but find out I don't have any fruit rollups there.

"Here. Take one of this. It made mommy's throat better. It will help you, too." I gave him a lozenge. Roland told me these were for adults only and he got them just for me. I haven't tried it yet--they are usually too sweet and I'm watching my weight. Roland was sweet to get them for me. Deep down, he still cares. I don't see how a lozenge can hurt a kid. I quench any possible complaints from his brother by giving him one, too. Now everybody is happy.

I hope we won't be late for school or my work.

* * *

The sun is out, bright and warm. It's a symbol of the life Anna and I will have together. I found out how to fill those lozenges with the stuff I got from the Internet. It took me some work. They say it kills fast with very little discomfort. Since they were talking about possums, I had to double the dose. Divorce is for men who can't carry out a great plan, not for me. I am, after all, a doctor.

I patted my pocket just to make sure the regular lozenges are there. I will swap them out later in the hospital--by Marie's death bed. Anna, the kids and I will be a perfect family. I can just see it. Wait for me, Anna. I will be there soon.

Golden Voice

2010-03-03T11:33:00.000-08:00

She was crowned by the media as Queen of Songs. Her voice was called Golden. There have been as many singers as there are stars in the sky, but few had a golden voice like hers.

She was abducted and sold by her own uncle, and later adopted by strangers as a young child. Throughout her adult life, after attaining fame and fortune, she tried in vain to locate her birth parents. She never found them.

Her death was equally mysterious as her birth. The following is a common story shrouded by the veil of unknown.

Her parents were believed to be either college educators or business owners. Her mother sent the little girl to her grandparents’ place to be looked after when her parents' third child was near full term, where her uncle sold the young girl for money to purchase opium. Her parents searched frantically upon the discovery, but the little girl vanished without a trace.

She was probably sold more than once, until a family with the last name Zhou in Shanghai adopted the six-year-old girl. Her good fortune didn’t last long. In her second year of school she was sold again by her adopted father, who was another opium addict; this time though, she was sold to a brothel. The landlord, Xhe, from whom her adopted parents subleased the house, took pity on her and arranged for her to work as a servant to the owner of a performing group. She also learned how to sing and dance while not working.

One day a piano teacher from another performing group came over as a guest, and overheard her singing. Her voice, as he described, was crisp and sweet and he recognized it as a rare talent. He talked her “owner” into let him take her to his group and be taught by him. She learned zealously on the art of singing, dancing and acting. She had a cute face and petite status, and was well liked by her teachers and peers. This was probably the happiest time of her life.

Her big break came when one day the leading lady of an evening show failed to arrive on time. The owner summoned her to be the replacement, and her voice of a golden canary and the performance of a young and fresh face wowed the crowd. She was given the stage name of Zhou Xuan. The rest, as they put it, was history. The year was 1932, and she was only fourteen.

During the near twenty years of her career, she made 42 movies, recorded more than100 songs—many of them were popular in common household, and some of them are still being performed by singers today. Her movies and concerts were often sold out on the first day when they came out. She was hailed both as the queen of songs and the queen of motion pictures.

If only her personal life was equally perfect and brilliant. But life has its own way of making its mark.

After the group she was working under disassembled, she joined a different group and worked with a fellow performer Yen. He was nine years older than her and perhaps filled the void of a father figure in her life. They married in 1938, but divorced in three years. Both events were headline news. It was reported by friends that he had raised his hands to her during arguments--which I suspect was not the kind of father figure she was looking for.

She fell for a merchant’s son Chu while working in Hong Kong during the late 40s. He captured both her money and her heart, and obviously kept the former and discarded the latter. She went back to Shanghai in 1950 with a broken heart and a soon-to-be-born young son.

Subsequently an art technician in the same film company entered her life and, just when they prepared to get married, he was sentenced to jail for fraud and rape. Soon after the delivery of her second son, she developed mental illness and was institutionalized. She never left the hospital and passed away in 1957, at the age of thirty-nine.

However, this was not how it really was from what I heard.

The version I heard was she was lured back to work in China, while her career in Hong Kong was going well, by a friend who persuaded her with a hidden agenda. Unbeknownst to her, this friend joined the communist party shortly after the revolution. She was persecuted and imprisoned for years before she finally died in the “hospital.” Her fiancé was jailed for guilty by association.

My initial thought was: that was unlikely as she was only an entertainer—there was no point in persecuting her. A recent book I read on the revolution of China and the many, many waves of persecution progressed there changed my mind. If the party was capable of persecuting its founding members, to whom they owed their revolutionary success, and dragging millions of civilian into hell on earth for more than a decade, it would be perfectly capable of sacrificing a mere entertainer.

The reason was--not that they needed one—she was the paramount of the “exploited class” and therefore the crowning example of an “enemy of the revolution.” In the minds of the crazed leaders and blind followers, she had to be attacked, persecuted and eliminated. In a place where evil resides, human life has the value of an ant.

The truth couldn’t be verified, since all information coming out of China is censored. Her own son voiced doubt on her mental illness, but he couldn’t substantiate it either.

Her life may have started and ended in tragedy, but her talents dazzled like a radiant comet in the dark sky. Her songs continue to echo in the hearts of many. Happiness may have eluded her entirely too short of a life, but I hope she had finally found peace in another, more sensible world.

Among Mud and Sludge

2010-02-22T21:17:00.000-08:00

"Even though growing among mud and sludge, the lotus is always clean and pure."

We were taught to do good even if we grew up among the wicked, but is it remotely possible at a young age when we are easily influenced and have not the capacity to steer our will toward the good?

My parents moved to a strange place when I was five or six years old. People looked very different from the old place and I didn't understand anything they said to me in the form of a series of sound made by the rolling of their tongues. We had to fly in an enormous airplane--that was really fun, for the first couple of hours anyway--and take a long car ride to get there.

I was a little scared of the people there, but I tried not to show it because a boy should be brave--that was what my mother said. She also said "Be nice to your sister" a lot but I found that hard to do, since she was very annoying and I didn't understand why my parents liked her so much.

We lived with my grand parents in a two-story house with a red door. I think we had the only red door in the neighborhood. My grand parents had been living there for a while so they could speak a little of that strange language, but my parents had to learn it just like me--only they didn't go to school like I did.

My grandpa walked both of us to and from the school most of the time. Sometimes my mother would take us. I was the happiest walking with my mother. Her hand was soft unlike grandpa's. Her smile was more pleasing to watch, too. But my sister had to be there to distract my mother's attention by talking childish things, and to hold her other hand.

My father got me new book bag and notebooks and an awesome mechanical pencil--my very first one--before the first day, and both my parents took us to the new school on the first day. I was a little scared and felt lost when my parents left us. For the first time I was happy my sister was there with me, although she didn't speak or understand the language either.

I had no idea what was going on, but I knew a recess was coming up when everyone in the class went outside. I left the pencil, which was the envy of my classmates, on the desk and went outside as well. Imagine my horror when I came back to find that my brand new pencil was gone. I looked around and couldn't tell who took it, and I couldn't tell the teacher what had happened either. The helplessness and agony made the first day of school the longest day of my life.

I told my parents what happened to my brand new pencil after I got home, and I could tell they were a little annoyed. It wasn't my fault, I thought to myself. I was embarrassed, and anger brewed in my chest to a consuming heap of incinerating ember.

I learned to put things in my bag before leaving the classroom, something my parents taught me to do after the stolen pencil. We all realized that stealing was more rampant in this new place, and we had to adjust our behaviors somewhat. Something they didn't teach me, and I started doing, all in an angry revenge, was to take their stuff when they were not watching. I didn't take big things, as it would be noticed by my parents, and I knew I would be in trouble if I got caught. So it had to be small and easy to hide--just like what they did to me.

My chance came when someone left a coin on his desk. I put it in my pocket when no one was watching. It was a worthless coin, as the country's inflation rate was several hundred percent a year, but I didn't know or care. It was revenge for losing my cherished possession to theft.

On the way home I would run a few yards ahead of my grandpa, drop the coin on the ground, then run back to him. When we came upon it I would say, "Look grandpa--a coin!" and pick it up. Thus I could keep the coin since no one was there to claim it. My grandpa was amazed at my frequent good fortune, as I found coins on the ground quite a few times.

Looking back, it was fortunate that I didn't continue this game for long. It was very easy to traverse down the irreversible path all the way to the dark side. I think eventually the teachings from the school and my parents brought me back from the detour without knowing what I was secretly doing. It could also be that all those coins couldn't come close to my lost pencil, and I eventually lost interest. Or was it the suspicious look from my mother that made me stop? I couldn't say for sure.

But there is always a chance that they failed to instill good in me. What if no matter how much they scrubbed and wiped and washed, and still couldn't make me clean and pure like a lotus growing in a mud pond? Would I be sitting in a jail somewhere, or lurking at some dark corner waiting for my next prey if that was the case? I hate to contemplate any further.

(Thanks to everyone who either participated or cheered on at the 'change a rhyme' two posts ago. I have decided to donate $200 to Red Cross in spite of the low turnout, since that was my original intend anyway. Thank you all!!!)

Stolen

2010-02-15T20:25:00.000-08:00

It was Ruan's turn to take the lunch racks to the kitchen. Ruan, and a classmate who sat beside her.

Everyday a pair of students would be on duty for various responsibilities. Other than sweeping the floor, taking the trash out and re-aligning the desks before going home, several times a day they also cleaned the blackboard after each class. She would go outside and smack the two board erasers together real hard until all the chalk dust disappeared. New chalks were placed in the groove for the teacher of next class to use. Sometimes the wind changed direction suddenly, and her hair and face would be covered with chalk dust.

