Author Archives: Yvonne

A continuation of the same life, just older

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Several years ago, my friend purchased a house in a suburb of Sacramento shortly after getting a new job up there at the local Veteran’s hospital. I was really happy for her and thought it was incredible — not only that she got a new job and bought a house, but that it all happened so quickly. She had only been searching for a couple months before this house worked out and it closed.

We ended up coming to visit her several months after she moved in during July 2021, when I was visibly pregnant. While she had told me that her brother would be “temporarily” living with her (he already lived in the area before she got her job offer), what I didn’t realize until later was that both her parents would also be living with her, as well. From her mom’s perspective, once two out of her three children were living in the Sacramento area, she wanted to move to be closer to them, especially since she said she never liked living in Arkansas. So she moved, then her dad sold their house and shortly followed after. When my friend told me, I always thought that they’d come live with her temporarily before getting their own house; at least, that’s how she framed it to me when we spoke. When I stepped into the house for the first time, I realized… no, that was not the case, or the intention, at all. The intention was that her parents would effectively move all their valued family belongings and essentially set up my friend’s house as their own. All their family portraits, including their graduation photos and special family event photos, were already up in frames. Her mom’s Buddhist praying area was set up in front of the house. Her parents even had the main bedroom and ensuite. My friend had relinquished her rights to her own main bedroom and was sleeping in a small bedroom next door that was like a teenager’s room.

Ohmigod, I thought to myself then. This is her family’s house now. She paid for it, but this is her parents’ house, and she’s living in it. I wasn’t sure how to react to any of this. And like she and her brother were as children growing up, her mom did all the cooking five to six days a week, and they’d eat out as a family once or twice a week. Her mom did all the decorating of the house, all the cleaning, all the housework. Her dad, the stereotypical Vietnamese male, did no housework and almost expected to be spoon fed. He didn’t even clear his plate from the table after eating.

While it’s now over three years later, the setup is still the same. Her parents and brother are still living there. None of them have any intention of ever leaving. They’re all just aging together. My friend and I are the same age, so we’re almost 39. Her mom is 71, and her dad is 81. I asked her if she was happy with this setup.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” my friend insisted. “They’re getting old and will need help. It doesn’t make sense for them at their age to live on their own or take out a mortgage.”

The strange thing about that statement is that her mom is currently in excellent health, which is why she keeps churning out Vietnamese specialties every day in the kitchen and does all the cleaning. Her dad has a rare slow-growing cancer, but the doctor has already said he’d likely just age with it given how slow this growth is.

I asked her how she would make new friends or find a potential partner with this current setup. She mostly spends all her time with her parents and brother, and while she does have some friends at work, that seems to be her only way of making friends since she doesn’t go out much. She said she didn’t mind it, but maybe she’d try online dating again. I have a feeling that both my friend and her brother have mental health issues that she’s never openly discussed with me, but she has hinted at it a few times without any elaboration. While it makes me sad that she refrains from being open with me about her feelings, stresses, and borderline unhealthy attachment to her parents as a nearly 40-year-old woman, I don’t push it with her. I just let it be, even though it seems like she’s just living the same life she did as a child, just 20-30+ years older. She seems to accept it as her fate. But part of it, I can tell, is her general distrust of society as she’s said repeatedly to me. She will casually mention she can’t trust humanity, which is why she would never be happy living in a condo or apartment long term (“What if they are stupid and set a fire that burns their apartment down, and then my apartment gets destroyed?”). But then the opposite of that is becoming a recluse in your own fortress of a home, isolated from other people who could truly add value to your life in the form of company, support, and love. Frankly, I am more concerned about how it feels like she is letting the prime years of her life pass her by. One day, her parents aren’t going to be around anymore, and then what will she do? Who is she going to lean on, especially with no friends nearby?

