Monthly Archives: November 2015

Dioramas

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Last night, I dreamt that Ed was still here. Well, more correctly, he was at home in San Francisco, and I was there visiting. I walked into the living room to see him piecing something together, and after looking more closely, I realized that he was creating mini dioramas of my life after he had passed away. It actually starts the month before he passed away, when Chris and I visited St. Louis, Missouri. There are little photos of us from St. Louis and the big arch. Then, it progresses to July 2013, the month he died, and there are photos of our family and me together. I see little 3D pieces he has built of things I’d done after that, such as Christmas trees in Germany to Niagara Falls in Canada, and the entire project was just so complex, complete, and intricate. He has a diorama for each month of my life since he passed.

Ed was really creative when he was young. I remember his drawing and sketching skills were amazing, and he used to be able to make very accurate models of things like houses and even toilets (it was for a school project). He just wasn’t encouraged enough. I was too young to think much of it then, but when he got older, I told him that he was always a good artist. As an adult, he’d lost interest in those activities. Of course, my parents don’t think being a good artist means anything or has any value in life, so I’m sure at some point that sentiment was communicated to him.

I wish his creativity didn’t die, that someone could have been there to cheer him on. But I know I will remember for him.

Almost a year later

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It’s almost been a year since my dad’s heart surgery. It’s kind of crazy to think that this time last year, I was on a plane going home, wondering if my dad would make it through his double bypass surgery successfully. Oh, and we can’t forget about my mother’s massive complaining and guilt tripping when I left and said I was going to Europe for Thanksgiving just days after my dad got discharged from the hospital, and then spending Christmas in Australia once again.

Since my dad has recovered from his surgery, he is now more anal about the food that he eats, and he’s following all kinds of healthy food trends, like organic turmeric powder, chia seeds, and hemp seeds. On average, he’s eating about one half to one cup of seeds per day (he says he’s read articles that eating that amount of seeds per day will prolong your life), and a couple teaspoons of turmeric powder are being sprinkled into his morning oatmeal. After mixing multiple types of seeds, wheat germ, flax, cinnamon (to regulate his glycemic levels), and turmeric into his big bowl of breakfast oatmeal, the entire bowl looks like a bowl of vomit. I told my parents this the last time I was home in September. My mom chuckled and agreed, and my dad said nothing and had a look of defiance on his face.

For me, turmeric is meant to be in curry and banh xeo, not in oatmeal. But I guess this is what heart surgery can do to a person.

Thanksgiving after thoughts

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I grew up with Thanksgiving as a tradition and greatly anticipated it every year in November. Granted, we never had the most gourmet of meals, as I would always expect Stovetop stuffing and gravy from a packet to be served, but it was still a meal that Ed and I loved and looked forward to.

After everyone left last night and we were cleaning up the apartment, I suddenly started to feel sad about the future and my own kids. They’re never going to know what it’s like to have a big family all together at a table here, enjoying Thanksgiving food every year on the same day. At most, they’ll see me scrambling to get all this food together and not really understand what the big deal is. My parents will never be involved. Ed isn’t here anymore. And it’s highly unlikely any of my cousins will be there. Chris doesn’t care about Thanksgiving since he didn’t grow up with it, and he doesn’t embrace it and could care less if we had a Thanksgiving meal to begin with.

Thanksgiving

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I get annoyed when people use the term “friendsgiving.” It’s like a new term that’s not even recognized by the dictionary that everyone wants to use when they are having a big get-together with friends that involves a roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. Why can’t we just call it “Thanksgiving?” Maybe the “family” I think about when it comes to Thanksgiving are the friends I invite over because my own family doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving since they think it’s against the Jehovah’s Witnesses belief? I personally think the whole idea of being against celebrating Thanksgiving is so stupid and pointless. I understand people not wanting to celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Passover, but with Thanksgiving, it’s not even remotely religious. It’s just a meal that gathers family and oftentimes friends around foods like turkey and stuffing. What is the big deal here, and why on earth would it be considered against God? Sometimes I think that weak people just need to be told what to do and not do because they can’t be smart enough to think for themselves.

And if I want to call my Thanksgiving with friends a real Thanksgiving, I will. It’s the only Thanksgiving I get, and it’s my making (literally nine dishes this year plus an apartment to clean), so I can call it what I want to and correct people when they tell me that I’m hosting a “friendsgiving.” Family is what you make of it, blood relations or not.