Once a year everyone would roll up the sleeves and sweep, scrub, and douse the classrooms down with buckets and buckets of water until the place was sparkling clean. Students never thought of saying “that’s not our job” and parents thought a little work did the children immensely good.

She put her own metal lunchbox in the racks after arriving in the morning, same as all other classmates. Now, during the first break, it was time to take them to the kitchen to be steamed. They believed cold food was harmful to one's health. Besides, cold rice just didn't taste right.

The racks were heavy for her, and she hated that she wasn't strong like her classmate. She mustered all her strength and completed the first part of the mission. The second part of the mission--getting the racks back from the kitchen--would be even harder, as the racks would be hot from the steamer, and, with all the moisture-saturated lunchboxes and empty stomachs, felt even heavier than they did in the morning.

Starving classmates swarmed to the front of the classroom to retrieve their lunchboxes from the racks. She couldn't find hers. She waited until everyone got her lunch and checked the racks again. They were empty.

Someone had stolen her lunch.

A sympathetic classmate advised her to talk to the principal. It was a terrifying thought, but she had to do it. She never had any money, so she couldn't buy anything. A search was organized, and sometime later she was informed there was an abandoned lunchbox near the kitchen. She went there as told, and it was her lunchbox indeed--left open and uneaten.

The principal asked: "Is it yours?"
A pause, then she answered with excruciating embarrassment: "Yes."
He looked at it and, for a while, couldn't find a proper word. Finally he said: "Well, maybe you can still eat it." He left after an awkward second or two.

She sat alone on the vine-shaded bench, staring at the untouched lunch and wishing the person had eaten all of it.

She put the lid back on and took it with her to the classroom, avoiding looking at anybody after she sat down. The pain in the stomach was easier to ignore than the thought in her head. What would her classmates think if they knew?

The principal's announcement in the flag-raising ceremony next morning solidified her humiliation. He lectured the entire school on how someone's lunch was stolen, and how the thieve left it untouched because it was not to the person's liking. She felt the gaze from her classmates and wished she could simply vanish. Now they knew, she thought to herself. Nobody said anything to her, but her mind swirled downward to the bottomless abyss.

How could she tell them that she ate her lunch everyday using the aroma from her fellow students' lunches as the appetizer, or she would have trouble finishing it even with a growling stomach? How could she let them know that it was prepared by her step-mother, and she understood that she should consider herself lucky to even be fed? The woman's contempt of having to be a step-mother of two girls, and her reluctance in having to feed them, showed clearly in the lunches she carelessly prepared.

She always ate with the lid half on, away from others if she could help it. She didn't want anyone to see what she was being fed with.

The rest of them had their delicious lunches prepared by their loving mothers, whose only worry was their daughters wouldn't have enough food to their liking. The aroma was a daily reminder of how she was less than her peer.

Now the whole world knew that even a hungry thieve wouldn't touch her lunch.

Somehow the pain was easier to take when nobody knew about it. That shield was stolen from her. She was left naked, with the raw wound exposed in plain sight for everyone to see. She hated the person who took her lunch and left it in such a crude display. She hated the principal for making her pain public. She hated her parents. She didn't want a step-mother, but her feelings were of no consequences. She hated her mother for not being there.

Among all that hate, she hated being born the most.

Her head bowed lower when she walked, and she never looked at anyone in the eyes anymore. Her world closed in and wrapped around her like a tortoise shell, in which she found the only comfort she knew—a desolate existence that few noticed.

(The 'change a rhyme' is still playing if you're interested. Go here to see what had been changed: http://thegoodgirls.blogspot.com/2010/02/rain-god.html)

Rain God

2010-02-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

Before you start laughing let me just say it for you: I don't know a thing about rhymes. So you can all stop the snickers and pay attention now.

I found out from Marla's blog that someone is doing a challenge with a twist. The gist of it is for readers to list or write simple things that make them happy, and for each response the author of Enchanted Oak will donate 2 dollars to Haiti's medical clinic.

Great idea! I thought.

I further thought: a good cause is worth a following act. So here it is: for each word at the end of each line below that you can think of a better substitute, I will donate 5 dollars to Red Cross to help Haiti. There are 40 lines, and each word can only be changed once. The cap is there because, um, Ms. Sarah is currently jobless, so she needs to exercise a little self control. The changed ones will be in blue font.

You can help Haiti's crisis and my rhymes, so what are you waiting for?

* * *

leaves on trees shimmer with thousands of sequins
freshly cleansed air smells of grass and aspens
thank heavens for the blessing of showers
to god of rain I pleaded with a whisper

please grace us with more nourishing moisture
water is in such desperate need at this juncture
several counties are talking the dreaded "R" word
we do not want a drought again just too absurd

* * *

the god of rain indulges me freely
two weeks of rain has fallen easily
grass on the mountains flaunt its new color
I can not find a shade bears more splendor

but the warmth of sun fairy is long missing
could you please let up just a smidgen
our water level is now more than bountiful
a little breather in between will make us o so thankful

* * *

my dog is bored and demand action
my bones are complaining dissatisfaction
my house the haven for fungi and pesters
my yard a jungle of moss that festers

one trip on the slippery brick road back there
could send me flying to the doctors in despair
the heartless god of rain parades on
there is no sign of stopping his fun

* * *

houses on the cliff are falling off to sea
saturated lands slide away everyday on tv
cars swirl and pile up everywhere you see
all state's freeways are too watery for me

wet air now smells like old woman's dirty shawl
musty, damp and suffocating on my skull
why can't you stop the cursed downpour
your mischief is more than our simple wish

* * *

one more week of rain announced by the forecaster
you should be ashamed of your ungodly behavior
when I pleaded with you for more moisture
I did not say, mind you, please rain forever

now that you have ruined houses, cars and lives
do pack up your hose, drums and darkened skies
may I suggest to sahara desert that you stay
I'm sure no one will b*tch there as you play

Lamp in the Dark

2010-02-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

Suey rubbed her eyes and blinked hard. She had been sewing all day and all night, except at times she had to go to the kitchen and cook. She turned the wick up a little in the oil lamp, stretched her sore back, and went back to her sewing.

There wasn’t much time to lose. She could hear the watchmen’s lonely dual in the dark of the night. One would sound the hours with wooden rattles that made crisp clicking noise, and the other would echo with a gong that had brassy and lingering noise. Five sounds indicated daybreak. Was it two she just heard? She was so tired she wasn’t sure anymore.

A messenger who carried a letter written by her was sent to where Hoi was doing business to fetch him home. The trip would be doubly hard on him with the speed he must travel to come back in time, and with the heartbreaking news in the letter.

His mother, Suey’s mother-in-law of seven years, had just passed away. She wasn’t fifty yet.

For the past seven years she had taught Suey everything she needed to know about housework. Suey started out clumsily as a daughter of an affluent family, but she bit her lips and carried on. After some cuts and bruises she managed most of the work, and gradually took over running most of the household. At times she resented the fact that she had to work so hard, while daughters from similar background had it easy. She didn’t understand why they had to do everything themselves and rejected the maids included in her dowry.

Gradually though, she could somehow see their logic. A farming family was not used to luxury, and being served by maids was unheard of. Secondly, her mother-in-law came from a poor family, so she wasn’t going to let her daughter-in-law be spoiled that way. In her mind she was doing this for Suey’s own good.

Hoi was patient when she complained. After venting, she felt better going back to the manual labor that was waiting for her. There was fun in eating the food you cooked yourself, or the vegetables you planted yourself, or wearing clothes made from the cloths you wove yourself. A strange kind of fun that she didn’t know existed before her marriage.

Slowly, Suey began to think of them as her real family.

She grew stronger - both physically and mentally. She missed reading and writing as she used to do a lot before marriage, but they seemed to be very impractical now. Confucius said: “A gentleman should stay away from the kitchen.” It was considered a lowly profession to be a cook. Now she thought to herself: “A gentleman is all fluff if he didn’t realize all the hard work that went into the delectable meal he enjoyed so much. Not only it is hypocritical, his writing would have nothing to do with real life either.”

There was noise coming from the front room, and her smile disappeared. Her father-in-law had been sitting there with the coffin that had his wife’s body, and had never left since she was put in there. He hardly ate anything all day. She went to the kitchen and boiled some water, then carried the kettle to the front room. He looked up with red and puffy eyes:

“How are the mourning clothes coming along? You should get some sleep…” his voice trailed off without realizing the two statements contradicted each other. She filled his cup with hot water and replied softly: “They will be ready tomorrow. Have some tea, father.” The coffin didn’t have enough layers of paint, as they were not prepared for her premature death. Everything had to be ready overnight.

“Who is going to take care of Fucheng?” He murmured to himself and appeared to be at a complete loss. Fucheng was her youngest brother-in-law, who was just five years old.

“I will, father.” She reassured him.

“And who will take care of the books?” He continued.

“I will, father.” Her ability of reading and writing were not valued before, but would be relied on now.

“Ah…” He nodded his head: “I will show you how to do it.”

“Yes, father. I will learn. We will manage.” She could feel a tear coming up and left after saying: “Try and rest a bit. It will be a busy day tomorrow.”

The lamp was flickering while she settled down by the table. She looked at the darkness around her with a daze. Could she do it? Would they manage without her mother-in-law’s directions day to day? She felt alone and a little scared.

She didn’t know it yet with the overwhelming loads thrust upon her. With great responsibilities, great liberation was also coming her way.

Liberators

2010-01-25T19:26:00.000-08:00

They were polite and courteous young people when they first came to the village. They would borrow either a wok or a cleaver from us, but always returned them promptly after they were done. I felt sorry for them—so young, and already thousands of miles from home. Their garbs were torn, dirty and skimpy.