Funny occurrences at Hong Kong Supermarket in the early mornings

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Chris and I switched our usual drop-off/pick-up routine today because I have a 4-6pm work meeting scheduled. So I got up earlier to use the gym, shower, and get ready to take Pookster to school this morning. The plus side of this is that I was able to make a couple stops for food/grocery in Chinatown without having to take Kaia back with me. So I went to my favorite fresh tofu/noodle shop to buy some pressed five-spiced tofu (they’re usually closed by 4:30-5pm when I arrive downtown for pickup), stopped by a popular street cart for some freshly steamed rice noodle rolls with cha siu and egg, picked up some just-churned soy milk from Yi Ji Shi Mo, and also went to Hong Kong Supermarket for some ginger, cilantro, and scallions.

Hong Kong Supermarket’s sign says they open at 9, but I thought I’d stop by while waiting for my fresh noodles to be made at the cart right outside its doors. They were actually open, but all their fresh produce trucks had not yet loaded. I asked one worker if we’d have fresh scallions today, and he asked me to wait a minute so he could grab some for me right off the truck. He delivered on his promise; it was in my hands in minutes. The next funny thing that happened was when I asked for cilantro, and another worker said he’d (once again) get it for me right off the truck. A few minutes later, he came back with the largest, fluffiest, freshest bunch of cilantro I’d seen in New York in ages.

“This is the freshest bunch,” he said with a huge grin on his face. “Take this one!”

I thanked him and headed to the cash register to pay. As soon as I got there, the cashier looked at my cilantro bunch oddly and said it was too big. I didn’t initially understand: what did she mean? I just took what the worker gave to me. She asked for her boss to come, and he took the bunch, split it in two, and asked me if I wanted both of them. So I took one, paid, and left.

I really like being in Chinatown in the mornings. It’s a bit quieter in general, but there’s endless fresh food being made, as well as endless fresh produce just getting off the trucks. The mornings are when all this fun action like this happens that I rarely get exposed to!

Fall spiced cooking and baking – apple fritter cake

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While I love spring and summer and all the delicious produce that comes with it, I will be honest and say that my favorite time to bake is most definitely in the fall. Autumn spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger are some of my favorites to use in baking, and they always go well with autumn produce, like apples, endless squash, pumpkin, and pears. While I love summer fruit desserts, summer is not my favorite time to have my oven on, which would make my house even hotter than it already is. Having the oven on for baking in autumn and winter make the house smell and feel more cozy, plus they also help to heat up the place when the temperature drops. For me, from a cooking perspective, I ring in the fall by baking something with apple or pumpkin in it. Last weekend, I made a light pumpkin cake to bring over for Kaia’s play date. This week, since my friend is visiting from out of town, I decided to use it as an excuse to bake another autumn treat that has been on my list, which was Scientifically Sweet’s latest cinnamon apple fritter cake.

A few years ago, I made apple cider donuts from scratch at home in the fall. While they were absolutely delicious and fun to make, it was time consuming since they were yeast donuts. Plus, they took an ungodly amount of coconut oil to shallow fry, which was both messy and expensive since coconut oil is not cheap. I’ve previously made a German style apple cake a couple autumns, which I enjoyed; Chris had even said it was likely the best dessert I’d ever made at that point in time. This autumn, I wanted something that was more of a mashup, and so this apple fritter cake was the perfect marriage of these desires. Scientifically Sweet describes it as tasting like “a cinnamon apple donut without all the oiliness from deep frying.” Granted, I think the best donuts do not feel oily, nor do they taste heavy at all; in fact, the very, very best donuts are so deceptively light that they feel like you can eat half a dozen of them and not even realize you ate that many. But regardless, this description sounded perfect to me.

I also just purchased a new bag of all-purpose flour so that I can start baking some breads. Chris requested breads that he could enjoy with jam, so I’m likely going to make no-knead brioche soon. And then I also want to make some yeast-based rolls, so I also have sweet potato yeast rolls on my list to make. Baking yeast bread in summer never seems fun, but baking it in the fall and winter seem like the perfect indoor activity. Who knows – maybe Kaia will want to get involved, too. Or… maybe she’ll just eat it all.