Mentoring children

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Last year, I started volunteering at two mentoring programs for two different organizations. The first group paired me up with a ninth grader, and ideally I’d follow her until she graduated from high school. I’m still participating in this program this school year. The second group was to mentor fourth and fifth graders, and unfortunately because the program was so disorganized, I never got paired up with a nine or ten-year-old the way I was supposed to. This week, I decided to let the program coordinator know I would not be returning this school year. Even though the second program was disorganized, I realized another reason I didn’t want to continue with it was because I didn’t really like kids that young. They just bother me. There was no structure to the program, but when we did chat, I realize it was really hard to pretend to be interested in these kids’ thoughts and what they were interested in. I felt like I was adding no value to their lives, so I ended my commitment to the program.

I was hesitant when I first started it, as I thought that age group may be too young for me, but now I know it will definitely not be a fit. It’s better to be honest with yourself rather than delude yourself into thinking you will make a difference in their lives when you not only are not making a difference, but also just dislike the entire act of going and being there. I may not be a fit for them, but I’m sure others can and will be.

Coffee catch up

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I met with my former boss’s boss for coffee this afternoon. We reconnected when I found out he lost his wife, who was a nonsmoker, to lung cancer two months ago. He knew about Ed, too, so inevitably a big part of our catch up was about loss, grief, and how to deal with everyone else and their reactions to moving forward with life without the ones we love. He has a 4.5-year-old son who seems very emotionally mature for his age and seems to understand everything that has happened, so that’s an added layer of difficulty for him as a single parent now.

We talked about how when tragedies like this happen how quickly people advise you to seek therapy or professional help. “I don’t know that I even believe in that, so I don’t think it’s a smart thing to do to just jump right into it without first thinking through what you are trying to get out of seeking professional help,” he said to me. He’s a very introspective person, so it makes sense that he would first try to think about his actions before proceeding. I got mad about that, too, when Ed passed away. I hated it when my friends told me that I needed to get help. I know that part of them just wanted the best for me, but part of me also felt it was their way of saying they didn’t want to hear me and my sob stories anymore. I’m sure it came from a place of simply lack of understanding, and even partially lack of desire and energy to understand. You can’t expect any friend to be everything to you. And sadly, as I’ve gotten older, I feel like I expect less and less because I’ve been disappointed a lot.

I didn’t see anyone until four months later, and at that point, I’d thought long and hard about what I wanted to get out of this. And it had less to do with Ed as it did dealing with our massively dysfunctional family.

People are so stupid when it comes to tragedies. All we want is a little love, and then we get told to get help elsewhere.

“Unnecessary”

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I let my dad know yesterday that we’re going to Australia for Christmas this year. He didn’t seem mind; in fact, he sounded like he was expecting it. I knew he’d tell my mom, who would get mad about it, so I was waiting for the point in our conversation tonight when she’d bring it up and demonstrate her frustration.

“You know, you can do what you want to do (that’s code for: you shouldn’t do what you want to do because it’s always a bad decision), but why are you spending all that money to go to Australia again this year? You’ve already seen Chris’s parents four times this year (that’s not even true; I saw them in the spring when they visited New York, and in October at Andy and Navine’s wedding in France). Why do you need to see them a fifth time this year? It’s unnecessary. I can see if you hadn’t seen them even once this year, but already four times! This is just not necessary. And then you are going to see them again in March!”

This is what I do. I try to respond calmly and rationally. It never works because she never actually hears anything I am saying. I told her that I’d only seen them twice this year, and the second time was for a wedding, which is a big deal even if it isn’t to her (because when I told her earlier this year we were going to the France wedding, she again said it was unnecessary and it was just spending money and wasting it… yes, wasting money to go to a close family member’s wedding. A waste). We’re going to Australia to spend Christmas with them. Christmas is a big deal in their family. My parents don’t give a crap about Christmas. Therefore, she will never understand.

In my mom’s world, spending money, airplane travel, and having fun seem to all be unnecessary. “Chris doesn’t care about us. He just wants you to spend time with his parents and his family. Do you really think he cares about us? I had (hand) surgery last week, and he didn’t even call to see how I was doing!” That’s because I told him it was minor and that you were fine. But she doesn’t care.

“Airplanes are dangerous. They crash. If your plane crashes, he is responsible for my daughter,” her voice getting louder at this point.

Time to end the call. The jealousy and absurdity were just getting to be too much.