They called us either “big uncle” or “big auntie,” the way kids in most villages did. We had to go to their meetings organized by some village leader everyday, and I really didn’t mind too much, except I moved with difficulties in the snow. In the meetings they told us our poor days were about to end, and that their "common property party" would liberate us from the evil landlords soon.

We had some land, but I didn’t think we were evil because we had to work very hard to put a roof over our heads and food on our table. There was not a single idle hand in the house. Everything we had we earned it with sweat and back-breaking work. But I didn’t say anything under some villagers’ unfriendly glare. I recognized some of the faces that had refused work we offered in the past.

Often someone from their group would pat my round tummy lightly and ask: “Big auntie, when is the baby due?” and nod with a mysterious smile after I replied. I didn’t think much of it. Kids were naturally curious about such things and were probably too shy to ask.

I was “sitting the month”1 in my bedroom with my new born baby when things came crashing down.

First I heard that a lot more of them were coming to the village. The meetings soon turned ugly. People would shout hateful bouts of slogan against landlords.

Then one day they came and dragged my husband and my father-in-law out. My sister-in-law told me what happened next.

They were forced to kneel down on an outdoor platform with cone-shape paper hats put on their heads that read “landlord” on them. The villagers shouted and threw stones at them all day long. Her hollow eyes reflected the horror she saw. She couldn't shed a tear.

After three days of this torture they died. It was cold, they didn’t have any food or sleep during the three days, and they finally succumbed to the stoning. Nobody was allowed to collect their bodies. They wanted to use them as a warning to others. My mother-in-law and I were crying everyday after hearing this. The most heart wrenching thing was we couldn't even bury them properly.

And then the liberators and the village vagabonds came and occupied most part of the house. The remaining women in the family were crammed into two rooms. They confiscated our food as well. We had meager rations from the liberators while they ate to their hearts' content.

I grieved silently in my bedroom. My husband and his father were honest and hard working men. They didn’t deserve this kind of death. What would be the future of me and my babies? What would happen to the family? In less than a year the invisible hand of a demon choked off our livelihood. Our only fault was being the owner of a piece of farm land.
My mother-in-law and I sneaked out one night to where the bodies were. We took a piece of wood plank with us to carry the bodies. They deserved to be buried instead of being exposed like animals. It was difficult for us to move my father-in-law’s body – we both were bound-foot women, but eventually we managed to move him onto the plank. I had to hush my mother-in-law so her sobs wouldn’t alert anyone.

We dug a grave in the field and buried him. It was hard to dig a deep one since the soil was frozen. I couldn't tell if my tears were from grief or the piercing wind.

We went back to move my husband’s body, and that was when I found out he was still alive. His faint breathing was barely detectable. We were elated. We put him on the plank and dragged him home to my room. It was the only safe place because the liberators wouldn’t enter my room during the first month. We slowly nursed him back to health in a few weeks.

They found out what we did, and told me they would deal with me later.

My mother-in-law told us to leave before the month was up. The liberators would no doubt kill my husband as soon as they could. She would be safe, she said, because she was a woman and didn’t really own the land. We made the difficult decision to do what she said. We didn't know if we would ever see her again.

In a snowy evening when most people were sleeping, my husband, me, my elder daughter left quietly. I wrapped my baby close to my bosom and covered both of us with my cotton quilted jacket. We plunged our feet into the deep snow all night long, avoiding the main roads, and caught a train in the next village. We traveled hundreds of miles to the capital city of the province, where we heard was not controlled by the liberators yet. My husband found a job at the pier as a day laborer to support the family.

I still get a headache when it gets cold, because not only I didn’t get the proper rest after the child birth, but also from the work and long march I did in the snow. But it was nothing comparing to the nightmares I have until this day.2

(1. It was believed women needed to rest 30 days after the child birth, and their rooms were considered unclean for a man to enter. 2. After hearing the story from this elderly woman, I too had recurring nightmares for years.)

Perfect Gentleman

2010-01-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

“There’s a delivery for you, my dear.” The receptionist chirped happily over the phone. She thanked her and proceeded to the lobby. It was flowers from her boyfriend, she was sure of that. She didn’t know though, that there would be a forest waiting for her.

“Wow! What’s the occasion?” A co-worker couldn’t hide his awe while she performed a careful balancing act back to her desk. It was both glorious and enormous, and she replied with her eye lashes batting purposefully fast: “Just because.”

He laughed. She sat it down and basted in the warmth of the divine light. She was being loved by a perfect man.

He was doing all the right things. Flowers, calls, “love you”s, pulling chairs and holding hands. There was not a single thing wrong with him. He was perfect, and she was on cloud nine. She thought his shiny head and round silhouette symbolized wisdom and success. After all, he prided himself as a true gentleman. She had finally found the man in her prayers.

She should know, of course, that there was the black hole of "too good to be true" lurking nearby, waiting to devour her. This has to work, she told herself instead. Nobody had ever treated her the way he did. He talked about marriage, moving in, and what closet she could use constantly. The visual of a happy life they would share was so vivid she could taste it.

It started subtly and she didn’t catch on. A casual comment about news event or people they knew caused his uncomfortable silence. The hand holding stopped. The “love you” became scarce. The flowers made their appearance less and less frequent. She ignored them – he must be tired from his work.

One day he called hours after the time he promised, with a resigned voice and a change of plan:

“I’ve been busy…I have Timmy tonight so I have to cancel. Do you want to come over after work instead?”

Timmy was his babysitting duty almost constantly. They spent countless dates as a party of three. Family was important, so she didn’t complain. This time though, she didn’t feel like trading a night out with babysitting again, so she said: “I’m actually a little tired. I think I’ll go home tonight. We can do this another time.”

There was that silence again. He stopped calling for several days. She had his recorded greeting when she called. Her world was lost in a haze, and there was not an echo to answer her when she reached out.

When he finally did call, he said:

“I don’t think this is working out. We are not meshing as we should.”

“What do you mean?” Was he breaking up with her? It felt like a bomb exploded somewhere near her. She couldn’t see a thing.

He was not happy she didn’t go along with his change of plan, and that was what he meant by “not meshing as they should.” He didn’t think she would have a different idea from his.

She explained and explained. No, she wasn’t mad at him. She was just tired. She would be happy to be with him and Timmy otherwise. She understood Timmy was family, and family should come first. Finally he agreed to meet. Things slowly went back to normal.

Only it was never quite normal again.

Every little thing made her nervous now. Did she say something wrong? Was he going to break it up again? The warm basting light had become revealing spotlight that shone on everything she did and said. If she inquired what his thought was, he would answer curtly: “Why? Are you wondering in your fucked up mind if I’m going to break up with you?”

The gentleman strangely disappeared. In its place was an unkind and distant shadow that scared her. Somehow she had transformed from a princess to a beggar, and she hadn’t a clue how she got there.

There was really no other way to respond when he called and said this was not working out, for the second time.

“Okay. When should I come by and get my stuff?” She didn’t miss a beat.

A pause, then he hesitantly added: “It’s not you. I could be too sensitive sometimes…”

“Please. Don't give me the ‘it’s not you’ speech. When will you be home?” her heart shivered as she spoke. She hung up the phone and all strength was drained from her. The soft carpet cradled her curled up body, and time halted to a hush around her for a long while.

She got there an hour before he would be home, and left everything he had ever given her inside of the house. She collected the few things of hers, and left before seeing him.

While she pulled away she had a final glance at the house – the home of the perfect gentleman.

Three Days

2010-01-10T14:49:00.000-08:00

"Going to the kitchen after three days
Washing hands before making a soup
Not knowing my in-laws' taste
I ask the little sister to try it first"1

Suey got up before dawn and washed her face in a hurry. She had everything she needed for the morning ready last night, and now she just had to change.

Hoi said softly: “You’re up so early?”

It didn’t sound like a real question though. Farming families rose and rested in harmony with the sun. It was more of his way of saying good morning.

She replied: “Go back to sleep. I think I heard mom in the kitchen…” and out she went.

There was a faint light from the brick stove, and she saw the back of her mother-in-law. She turned and saw Suey standing by the door timidly. With a smile she said:

“Up already?”

“Yes, mom. You’re early.” Suey felt embarrassed that she might give the impression of laziness, but “mom” didn’t seem to be upset. She was also relieved that she had the foresight to put on her darker, plainer clothes made of cotton.

The first thing mom showed her was how to start a fire in the stove. Within minutes her brand new clothes were stained with soot, and her sleeves were used to dab sweat off her forehead. The only comfort was she might have hot water to use the next morning.

She watched and kept the soy milk and rice porridge from being burnt, but the flat bread and pickled side dishes were out of her ability completely. The steamed buns were so complicated to her she just wanted to cry. Her mind was busy making sense of all the steps in preparing those foods, but it was overwhelmingly frustrating that she was on the brink of panic.

Mom seemed to see through her thoughts, and told her: “Don’t worry. You’ll get a handle on it soon enough.”

She didn’t think that day would come, but she didn’t tell mom.

Together they served the breakfast to the men. Some were family – Hoi among them. Some were hired hands. They ate almost all of it before they left for the fields. Harvest was done, but there were wheat to be turned on the flat land waiting to dry, the rice fields needed to be turned upside down before it turned too cold, so the roots would serve as the fertilizer for next year’s planting.

Women in the house would be making mid-day snacks for the men while they worked, then sending it to the fields. There was not a moment to waste. They ate their breakfast after the men left and, after they returned to the kitchen, mom whispered to her:

“Don’t forget to give me your ‘proof’ later.” 2

Her face burned like the fire under the stove. Her husband did the "deed" last night, and she had carefully saved the “proof;” but to think she had to show it to his mother and father was both horrifying and awkward. No matter how gentle Hoi was, he couldn’t save her now. She would have to do this on her own.