Good people all around

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I walked up to 84th Street this afternoon to pick up my repaired earrings from a generous and artsy neighbor. I wanted to get her something to express my appreciation and debated between a gift card to the new Salt and Straw or flowers, but in the end, I thought flowers might be a safer bet. So I picked up some sunflowers on my way to her apartment. She seemed shocked, as though what I gave her was excessive for whatever reason. But it just seemed like a no-brainer to me. She generously offered to repair my earrings at no cost with her own time and materials, so this was really the least I could have done.

The last few trips home on the subway with Kaia, she has expressed that she really wants a window seat. Unfortunately, we’re not always able to get one for her because they’re occupied. So the last few rides, she’s loudly expressed she wants a window seat. A friendly woman overheard her yelping, so she tapped me and insisted that Kaia could sit in her seat; she said she was getting off in two stops, so it was no big deal. With my permission, she lifted Kaia up out of her seat and into the window seat. At first, Kaia seemed a bit shocked, as if to say, “Who the hell is this stranger picking me up out of nowhere?” But when she realized what was happening and where she ended up sitting, Kaia broke into this huge, wide grin and started giggling. I asked her to thank the nice lady, and she said “thank you” several times before the woman got off the train.

Kaia has elicited endless smiles on the subway. She’s disarmed many people everywhere. More people than I can count on my fingers have offered to give up their seat for her, to give her Kaia’s preferred seat, to help with her. I am always deeply appreciative and humbled by how truly kind so many complete strangers are. Granted, I suppose I’ve been lucky in my life. Even before Kaia existed, strangers have generally been kind to me. People pick things off the floor that I’ve dropped. They’ve offered to help me lift luggage into overhead bins on planes or take them up or down the subway stairs. These are all reminders to me that the majority of the world means well, even when 2-3 percent of the world may totally suck.

Sweet potato leaves – not a family favorite

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While reading Clarissa Wei’s Made in Taiwan cookbook, I learned that sweet potatoes made their way to Taiwan from China in the 17th century. Initially, the sweet potato’s leaves were consumed as food during famines when there was little else available to eat, and as livestock feed. This is why sweet potato leaves are often referred to as “the pig vegetable.” Original sweet potato leaves had coarser, rougher, tougher leaves, which made them more time-consuming to prepare. In the late 20th century, an agricultural center in Taiwan developed a new variety of sweet potato that was cultivated just for its leaves, which were more tender than the original varieties. Today, sweet potato leaves are cultivated worldwide, but they are mainly consumed in Asia. In Taiwan, you can oftentimes find stir-fried sweet potatoes leaves made by night market vendors, dressed up with a lot of crushed garlic for extra pungency and flavor.

Prior to this year, I’d never really given sweet potato leaves much thought. I’d only see them at Asian grocery stores, and because I didn’t know much about them, I never thought to buy them. Given that I’m down in Chinatown every weekday now given Kaia goes to school there, I figured it would be my opportunity to try to give unfamiliar Asian vegetables a try, especially when they are on special, so I have now purchased and cooked sweet potato leaves at least three or four times now.

Well, I’ll be honest: they are certainly not my favorite Asian vegetable, or any vegetable, for that matter. I bought it subsequent times because it added variety to our diet, and you can never have too much variety when it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables. But at dinner time today, Chris commented that he was NOT a fan.

“These sweet potato leaves… they are not good,” Chris said, begrudgingly crunching down on them. “Can you not buy them again?”

As he said this, Kaia was pushing them around on her tray, hesitant to eat more of them. Clearly, they were not her favorite Asian vegetable, either. We had to bribe her with a “treat” after dinner to finish eating her leaves (she got a quarter of a taro bao).

I told him that sweet potato leaves were looked at by older generations of Taiwanese people as famine food, so many of them to this day refuse to eat them because of the negative association. He quickly said he could understand that sentiment.