Chopped up turkey

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I went to the Whole Foods in the Upper East Side after work tonight to pick up an 11.15-pound free-range whole turkey in preparation for my early Thanksgiving feast this weekend. My oven is a sad, small Manhattan oven, so there’s no way I’d be able to roast the bird whole. So the last few years, I’ve asked the butcher at the meat counter to cut it up for me. This year, I came to request it to be chopped up, and the meat guys behind the counter said the butcher had already left, but they’d cut it up as best as they could. But they warned me that they’d never cut up a turkey before, so to not be too disappointed if the pieces didn’t turn out too pretty.

“Isn’t a turkey really just an over-sized chicken?” I asked the meat guys quizzically. “You guys cut up chickens all day, right?” Yes, they do.

It came out fine. I also made sure they cut up the back bone and put it back in the bag. “You want the back bone, too?” Damn right, I do. I’m not paying for a whole turkey to then have them take away the freaking back bone. That’s for my future stock.

Then, I lugged my big bird all the way home along with a pint of eggnog ice cream on sale. I only walked about ten blocks back to my apartment, but I already felt strained carrying this bird, along with a five-pound bag of flour and a two-pound bag of sugar. As I walked down to my street, I remembered all those years when I prepared Thanksgiving feasts at my Elmhurst apartment, and I went all over Manhattan to multiple stores (because of my food quality anality) and brought all my foodstuff supplies back to my Queens apartment. I never thought much about the inconvenience of buying things in one borough and carrying them back to another. I just did it because it had to be done. Now, I’m spoiled for convenience and dislike carrying weight in general.

It’s interesting how times have changed in my life. And in the next stage of my life, I may have a car and drive groceries instead of carrying a grocery bag even one block.

Dead yeast

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I love making bread. There are few things more amazing to me than the smell of fresh bread being baked in my oven at home, especially when that bread is either eggy, buttery, or a delicious combination of both. Unfortunately, since I’ve moved into this apartment over three years ago, I haven’t made a real yeast bread. The closest I’ve come to using yeast in this apartment was using it for appam earlier this year, and that, while edible, was a disaster in terms of how long it took to cook.

So for whatever reason, I bought instant yeast years ago, and I had no idea whether it was still alive or even how to test it. I know how to test dry active yeast, but I had no clue on how to test instant. So I did what anyone might do and just proceeded to use it in the challah recipe I wanted to use for my early Thanksgiving celebration this weekend, and I convinced myself it would work.

And then after two “risings,” I took photos and compared the before and after. I wasn’t sure if the dough had really risen, or if it was just my eyes trying to make me believe it did. It seemed too stiff and not airy at all… And the final verdict? The dough baked into a hard long brick. And I had a big mess to clean up after and no edible bread to eat.

I’m never buying instant yeast ever again. And the remaining instant yeast packet, which I bought around the same time a few years ago, also went into the trash with my sad dead yeast dough.

Invitation prep

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Chris and I have spent the weekend going through wedding to-dos, writing out wedding invitations, preparing the envelopes, and going through the mailing address list. There were a few names on the list of people who are my mom’s friends who we didn’t have addresses for, and so I had to call my mom to ask for their addresses. This is one of the must frustrating things because my mom is honestly one of the most disorganized people I know. It will take her weeks to find a friend’s address because she has about five different address books in five different places, and she doesn’t even write all the addresses in those books. She writes them on random note pads that she leaves all over the house. This is not an exaggeration.

So I called her today to ask for a friend’s address, and she says, “Why are you sending her an invitation? She got laid off from her job a few months ago.”

Well, this isn’t really about job status, is it? It’s just our sending her an invitation, and she can RSVP yes or no or whatever she wants regardless of whether she can come. She’s a good friend of my mom’s, so I’m not sure why she wouldn’t want her to at least get invited formally.

“I don’t think you should send her the invitation,” my mom persists. “She has nothing to offer.”

I realize that in the majority of immigrant Asian families, people throw weddings expecting to bank it in and profit. I’m Westernized to the point where I don’t look at it this way, so regardless of whether she comes or doesn’t, gives money or doesn’t, I really only added her to the list because my mom asked me to a year ago. I did what I was told, and now I’m being told to undo what I was told to do.

“Did you remember to put on the invitation that you want cash only?” my mom said. “You don’t need junk gifts.” I wanted to grind my teeth.

My family is too complicated.