“Come. Let me show you how to make noodles as a starter. It’s the simplest task.” Her mom beckoned. She followed her to the corner of the kitchen where the big board was. Hoi’s sister joined them for breakfast, but disappeared to her room afterward. She had the luxury to enjoy life as an unmarried girl, just like Suey before her own wedding.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

(1. An ancient poem describing the mood of a new bride making her first meal. 2. Proof of virginity was required from the bride, or she would be expelled from her husband’s home and deeply shamed.)

Going Home

2010-01-03T22:44:00.000-08:00

Suey lifted the flap cautiously to see if the familiar stone road was in sight. Now that she was a married woman, being seen by strangers was not such a taboo anymore. Out of habit, though, she carefully hid her face out of sight. The daily market was over, and people were walking home with fresh produce and meats in their baskets. Just like her, they were going home.

Only she didn't have grocery with her. She turned to see her travel companion, Hoi, her husband of three days. His eyes shined like dark onyx, with a hint of something exciting that made her face warm. She looked away so he wouldn’t find out that she was secretly wanting him. Boldness in a woman was unbecoming.

She had left home on short outings when she was a girl. Her mother had taken her to a temple several times to beg the gods with generous offerings. They failed to perform the miracle her mother had asked them. She remembered first the disappointment, then the bitterness she felt every morning she looked into the mirror.

She had also gone to the temple of the marriage goddess like so many other girls. All the travels were done with her securely tucked away in the covered horse carriage. Other girls from poorer families walked to the temple, but they always had fans or handkerchiefs to cover their faces if any men were around. They prayed feverishly for good husbands, and in exchange they promised to return with more offerings. She remembered how little hopes she had when she prayed. With her cleft lip she was sure the matchmaker would never find a husband for her.

Her bitterness was gone now. Hoi turned out to be better than she had imagined before the wedding. He was kind and a little shy. Although this was only the third day they had been together, she could tell he was not the tyrant she heard from the stories the servants used to tell about their husbands. Sometimes the beatings they described made her wish she could stay at her parent’s house and never marry.

The sound of the horseshoes clacking on the cobblestone told her she was near home. Her heart started beating with happiness. How she had missed her mother and her maids! A part of her wished she had never married, and stayed in the warmth and protection of her parents forever. Her husband extended his hand to help her dismount, and the touch of his hand pulled her back to reality.

The giant stone lions stood on both sides of the gate guarding the mansion looked happy to see her as well. They walked up the steps to the threshold of the main gate, and she could see her parents walking toward the gate to welcome them – the newlyweds. Her tears flooded out without warning, and she collapsed on the stone ground on her knees. Hoi followed her, kneeling to his in-laws and called out: “Mom, dad.” Her father said in a pleasant tone, “Do get up, my son. Do get up.” If he was emotional to see her, he did not let on. She knew he was behaving the way it was expected of a master of the house.

Her mother pulled her up and put her arms around her. She saw her mother's watery eyes and told herself to stop crying. This was supposed to be a happy occasion. Together they walked through the courtyard and arrived at the main hall. A big round table had been set up in the middle of it, and now the father said to the servants, “Tell the kitchen to start serving lunch.” The housekeeper replied, “Yes, master.” and disappeared. The young guests freshened up in the water basins offered by the servants. Suey looked at her mother. Somehow she seemed so familiar and yet different at the same time. Just like the house - it was her home and now it felt like a strange place. She could tell there were many questions her mother wanted to ask her, but couldn’t. She had so many things to tell her mother, too; but she couldn’t.

She and Hoi were seated at the “top seats” that were customarily reserved for distinguished guests. She felt like a complete stranger in her own home. Her siblings and their spouses were there for the happy family event. Knowing what little she knew about men now, she had a difficult time looking at her brothers and her sister-in-laws. She held hands briefly with her maids - the two who were sent home on her wedding night - and refrained from crying by forcing a tearful smile at them. The maids did the same, and they stood behind her for the rest of the meal.

She had dined in the main hall before, during important family gatherings such as New Year, her parents' birthdays, and several festivals every year. Those occasions were always accompanied by banquets in the main hall. She could only imagine what was going through Hoi’s mind. She was sure he had never seen such a house or being treated in such a manner before, but he behaved respectfully so far.

They dined in pleasantries and laughter, with endless dishes served throughout the meal. She had a chance to be with her mother after the meal, when the men stayed in the main hall to talk, and the women retreated to the back quarter. The smaller children all begged, and received, candies from the new bride, and were now playing in the courtyard.

The first question her mother had was:

“Is he being nice to you?”
“Yes, mom. He seems to be a nice man...” She replied shyly. The other women in the room laughed, and her face turned red.

She couldn’t tell her mother how he was taking advantage of the privacy of the horse carriage, and had been caressing her wrists all that time, sometimes venturing up to her upper arms in the sleeves. She knew she should have stopped him – they were, after all, at a public place; but she couldn't and didn't. How could she tell her mother that her body weakened at his touch, or that she enjoyed his caress and wanted more, or that the “big event” her mother warned her about had not happened yet, but she almost looked forward for it to come?

They both were inexperienced in the newly found pleasure of the flesh, and they both were still exploring each other in small steps. Her mother warned her about the intrusive and painful nature of the big event, but she never told her daughter that a man’s hand could ignite her body with such desire that she was terrified by her own yearning for him.

Her mother saw the blushing on her face, and understood more than Suey's simple answer indicated. She held her hand and said gently, “It will be alright.” Suey's anxiety over the inevitable event was somehow eased a little by her mother's soothing voice.

They left shortly so they could reach her in-laws’ house before it turned too dark. She waved to her parents from behind the opening until they disappeared from her view. Hoi held her hand while she wiped away her tears.

She was going back to her husband’s home. It would be her real home from this day on.

(The old custom dictates the newlyweds go back to the bride’s home on the third day of the wedding.)

Marinade of Contentment

2009-12-27T17:02:00.000-08:00

Morning woke me with silence and warmth. The blinds glowed softly, tickling my senses with dim grayish light. I tried to recall dreams from last night, but there wasn't any to be summoned. The slumber was as smooth as the silky sheets around me.

Coco curled up in a furry round ball by my feet. She would not rise unless I asked: "Breakfast?" I hugged my companion - the soft pillow - with a lazy sigh and a contented squeeze. My head on its body and my arms around it, I enjoyed the slow retreat of the morning haze, one warm breath at a time.

Everything was quietly resting. Even the birds were snuggling in their nests tucked away deep in the trees. Faint aroma of dinner and spices still lingered in ribbons of air painted by watercolor brushes. Last night was brought back to mind instantly. We didn't have fancy games on a table glistening with silver and crystal to admire, but we had more than enough tasty morsels for our stomachs to expand with joy.

I asked for nothing this year. A wide screen high definition TV given to me earlier was more than I needed for my simple house and lifestyle. I was blessed in more than one way, and perhaps more than I deserved. I still received presents in spite of it. What more could a heart desire?

We missed one or two of our loved ones, but we were happy most of the small family was together. I was thankful for our health, our safety and a year of relative calmness. Perhaps a few bumps in the road, and perhaps we were scarred slightly, but we overcame and were grateful they weren't worse. We look forward to a brand new year with brand new adventures, hopefully with stronger minds from the roads we navigated through the year before.

The kids were sleeping soundly, recovering from a late night of movies, games and chattering. One was under the attack of a cold, and the other snored through the night. Chicken soup had come to the rescue, or at least to the comfort, of both mother and child. The mother would like to feed her child chicken soup everyday if she could, until the ailment was defeated completely. The child had asked for a second bowl of it. A simple "yummy" was the best reward a mother could receive.

The warmth of the bed, the scattered clan under one roof again, and little abundance in our lives made my grateful heart full of joy. This was my happiest day of the year - the morning after Christmas.

(I hope your Christmas was joyful and warm, whether you were with or without your loved ones. Happy New Year to everyone!)

.
.

Girl at the Bus Stop

2009-12-20T09:36:00.000-08:00

He walked slowly to the bus stop and sat down on the bench. The sultry summer heat felt like a thick warm blanket wrapped around him. There was no relief anywhere he looked. The shaved ice he just had while visiting his friend had already turned into sweat, and it was eager to escape from his every pore.

Several young girls gathered at the far end of the bench. Their whispers and giggles told him they were talking about him. It was a reaction he had to get used to, along with double takes and pointing. He was, after all, an outsider to them. The tropical island thousands of miles away from home enticed him from the booklet with beautiful pictures, and convinced him to "study abroad." It was a difficult language to master, but he studied hard in the crash course before departure. They would be in shock if they knew he could manage some basic phrases. The thought of it brought a smile to his face.

He turned to see if the bus was in sight, and he saw her.

She had long straight hair, and a clear face with no makeup. Her youthful features would be soiled by the manmade mask. The arched eyebrows asserted to be lively and challenging. Her small lips rested under a cute nose which perked with curiosity. Her dark eyes held behind a mysterious veil he could not describe. A glance from her seemed to see through his emotions, and ask for more. He had to remind himself to breathe. Her skin was perfect, as if life's worries hadn't found their ways to her yet. Her slender body was wrapped in short-sleeve shirt and a simple short black skirt. Her freshness glowed unintentionally. He hadn't seen the like until now, and a cord somewhere in him was plucked.

She came to him, or rather, to the bus stop, and sat down on the bench, maintaining a safe space between them. He moved his body when she turned to inquire the absent bus, trying to get her attention. Her eyes swept over him for a second, but they did not linger. He was a handsome young man by the standards of where he came from, and girls always paid attention to him. This was frustrating, but he was not to be discouraged.