Okay, so I relented and said that if he really didn’t want them again, then I would no longer buy them. All I’m trying to do is diversify our gut biome as well as Kaia’s exposure to different produce, so can you really fault me for trying?

A play date in New Jersey

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Kaia’s bestie from her old school/daycare, Jacob, and his family moved to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, earlier this year. It was a sad time because they were very close at school and talked about each other all the time. Chris and I had become friendly with Jacob’s parents, so we had a few play dates before they moved, and also went to a kids’ theater show at Lincoln Center together shortly after their move. They said that once they got enough furniture and things fixed in the house that they’d invite us over, so that day finally came today. Chris rented a Zipcar, and we drove the approximately 20 miles to Glen Ridge so that Kaia and Jacob could reunite.

Unfortunately, the day was quite wet, so we spent most of the day inside, other than the brief time we were out in their yard so that they could grill some late lunch. I got a brief tour of their vegetable boxes, and Kaia was excited to eat fresh raspberries off the bush. But it was sweet to see the two of them get excited to see and be around each other, even if that was still interspersed with fighting over toys and squabbling here and there.

On the ride back, I was reminded of how disgusting and infuriating New Jersey traffic can be. The entire drive back to Manhattan was bumper to bumper and miserable. It took an hour to get back even though the distance was only 20 miles. I wonder how people could possibly find this tolerable who do this multiple times a week? The traffic here never seems to get any better, yet people always think it’s a “better life” when you move out to the ‘burbs. From my perspective, it just feels like more annoying time spent in a car and in painful traffic.

A growing awareness of mortality

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I’m almost done reading the book I am currently on, Matrescence. While I am not totally sure I would recommend the book, as it does tend to get on a number of tangents that are hard to follow at times, and it seems a bit like rambling at others as opposed to cohesively strung together thoughts, it does bring up a number of thoughts I’ve had about becoming a mother and about life in general. One thought that I was ruminating on after Kaia was born was that becoming a parent really does force you to think about your own mortality quite a bit. As a parent, you bring life into the world with the awareness that your goal, as ironic as it may be, is to raise that tiny blob into an independent adult who will one day not need you. And at some point, assuming all goes well and nothing tragic happens, is that that adult will one day live in a world without you in it; your child will outlive you, and you will die before they will. They will die after you (hopefully…. please). So becoming a parent makes you even more painfully cognizant of the fact that you will one day die, that your life on this earth is finite. It will come to an end. And so with that thought and fact is another thought: how are you going to make this life and all the moments that make it up worth it?

But that’s also another reason that it’s important for us as parents to have passions outside of our children, as all-consuming as parenting can be. One day, soon enough, Kaia will not want to spend that much time with us, and we should not expect her to fulfill all our needs and spend all her free time with us. I think that’s something that’s lost amongst many parents of our parents generation… like my own mom. In my early twenties, my mom used to get angry if she knew I was taking time off work to do anything other than go home and spend time with her. She used to call me selfish and threaten to make me pay her back for my college tuition (oftentimes used as a threat, as always). She said that all my vacation time should be spent with her. When I’d come home and spend time with friends, she would get angry and say that it wasn’t necessary and that I should be with her (you know, at home doing nothing). And at that time, I could not coherently verbalize why I thought that was wrong. But now, it makes perfect sense to me why all that talk did not sit well with me. As a parent, you are not just a parent. You are (potentially) a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a colleague, a citizen of the world. You also play other roles. And as your kids grow up, spread their wings, and fly away, you should also grow up and get back in contact with your own self and what you like to do and spend time on.