She sensed his gaze, and hid her eyes under her long eyelashes. She hugged her books closer to her body slightly, as if they could protect her from his relentless eyes. His hair reminded her of the cinnamon bars in her mother's kitchen cabinets. His eyes looked at her, but the transparent irises strangely lacked focus, or a definite color. One could almost see through his head and into the unknown. He was not one of them - he was too foreign. She wished he would stop looking at her. What did he want? She could not fathom.

Before he could think of something to say with his simple vocabulary, the bus arrived. The group of girls swarmed to the door and shoved each other to get on. She watched from a few steps back, but did not join the battle. He quickly walked over and blocked the door with his arm, then turned to look at her. All the other girls turned and looked at her as well. It was clear what he wanted, and it was too much staring for her to endure. She lowered her head and got on the bus, whispering a soft "thank you."

His boldness terrified her. She walked to the last row hoping to avoid him. He followed her and sat down next to her, blocking her way out. She had a moment of panic, but did not let it show. She answered his questions with either a nod or a shake of her head, speaking only a word or two when absolutely necessary. He did his best to start a conversation, but clearly she was not used to talking to a stranger. He could not tell how fast her heart was beating, but gradually he sensed he was not going to have a cooperate companion for conversation, much less anything else.

She stood up after what seemed to him a very short ride, and reluctantly he moved to let her pass. She got off the bus and stole a look back, relieved to be free of his spell. He watched her silky hair flow like the wings of a butterfly when the bus pulled away. With a silent sigh he lost sight of her silhouette.

Another time or another place, the encounter would be much different. Where is she now and how is her life? He sometimes wonders, but the quiet night thousands of miles away provides no answers.
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First Night

2009-12-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

She woke up from a deep slumber. The room was still dark, and for a while she didn’t know where she was. She realized with a shock that this was not her room, and was awake completely.

The night before was long, noisy and utterly embarrassing. The boys stayed well beyond midnight with their endless teasing, game playing, and drinking. She was forced to have a sip, and her face turned red immediately upon swallowing the burning liquid. They laughed and let her off the hook. She thought she caught a glance of her husband, who stole a look at her shyly while the boys laughed. He was a nice looking young man. Her face felt warm at her own thought.

She sat up cautiously in bed and peeked at the other end of the bed. He was still sound asleep. The fact that there was a stranger sleeping next to him, although not face-to-face, and he didn't seem to mind was a little odd to her. She was so nervous when he came to bed last night she thought she was going to faint. Her heartbeats calmed down when the only thing he did was to fall asleep as soon as he lied down. Her mother vaguely explained to her what might happen during the first night, which sounded much like a torture to her. She was relieved it did not happen last night.

But then, he must have been exhausted, too. The boys would come back again tonight, to perform another customary "havocking the new room" for the newlyweds. Only heaven knew what they had planned to do. Last night, for one of the tricks, they forced her husband to traverse a handkerchief up one of her sleeves, across her bosom (her face was as red as the persimmons!) and down the other sleeve inside of her garment. The sheer embarrassment of it! No men had ever touched her in her life except her father, and he stopped hugging her when she turned 16. Her husband's touch sent an electric wave to her entire body. The feeling was so foreign and so exciting that she almost wished it would happen again tonight.

Her face felt warmer at this thought.

She told herself she had better get up and get ready. Her mother had told her: always get up before your husband does.

Her maids were sent home last night by her mother-in-law after the banquet, which she did not attend by custom. Her mother-in-law had made it clear: no daughter-in-law of hers would have any servants. They cried when they came to say goodbye. She was in shock and did not have any tears. She grew up with two of the maids her parents sent with her as part of the dowry. They were her only friends outside of family members, since girls from good families were not supposed to go outside or be seen by strangers.

She was left alone in a stranger's house, and she knew her days of being a treasured daughter had officially ended.

She opened the door quietly and walked to the other side of the courtyard where the kitchen was. She tried to get some hot water, but starting a fire in the brick stove proved to be too difficult of a task for her. The ceremonial lectures from her mother did not mention the details of the work normally performed by servants. The courtyard was quiet and dim before dawn, so nobody saw her predicament. She did not have to cook for the first three days, but the honeymoon would end there. Her husband was the first born; therefore his wife would bear much of the housework.

She did not understand why she couldn't keep the maids, as they could lighten the workload for everybody. They would not increase the expense for the family either, as she had her own money. She did not ask, for she was not in a position to make any decisions.

Yet.

She carried some cold water back to the new room. The fine china water bowl and jug were set up by her maids last night. All of a sudden tears appeared in her eyes now she thought of her companions, and felt very lonely standing in this unfamiliar room.

Her husband woke up just when she finished washing her face, getting dressed, and styling her hair into a simple bun – a style indicated her marrital status. She helped him get ready for the day in silence, both felt awkward being alone in the bedroom. Much to her relief, he did not seem to mind her imperfection. He had a gentle tone when he spoke. She took it as a sign of having a kind temperament. She thanked her parents and the goddess of marriage silently.

They would greet the parents with three koutous in the main hall, and the four of them would then go to the family’s shrine to present the bride to the ancestors, with incense and another three koutous, and ask for their blessings - the parents standing in front, she and her husband behind them. She then would become a formal member of the family.

Relatives and neighbors would come and congratulate the newlyweds all day long, followed by their boys proceeding with the second round of teasing at night. It was meant for good omen for the new couple, and they would do this for three nights straight. The more they teased, the better the marriage would be.

The night might require all her strength to endure, but comparing to what was waiting for her in the future, it was just a dress rehearsal.
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Dowry

2009-12-07T09:29:00.000-08:00

The day started very early. She bathed with fruits and herbs soaked in hot water to rid any evil spirits. She then put on brand new undershirt and skirt, and waited for her aunt to come and comb her hair. She would comb her hair with the jade comb four times, each stroke with a different symbol and blessing for her future.

First combing: From beginning until end
Second combing: Harmony to old age
Third combing: Sons and grandsons all over the place
Forth combing: Good wealth and long-lasting marriage

After that, her maid would style her hair to a fashion that would accommodate the headdress later.

She was marrying down to a family with a lower status. She never met her future husband. Parents of both families arranged everything with the help of a matchmaker. She had spent the past six months preparing her dowry once the proposal was accepted by her father. She made all the bedroom linens with embroidered dragon and phoenix on them. She made all the clothes she and her future husband could possibly wear for the next ten years. It was a lot of work, but it wasn’t hard. She knew needlework since a very young age. She also had to learn how to cook. Not that she needed to – her two maids were going with her. But she learned it as a basic skill any brides should know.

And everyday, her mother would give her advice and lessons on how to be a good wife, and an obdient daughter-in-law. She could sense the sadness in her mother grew stronger as the wedding day drew closer.

It was time to leave. She had the red gown and the red headdress on a while ago. Now the maid put a red veil over her headdress to cover her face. It would be removed by her husband when they were alone in their “new room” later. The procession of the dowry started a while ago. It was required by the custom, and it was copious because of her lineage. Her father was the descendant of Confucius, the most respected scholar in history. Her husband’s family was related to the Mencius clan, the second most respected scholar in history, by marriage. In a way it was a perfect match, and she should feel grateful that she was being married off. After all, she was considered a girl with a serious flaw.

Her mother whispered some last minute advice before she boarded the red sedan. She cried silently under the veil, for the future was foggy and scary. She wouldn’t be able to see her parents often. She would be alone in a stranger’s house. Her mother was crying as well. How was the husband going to treat her? Were her in-laws going to like her? She was out of her protective arms now.

It seemed that the whole village came out to see the procession. This was not a common marriage between two ordinary families. Both families, especially the bride’s side, held high esteem and were well regarded in the village. They were educated people who used to hold government official positions. The wealth might have been declining in the past hundred years or so, but the status was still there.

The dowry carriers formed a line as long as a mile following the musicians. Men on horses guarded the procession on both sides. The linens she made occupied about ten trunks, each carried by two hired hands. Silk cloths occupied another ten, some were brocade and some were plain. There were clothing materials for the whole future family for the next ten years or more. Jade and marble vases, bowls, and ornaments for the house stored in several trunks. There was a trunk full of coins in gold, silver and copper for her to use, so she didn’t have to ask her husband or her in-laws for money. Everything she needed for her future married life was provided by her family; including the satin pieces used to clean herself after daily bath chamber routine.

All these were unheard of and unseen by the villagers before. They watched in awe and appreciation. It was a rare glimpse into a prominent family. The bride sat silently in the sedan. Occasionally a word or two would escape the music and the crowd, and reach her ears. She wondered if the villagers knew about her, and if they had guessed the real meaning behind the bountiful dowry that came with her.

What would they think if they knew? What would her husband think when he saw her? She wished many times that she could forfeit beauty in exchange of flawlessness – she was otherwise a pretty girl. She knew she was different, and she knew she was damaged in the worst sense for a girl.

Her parents knew it as well, so they did not bind her feet. They anticipated that she would have to marry into a lesser family – if she could be married off - and would probably have to do physical work. Girls from rich families all had their feet bound since tender age. They never had to work, and would always be married to other wealthy families. In fact, they couldn’t even walk without being helped.

The abundance of the dowry had a secondary, not so obvious meaning. They were apologizing for her parents. They were saying to her in-laws: “Thank you for taking our daughter. She is flawed and unworthy, and is lucky that you accepted her to your family.” Her future husband’s family had some land, but also was some kind of merchant. It was considered a lower profession than a scholastic pursuit. It probably took the matchmaker some time to find a family that would accept her.