The lesser visited parts of Manhattan Chinatown

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As I’ve gotten older, and as the pandemic decimated a lot of Chinatown businesses, my fondness, general adoration, and affinity to Chinatowns everywhere have grown. Since the pandemic, my desire to support Chinatown businesses has only grown stronger, not that it was ever weak. So much Asian hate happened in 2020-2021 because of COVID-19, and it was unfairly exerted against businesses in Chinatowns across the world. Although I’ve lived in New York since 2008 and have always had a strong familiarity with Manhattan Chinatown, I think my knowledge of it and its businesses has gotten even stronger since 2020. Manhattan Chinatown is quite a large Chinatown. If you were to delineate where Manhattan Chinatown is touristy, popular, or “clean,” I’d draw the line at where Chrystie Street is, all the way down to where the Manhattan Bridge starts, and say that everything west of that line is recognized and frequented by people who are Asian and not. The main tourist drag is most definitely Canal Street. But once you go east of Chrystie Street, that’s where things become a bit more ambiguous. That area, to me, has always felt like the “real” Manhattan Chinatown since even before I moved here. At some times of the day and night, walking through there feels just like walking around in a large city in China when you see the sea of people moving, hear all the endless Chinese dialects spoken, and feel the sheer energy.

Generally, the area both slightly to the east and west of the Manhattan Bridge feels grittier, likely because of all the endless car traffic and the trains going above. There’s this one “mall” that is right on East Broadway, just underneath the bridge, that I’d always wondered about. It looked like there were businesses inside, and I could always see people walking in and out of that building, but I never felt compelled to go in there until a popular New York City-based Asian food personality on Instagram posted that she had some delicious dumplings and steamed pork buns in its basement. The spot is called Fu Zhou Wei Zhong (or ZWZ for short). The owners are originally from Fuzhou, so the food is Fuzhou style, which I’m still getting familiar with. So I figured that since I have to go pick up Kaia from school down in Chinatown five times a week now that this is my opportunity to finally explore all these little restaurants and holes-in-the-wall that I never gave myself time to really look at (and taste!) before.

This afternoon, I entered the mall, which was dingy, poorly lit, and not well labeled (other than in Chinese). I went down to the basement, where it was pretty much completely deserted except for tthe Fu Zhou Wei Zhong food stall, which was a huge window with a bunch of random tables around it. The same printing of the menu was on several walls, in English and in Chinese. On another wall, there was just Chinese writing outlining additional items, such as drinks (hot and cold), congee, and other steamed breakfast items you could get earlier in the day. I decided to order the fried dumplings, which was eight pieces for $5. They make all the food to order, so I waited for a bit while they did this. All the cooking is viewable through their large window, where I could see four women all busy pleating dumplings. Another woman was busy mixing a huge vat of what appeared to be pork and chive paste for dumplings. They called out to me when my dumpling order was ready, and I decided to eat one fresh. I took one bite, and BAM! It was crispy on the outside, super juicy and well seasoned on the inside. It was like the perfect fried dumpling. I did not regret eating one right away; I was only sad that Chris couldn’t enjoy these immediately with me and would have to eat them an hour or so later after I brought them home. I cannot recall the last time I was that happy and satisfied having a freshly made dumpling for takeout. These are like the dumplings that used to excite me when I first moved to New York, when I lived in Elmhurst and would occasionally go to the very popular Lao Bei Fang in Elmhurst’s “Chinatown.” Unfortunately, Lao Bei Fang, while still going strong in its newer location directly on the main drag of Elmhurst on Broadway (when I first moved to New York, it was in a tiny space on Whitney, which is a more obscure street) has since lost its magic since the owner no longer makes the dumplings himself and has his staff make them (good for him, but bad for us).

So while it’s nowhere as convenient now taking the train downtown to drop off and pick up Kaia every weekday while she’s in 3K in Manhattan Chinatown, it’s actually a positive in more ways than one. I get constant access to all my Asian greens, fresh tofu, and noodles. I can revisit my favorite bakeries and businesses as often as I’d like (or as much as my cholesterol/waist line allow). And I can also check out and really explore other sections and businesses in Chinatown that I’ve never given myself time to do before. So many places around East Broadway look authentic and delicious (not to mention that the prices on this side are definitely cheaper!), and they deserve to get more business… and my business.

“Oh, she eats well!”