It really wasn’t anybody’s fault, and there was nothing could be done. She was born with a mild form of cleft lip.

She crossed the threshold, helped by her maids, and walked into a smaller, simpler courtyard than the one of her parents, and began her unknown future as a wife.

(My grandmother’s wedding)

Little Runaway

2009-11-29T21:31:00.000-08:00

The rain stopped falling for three years. The land cracked open like dying fish, waiting in vain with its mouth open. The unforgiving sun soon turned the land into baked broken clay.

Then massive grasshopper clouds landed on the remaining crops, shielding the sun in the sky as they made their descent, and consumed whatever was left on the ground. In a matter of minutes all crops were gone. The farmers stared at their now bare rice paddies, too hungry to cry.

As if that wasn’t enough, a three-month rainfall followed the drought. The ground was saturated with water it felt like sponge when you poked at it. Whatever managed to come out when the rain first started, now died in flooded paddies.

We were a half-merchant, half-farmer family. We had a little food left, but we had to be very careful. The front gate was secured with heavy wooden bolts before each meal. The hungry farmers would rob, or even kill, if they knew we had food left.

“Food” was a loose term to use. We had to mix tree barks with a little rice to make gruel. We ate it slowly. The taste was strange on our tongues, and we waited for the unpleasant consequences. Some would have stomach aches, and others, diarrhea.

My father traveled all over the place as a merchant. He finally told us we should move to another province, where there was no drought or flooded fields. We packed our belongings in as much luggage as our hands could carry, and boarded the train.

The train station was a chaotic mess. People swarmed the place with their families and luggage, shoveling and pushing each other. Japanese soldiers were beating them with their rifles, trying to instill some order. We managed to get on the train and, with all the chaos around us, lost the sight of my father promptly.

Older boys had been sent to another province to study before all this happened. My mother, my younger brother and I stayed at a local resident’s home after searching for my father to no avail. I was playing with a hand-made ball in the courtyard when I heard the conversation. The ball rolled to the base of the wall and rested under an open window. I froze when I realized what was going on.

“It’s so hard to carry on for you--a lone woman with two kids. What are you going to do with a long journey ahead of you?” The landlady said.

“Well, one step at a time I guess.” My mother replied.

“I don’t have girls of my own and can really use some help. Why don’t you leave your daughter here? I promise she will be better off staying here with us.”

“…” My mother didn’t say yes or no, but I could see that she was giving it a mull over - much to my horror.

I ran back to our room and packed everything I had in a cloth wrappage. I slipped out of the house with my little baggage and ran to where the train track was. I remembered which side we got off the train, so in my young mind I determined that if I continued in the direction where the train was heading, I would get to the destination. What that destination would be I hadn't a clue.

Somehow my mother found out that I had run away. She carried my brother and our stuff and started chasing after me, calling my name over and over. I ran faster as soon as I heard her so she wouldn’t catch up - she might trick me into going back and staying with that landlady.

I looked into each and every alley by the train station when I got there, wishing I would see my father in one of those alleys. I was so young that I didn't realize how low the odds were. Wouldn’t you know it? I glanced upon a person when passing one alley, and backed up to see a familiar silhouette. I met the eyes of the person who was also backing up to see me. It was my father!

I ran over to his side and saw that his eyes were all blood shot and swollen. He had been looking for us for days, and thought he had lost us forever. The stress of the trauma probably raised his blood pressure to sky high. By this time my mother had caught up with us. The first thing I told my father was: “Mom was going to sell me off!”

They had a huge fight in the hotel later. My father, unlike his wife, was always partial to us girls, and the idea of selling me to a total stranger, even though it was a harsh time and I didn't really hear the word "sell" or "buy", was beyond his comprehension. He was a very gentle man and I had never seen him losing his temper. My mother usually had her say and he never argued with her much. That was the first time I remembered him raising his voice to anyone.

And that was how we migrated to another province. I never went back to the old house until forty years later.

(My mother’s experience with the drought, famine and runaway when she was a little girl. The tree they consumed, after a little research I did, was elm tree.)

From Me to You!

2009-11-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

Sarah is a young and aspiring writer who's still going to college. I'm honored to know that she thought my writing is worthy of passing on the "From Me to You" award. She may be young, but her writing shows great style and stands out among her peer. Thank you, Sarah!

I found the Coffee Shop in August, and timidly started joining the conversation. Much to my relief, I found people in the shop friendly, fun and encouraging. I was instantly hooked. I only had a handful of posts back then and they were pretty immature, but one person was kind enough to not only read them, but also took the time to comment. His comments to a person who didn't know what she was doing were the lifeline a blogger needed. So I carried on. I tried to write better. I didn't want to disappoint my "reader." The fact that I had one reader was enough to keep me going.

His name was Mr. Bob. By now you all know that he's always kind and tolerant and humorous. I visited his blog many times because I wanted to find out what kind of writer he was, and each time I ran away as soon as I got there. What in the world is he talking about? What kind of language is that? It looked like English, but I didn't understand a word of it.

I finally got used to his style and language, and it's a good thing I did. His stories are so funny you will find yourself ROFL, like the bloggers would say. I thought he was just a happy-go-lucky guy, until one day I read this post and was left speechless. Anybody who went through that kind of trauma and didn't resolve to traversing on a self-destructive path is a hero. To be kind and warm and encouraging to others after such trauma is divine. He survived the demon in more than one form. So I want to dedicate this award to him as the honorary recipient.

His self description is:

I enjoy everbody, and love every comment left here, they are truly treasured. I am not computer geeky, learned, or proficent, so please forgive me, if you find something here that doesn't make sense to you. if you want I am always open to your ideas and suggestions. If you have arrived at this site it probably was not by accident.

thanks for stopping by, and just keep on laffin. plainolebob

He started the Hot Dawg Friday, where each Friday he gives out the award to five people--a lot of them new bloggers. It takes a lot of work to get that done. I know because I have trouble just doing it once in a while. That's just Bob--always encouraging others to carry on.

Bob, you are such an inspiration to so many people. I am honored to have known you. You don't need to pass it on, write a thank you post, or anything the like. I just wanted to tell you how much you are appreciated.

It's a great pleasure to pass this award to these delightful writers. There are more great blogs out there than I have space to mention them here. You know who you are. You all have beautiful awards to bear witness. But to continue in Mr. Bob's style, I would like to acknowledge these fairly new blogs. Please pay them a visit. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

http://buttsandashes.blogspot.com/

Dealing with elder care, death, and family members in such a humorous way you will laugh your troubles away. Her blog description is simple: Loving Someone From End To End. And that's what she did.

http://lesleymopolitics.blogspot.com/

You may not agree with her political stand, but her writing is witty and to the point. To quote her own words:
I'm a liberal Christian Texas Democrat. A living, walking oxymoron. With plenty of reasons to rant.

http://ubergrumpy.blogspot.com/

An Englishman’s sarcasm written in fine forms. He always has beautiful picture to go with the story if you're not big on reading.

http://wwwaphorismscom.blogspot.com/

One single post can generate 114 comments. Need I say more? He has a good amount of followers, but I have yet to see this kind of response on other blogs. His one-setence aphorisms make you look at things in life from a completely different angle.

http://burbsbuckandbuntlineinn.blogspot.com/

Ms. Burb’s energy in the coffee shop can blow your derriere off your chair, and laugh all the way down. Her blog is all about murder and such. You might not want to read it before bedtime. There is a disclaimer at the bottom of her blog that states in the spirit of Ms. Burb:
The half-cocked views of the Authors of B3 may not necessarily be the views of those Authors when they're sober...so don't hold anything against us, okay?!!

There is also a catch of seven things you have to share. I will not bore you with a repeat. If you are curious here's the link:

http://thegoodgirls.blogspot.com/2009/10/seven-things.html

Congratulations to all!
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As the World Turns

2009-11-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure if this soap opera is still running, but I saw the name in the passing every now and then, and thought I’d borrow it for this post.

Mr. Bob initiated the conversation titled “Is the world gonna end in 2012” the other day, and that prompted me to think. They say everyone needs to make a “bucket list” to set your priorities straight. And if the world is going to end in 2012, now will be a good time to start thinking about it.

My initial thought was: this is easy! I can give you a list of fifty things I want to do before the world stops turning, or goes up with a big kaboom.

As it turns out, I had to mull it over longer than I thought, and I could only come up with ten. If your time is limited, suddenly some of the things you want to do are not that important anymore. For example, I wanted to learn French. But what would be the point giving the situation?

Here’s my list of ten after some hard thinking:

1. Make sure people I love know I love them – I hope this one needs no explanation, and I probably don’t do it enough.

2. Go to dance once a week – I envy people with rhythm and coordination. Dancing seems to be so natural for them whenever there’s music. I’m too shy to do that, but will try to overcome it before the world ends. I have a karaoke machine at home, so I got the singing part covered.

3. Go to Italy – I always wanted to visit Italy. I know my half-Italian friend wants to go, too, but the hope is dwindling since her health and employment situation are both declining. I’ll see if I can come up with the budget to pay for both of us.

4. Laugh everyday – crying everyday won't stop the inevitable, so I'm going to enjoy every minute of it.

5. Go back to the city where I was born – and see if I can reconnect with some old friends. Tell them I miss them, and that I dream of them often.

6. Find my lost half brother – two words: dysfunctional family. I tried it once to no avail. I hope he’s doing well.

7. Move my mom in to live with me now (I may be crazy by the time the world ends, so I won’t be too devastated)

8. See the world if I have money left – the earth is a wonderful place. See it before it goes away.

9. Thank God every morning I wake up – that means the world and me are both alive. I do that now, actually.

10. Eat all the chocolates I could – especially the dark ones. This one may change after two days, as I will no doubt be sick of it. When that happens I’ll change it to “Taste every cuisine available” Thankfully I live in a very diverse community, so I won’t be running out of options any time soon.