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Our interactions with the teachers at Kaia’s new school have been a lot more limited than at our last school. We’re not allowed to enter the classroom as we please like we could at our last school. They keep the doors locked at all times. The only real time we can talk to them is at drop off (which Chris rarely does), or at pickup. At pickup, Kaia’s Chinese teacher has left, so there is another teacher’s assistant there along with the main teacher, but they are not the ones in charge of getting Kaia ready for dismissal. That’s the admin’s job. So I usually end up asking the admin quick questions about Kaia’s day. She always seems a bit frazzled, so I try not to ask too many things at once.

The other day, the admin wasn’t there, and another one of the teachers got Kaia ready and brought her to the door to meet me. I recognized the teacher’s face but forgot her name, so I reintroduced myself so that she’d tell me her name, too. I asked her how Kaia’s day was. She didn’t really give much of a response other than, “It was good.” But when I asked her how she ate, her face immediately broke into a huge grin and she said, “Oh, she eats well! She eats a LOT! She definitely enjoys eating and has no problem there at all!”

I laughed. Well, I already had a feeling she was eating well given the admin had told me, plus they had written us quick “kiddie grams” for her first two weeks, so we got quick summaries of how she ate, played, and interacted during the day. But it makes me happy to know that my baby is eating well when I am not there and that she doesn’t need much help in that area. I want Pookster to have a happy, healthy relationship with food and to eat to her heart’s content…. as long as it’s not processed garbage.

Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

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I recently started reading a book called Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood, written by Lucy Jones. The term “matrescence” still doesn’t seem to be recognized by the dictionary in the year 2024, which is quite sad and pathetic considering time has evolved. Matrescence refers to the state of a person becoming a mother and all that this transition entails. I first heard of the term in a news article my friend linked to me, which I think was in NPR, about matrescence and how it doesn’t get nearly as much research, news coverage, or talk as it should. My friend sent this to me as she was sharing with me how much her body and her mind had changed after giving birth. She said it was hard to describe, but the way she thought about things and saw the world was completely different. She expected it to be different after becoming a mother, but she wasn’t prepared for exactly how different her perspective would be in her postpartum state.

A lot happens to a person when they become a mother, both mentally and physically, yet somehow, we’re all expected to just “bounce back” in every sense of the word after giving birth. Children do not give birth to themselves; mothers give birth to them, and that’s a very wild and intense ride, and for some women, can even be traumatic. To this day, the 25 hours I spent in labor from beginning to end was the most intense 25 hours of my entire freaking life; I doubt anything will ever top that – physically, mentally, emotionally. IT WAS BEYOND INTENSE. It is said that it takes somewhere between two to four years for a woman to feel like “herself” again after giving birth. Unfortunately, in the U.S., you’re meant to go back to work the next week, in six weeks, and if you’re “lucky” like me, in the next 16-20 weeks. So who cares if you are “yourself” again!

A lot has resonated with me as I am going through this book, but what I wasn’t expecting was this excerpt near the beginning:

“During pregnancy, cells are exchanged between the mother and fetus in the placenta. When the baby is born, some of those cells remain intact in the mother’s body. For decades. Perhaps forever. The phenomenon is called microchimerism. The exchange creates what the leading geneticist Dr. Diana Bianchi calls “a permanent connection which contributes to the survival of both individuals.

“Cells have been found in subsequent siblings, too. If you have a younger brother or sister, they may have your cells.”

I figured that something would likely be left behind from my baby after giving birth, especially given the role the placenta plays and how that also needs to be birthed out of you, but I didn’t realize that my baby’s cells could stay in me potentially forever. Nor did I ever think that any subsequent siblings would have their older siblings’ cells in them. But that then made me stop and think: Wow. That means that I physically have some of Ed’s cells in me. He actually is a part of me, and in more ways than I had previously thought or known. I always knew that a part of Kaia would be in me, and I’d obviously be in her, but Ed’s in me? But it gave me this sense of joy and warmth, as strange as it sounds. He may no longer be living, but he physically is still living on in me, through cells that I got from him through our mother.

I think it goes without saying that I am definitely enjoying this book.