There’s no order for this list, but there’s really only one thing that’s important, and I’ll let you guess which one.

I did, however, have to struggle with “Forgive people who did you wrong” which is on most people's bucket lists. I did this for the most part, and the great reward was the inner peace and happiness. But there are a couple of people I just couldn’t look into their eyes and say, “I forgive you for what you did to me.” One of these people is my step-mother.

She is a hateful and crass woman. She did everything she could to alienate us from our father. Case in point: her lovely answer was often: “What do you want? To suck on his old nipples?” whenever we asked the simple question: “Where is dad?” She had a son after she married my father in a shotgun sort of wedding, but the elephant in the room was he was not my father’s son. We never said anything to our father.

She got her wish when both my sister and I were out of the house and living in dorms, and she always sent the maid home for vacation when my sister went home for summer breaks. Luckily I lived in a different city and often did not go home for breaks. She made sure we know that we were uninvited and unwelcome outsiders the day she set her foot in our door.

I will probably be dancing around the house and singing “Ding dong the witch is gone” the day she dies. So you see when it comes to forgiving her, I’m afraid I still have a long way to go.

What will be your list of ten things?
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Road Traveled

2009-11-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

The patio overlooked the river that melted into the ocean half a mile away. The crisp morning air glistened above the water. A couple of ducks floated lazily along the slow and cool current, still half lingering in last night’s dreams.

She looked down on her plate of eggs, ham and strawberries. There were white linen and smiling guests all around them. It was as perfect a getaway as possible for the new romance.

Something was missing, and she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

He commented on the ducks and the setting, the history of the harbor and the sound of the morning trumpet. He asked what she wanted to do after the breakfast. They chitchatted through eating, but avoided the unmentioned. She looked into his eyes, and he returned with a glance and a smile - both ended half done. They finished without once touching each other.

The drive home was less jubilant than coming here. They passed jokes here and there for the sake of breaking the silence. Passion died before it even started, and she wondered if she was to blame. He appeared to be a nice man, if not physically attractive. Still, she was willing to tend and irrigate the new liaison and see if it would grow into full blossom. They had good times at the theatre and symphonies. For her a nice guy outweighed the other shortfalls, which he owned quite a few.

Maybe you can’t force chemistry, she wondered to herself.

She picked up her car at his place and drove home. Just when she was pulling into the garage her phone rang. He wanted to talk, but not on the phone.

Talk to me now, she said.

I don’t want to do this over the phone, he pleaded.

I don’t want to wait, she insisted. She couldn’t let it brew for several days before they meet.

I feel that this could be something great. You are the perfect woman that I could fall in love with, he slowly proceeded. She waited for a ‘but’.

But…I don’t know how to go on when I’m not over somebody else, he said it sadly.

His ex-girlfriend called him a couple of days earlier. It was a tumultuous relationship, and he eventually asked her to move out when they broke up for the tenth or twentieth time. He assured her that it was over when she questioned if he had moved on too fast. No, he said. Her drinking, her dark moods, her cruel words to him were all too much to bear. I would never want to go through that again, he declared definitively.

Yet he wanted to go back to her as soon as she called.

She felt like an idiot. She was looking at a possible future, while he was leading her to a dead end. Was he thinking about her the whole weekend? She blamed herself for not seeing this coming. She had suspected it was too soon for him to start anew, but she ignored her intuition and trusted his words anyway. She beat herself down for the next few days. It was all her fault. She knew it was too soon for him. She should have been more careful. When grief veiled all lights around her, something inside changed unexpectedly.

They agreed on a date to meet at the train station for the last time.

She pulled into the station by the curb where he was waiting. He opened the door and said hi, handing over a bag with her belongings.

“Come in, and sit down.” She said quietly. He did what she said and got into the car.

“I have something to say and I want you to listen.” She tried her best to mask her shaking body and voice.

“Okay.”

“You think by jumping into another relationship is the best way to get over an old one. You don’t allow yourself to grieve and reflect on what’s going on within yourself. So you start something when you are not ready, and end up hurting others. Nobody needs a rebound from you - least of all, me.”

“I’m sorry…” He started, but she didn’t let him go on.

“I’m not finished." She paused, gathered her thoughts and continued, "You need to know how you made me feel. I thought I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t measure up, that you were quiet because you missed her and wished I were her. Do you know how hurtful that could be? You didn’t care how painful it was for others, so long as you didn’t have to feel the pain yourself. Next time you want to do this, stop and think about what you did to me.”

He started to mumble something, but she couldn’t hear a word over the deafening sound of her heartbeat. She took a deep breath and said, “Now you can get out.” He opened the door to leave, and bent down to say good-bye before shutting the door. She pulled away from the curb, determined not to look at the rear mirror. She made the turn and fought hard not to let the tears glide down.

Two years later he called and told her that he was in the process of divorcing his wife, the ex-girlfriend he married after their train station breakup. It was the biggest mistake in my life, he lamented. Her drinking, her dark moods, her cold and callous words to him, all were reasons why it didn’t work, and she had heard them all two years ago.

He eagerly wanted to renew their relationship as if the past two years didn’t happen, and didn’t understand her reluctance. What’s different, he asked in genuine bewilderment. I didn’t change, he assured her. His complete denial was astonishing. Apparently nothing she told him in their last meeting had registered with him, in spite of her best effort to connect with him emotionally.

Sometimes we need to revisit the road already traveled more than a few times to get it right, and only if we are willing to listen to our innermost voice carefully. She can't help but wonder how much more traveling awaits her.
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Goose Alley

2009-11-05T23:06:00.000-08:00

It was no doubt the dorkiest uniform I had to don in my life, and it lasted twelve years. I will try to paint as clear of a picture as I possibly could.

White boxy shirt with no shape-forming darts anywhere, and buttons going all the way to an inch under my collar bone was normally the choice of tops. The only variation was short sleeves in the summer and long sleeves in the winter. It was tucked in a knee-length black or navy blue skirt with pleats all around, and the kneecaps must be completely covered. White tube socks went half way up to the kneecaps were required, extending from a pair of black MaryJane style shoes. They had shops make these uniforms especially for schools, and we didn't have any saying in how they tailor to fit anybody in any complimentary ways. If you managed to do that, you must be from an extremely wealthy family. I knew of only one person during the entire twelve years who actually had her uniforms tailor-made, and we all thought she was a slut because the uniform greatly enhanced her feminine curves--a concept entirely foreign to us.

Everyone had to wear uniforms from first grade through twelfth. The only solace was everyone looked equally dorky--except for the one aforementioned.

The worst part was not the uniform, however. It was the hair. We must keep it no longer than our earlobes. That means we had to cut it an inch above the earlobes, so we could last a month or so without being called to the military training officer's office and getting a good reproach, or worse yet, a write-up. He checked our hair with a ruler every week, making sure we obey the rules. That also means there was always a patch of stubble in the back of my head from shaving off that part of the hair. Very few schoolgirl hairstyles in the world could compare to the ugliness of that patch. Whoever came up with the hairstyle ought to be publicly caned. I still cringe at the thought of the unsightly hairstyle.

My good friend Jeanne had the misfortune of being born with wavy hair. The training officer refused to accept her explanation and insisted that she permed her hair, which was against the rules, naturally. I think her parents eventually had to talk to the officer to clear her name. No wonder I felt a strange kinship when I saw the picture of a colonial period man with a "pumpkinhead" hair cut. He would fit in nicely in our school--on the girl side, that is. It was little wonder we all let our hair grow as long as possible once we were in college to make up for lost time.

I don’t recall the hairstyle for boys for reasons I will explain shortly. I vaguely remember it was extremely short, with at least half of the scalp shaved.

We also had to carry the crossbody book bag with the school's name on it. It added little to the dorkiness because, frankly, nothing much in the world would. Makeup was strictly prohibited. Since wearing makeup was considered a ritual for older women, we didn't really mind. Talking to a boy in school (or any boys for that matter) was an offense worse than wearing makeup. I got into serious trouble in junior high when the son of a family friend decided to write me a letter--and he sent it to my school. I still suffer the "No, I didn't do it!" knee jerk reaction nowadays from repeating “No, I don’t have a boyfriend. Honestly.” a hundred times to the school interrogators. I never looked at the boys at school, let along talking with them.

To this day I have no clue what was in the letter. The interrogators had obviously read it, but they didn’t hand it over after the scolding, and I didn't want to ask for it. I left the office as if there were a scarlet letter embroidered on my chest. I was lucky to get a mere scolding. They warned me that I could be expelled--and therefore further shamed. I felt the utter unfairness, but could argue with no one. All that humiliation for something I didn't do, and the distrustful expression on their faces I had to endure. I only wish I could somehow meet the boy again today, and have the chance to say "What the hell were you thinking?" to his no longer boyish face. But this event happened years after the goose run, and I digressed.

The walk home after school was the happiest time of the day. After the scolding, spanking (from math problems we didn’t get right) and the assignment of endless homework for the day, finally we were able to have a little breathing room. We were able to talk, laugh, play tags, and banter before going home and burying our noses in the books until late into the night. We had to get ready for the test to enter junior high.

The walk would be perfect if I could get pass those geese without being nipped.

Somebody was raising geese in a residential neighborhood near our house. Weren't there any zoning laws, you ask. If there were, we had never heard of it. This somebody thought the geese were civilized enough animals to let loose in the alley unsupervised. They might look white and fluffy and cute to the owner, but they were in fact mean little creatures that were noisy, territorial, and aggressive. Unfortunately I knew this first hand.

My heart started pounding fast when I was near the alley. My ears were suddenly super sharp, and my palms were suddenly clammy. Are they anywhere near? Do I hear a goose honking? Is that the sound of little webbed feet flapping down the road? If none of these were true, I would dash to run the length of the alley with all my might, while praying to whatever god there was to protect me and blind the geese and get me home safely.

I was not always that lucky. Somehow they heard me coming more often than I liked. Even if I started out with no geese in sight, most of the time they appeared from nowhere in the middle of my mad dash, and started chasing me as if I were the big bad wolf set out to get one of them. The long tube socks were never long enough in these incidents, despite how much we hated the length otherwise. One or two of them always managed to get me on the calves, and always on the skin, not on the socks. Their loud honking noise and the long stretching necks just increased the terror many folds. I was the villian that invaded their space.

I eventually got home with sweat on my face, and bite marks on my calves. Luckily they didn't draw blood. Mostly just scrapes as if I fell down backwards and scraped myself on rocks. I would wash up, do my homework after my heartbeat calm down, and get ready for another day, and another goose run. The only thing I could do was to try and run faster next time.

We didn't stay in that neighborhood too long, but the mental alarm was permanently set. There are flocks of Canada geese in the park where I will now take my dog for walks. I always look at them with watchful eyes, and warn my dog that they are vicious fowl. I don’t allow her to get close to them, regardless how badly she wants to investigate the wobbling birds.

I can't tell you how happy I was every time I dined at this little restaurant in the city where the geese roamed free in the alley. My favorite dish there was boiled goose meat. There was simply no word for the feeling each time I sank my teeth into the juicy flesh.

Superior Scribblers R U

2009-11-03T09:40:00.000-08:00

Yes. We are all superior scribblers--unofficially.

It took a lot more work than I had thought to pass this award on. Not because of lack of good blogs, but the opposite. So many good blogs and so little time/awards. I had sleepless nights over this.

First, the rules you need to follow if you get this:

*Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

*Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
*Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award. http://scholastic-scribe.blogspot.com/2008/10/200-this-blings-for-you.html
*Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
*Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

I'm passing this to these blogs:

http://dannysignifyingnothing.blogspot.com/ He's very young, but very into technology. The novel he's putting together is full of details of the technology world--all fiction, but you won't know it unless he tells you. Danny has been putting in a lot of effort on a subject he loves.

http://www.boomerpie.com/ The thoughts and rants of a baby boomer, but you don't have to be one to appreciate them.

http://www.thecleanwhitepage.com/ A great story teller in Ireland. The Halloween story "After Dark" is really good, and really creepy.

http://coachyourmind.blogspot.com/ Coach Dayne is always thought provocative. One read may change your mindset for good.

http://auntievlifeandcookery.blogspot.com/ Good writing combined with yummy recipes.

Of course there are a lot more than mentioned here. I may have to come back and add five more later. Congratulations to all, and thank you so much, Mike!

Uninspired in NorCal

2009-10-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

“Cold autumn candle light flickering on painted screen
    Chasing fireflies with round fan, in light clothes
    Courtyard steps feel cool as water in the night
    Sitting there alone watching stars in black skies”

A beautiful and somewhat lonely depiction of an early fall evening. No, I didn’t write that. I wish I could.

Or if I could put the words together so eloquently as Lou did in one of her poems:

“As soft mist lingers white over waters
    starched by the cold hand of frost”

She has such a way with words, doesn’t she? Instead, I wrote the following:

The air feels a little chilling in the morning. I put on the light sweater the first time in a long time.
The heater kicked off one early morning unexpectedly, startling me and the puppy.
Hot coffee in the morning doesn’t feel hot enough, and gets cold sooner than days before.
A sip of brandy at night warms me up more agreeably, and no longer makes me sweat.

That was all I could say about fall season in California. I have good reasons. This is a fall scene you will likely see here:

It isn't a joke - I’m dead serious. In fact, it could be worse. I saw this a little further down the road:

If you were lucky you might see this (Yay! Red leaves.):

But I got real lucky today and saw this - finally, some real fall pictures. (Okay, that was the only one I saw):

I could practically hear the two maple trees arguing:

“It’s fall.”
“No it’s not.”
"I’m telling you kid, it’s fall.”
“And I’m telling you pops, it’s not!”

I needed to take a shower for sweating too much from walking the dog. It was a sunny 75-degree “fall” day. Now you know why I’m not a poet.

Fallen

2009-10-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in my car pondering what to do next when I saw her. The parking was free after six o'clock, and I was a little early. Should I stay in the car or feed the meter?

She was wearing a coat on a balmy early evening. That should have given me a clue. She made some gesture at me from the passenger side. I buzzed the window down just a little:

"What?" I thought my parking was bad and she was alerting me good-naturedly. Maybe this is not a parking zone? Is she telling me to move?

She waved and said something inaudible. She then bent down to pick something up. I saw an empty soda can in her hand when she straightened up again. Oh God, is she homeless? Is it too late to get out of the car and run? I decided to stay put. What could she possibly do to me?

I buzzed the window up. Please go away, I pleaded silently. I have a class to go. I don't have time to be bothered.

More importantly, I needed my quarters for the meter.

She moved slowly across the front of my car and approached the driver's side. Oh no, what does she want? I felt a little panic.

She started talking and gesturing. I couldn't understand a word of it, but finally i figured out from her gesture that she wanted food. I dug into my purse for some change. I couldn't give her the quarters because, well, I needed them for the meter. I had to give her something because she was blocking my way out.

I found a few dimes and cracked the window a bit to hand them to her. She didn't take them right away - still busy talking in spite of the fact that I didn't show any signs of comprehending any of it. She showed me her wrist while she talked. There was a round bump the size of a ping pong ball near her wrist. I thought to myself, "Please don't let it be contagious."

She finally took the change I was holding (carefully - trying to avoid touching her skin in any way.) But she was not leaving. I came to realize after more gesturing that she wanted more, so I looked back to my purse with a hint of resentment. Where is her family? Have they no shame? How could anyone let their elder, who doesn't speak a word of English, beg on the street? Street in a city with the highest crime rate, I might add.

At last she took the second alms and left, but not before rambling some more of the foreign words to me. Now it was almost time for the class, so I didn't need the quarters after all.

I felt a thorny pinch in my heart every now and then for the next few days. Why didn't I give her more money so at least she could get a hot meal or two? Why did I assume she had something contagious just because her joint was deformed? Why was I afraid of an old woman who was just hungry? I shouldn't have blamed her family either. Maybe she outlived all of them, and she didn't have other means to support herself.

I prepared some small bills when it was time for the next class, but she was nowhere to be found. The redemption I was hoping for did not happen. It must be a punishment designed by God. My sin was forever etched on the triptych.

I have always thought of myself as a somewhat decent person. Not perfect, but still, not bad. I tried to be nice to people. I tried to be compassionate to my friends. I tried to do the right thing most of the time. I volunteered at the children's center and other non profits. I even donated to my friend's cancer walks. I was better than most people out there, you know?

Along came a tiny, frail, and very wrinkled old lady, and she nudged me off my pedestal effortlessly.

Long Drive Home

2009-10-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

I barely started my first job a month ago. It was new and exciting. I was officially "man of the house" and bringing home the bacon. We had a very orderly life. We got up early and headed to our separate destinations - the kids to school together, I to the office. When I got home in the afternoon they would have finished their homework. We would have simple dinner before getting ready for bed. Life was plain and calm, but that was about to change.

I pulled out from the company's parking lot one afternoon and merged into the traffic. I stopped at the light behind some cars and thought to myself what I could make for dinner that night. All of a sudden the car started to rock as if it were a boat on choppy water - very choppy water. I was trying to hold on while wondering if I should get out of the car - not that I could. It just felt dangerous to stay in a car that was acting crazy. All I could do was holding on the steering wheel as if I were riding the mechanical bull.

It felt like forever before it was finally over. All the traffic lights were dead. Cars stayed on the road, and nobody moved. Two cars ahead of me the female driver got out of her car, and ran to the car behind her. She cried, "Oh my God! What was that?!" At this time it gradually dawned on me: we just had a major earthquake.

The normally twenty-minute drive home took me an hour and half. Every intersection was stop-and-go, one car at a time. The speed was reduced to that of a snail. I gripped the steering wheel with my white-knuckled fingers, and bit my lips to fight back tears. The kids - are they all right? They are home alone. Are they hurt? Is the house still there? Are they being buried in the rubbles? I forced myself not to imagine the worst. The houses along the road were still standing. I had some hope. There were no fires as far as I could see. The kids could be just fine.

I got home at last and everything seemed "normal." I looked at the kids and I had a strange feeling of having been away for a month. They looked the same, and yet different. The kids told me how they hid under the dining table and finished their homework there - thinking there might be another one coming. A plant was toppled over and left some dirt on the carpet. Everything was fine. We were safe.

Until this day I couldn't remember what I did for the rest of the evening. It was completely blank. The only thing I remember was crying silently in the office the next day. I couldn't work at all. The boss finally told us to go home. It was futile to tell anyone to concentrate on work. I don't remember what I did after going home either. Somehow my memories in those time periods were completely erased.

I grew up in an earthquake country. Hurricanes and earthquakes were common events. Nobody showed any emotions toward them. It was life - deal with it. My reaction to earthquakes used to be exactly like that of the kids - that was frightening and fun! Now back to homework.

My life and my feelings for earthquakes are completely different now. I used to be strong. I could deal with disasters with no problems. The long drive home that afternoon twenty years ago changed me forever.