Category Archives: Contemplation

My kid’s palate: You win some, you lose some

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Earlier this week, Kaia came up to me and started grabbing my leg.

“Mama!” she said sweetly, looking up at me smiling with twinkly eyes. This usually means she wants something. She glanced at the kitchen counter, where she saw some bananas I just bought. “Can you make me some banana pancakes this week?”

Kaia has loved pancakes since she was a baby. Banana pancakes was likely her very first type of pancake I made her, and since then, she has consistently enjoyed and asked for them since. I’ve made many variations of pancakes for her over the years, but these seem to be her favorite.

I explained to her that work was very busy this week, so I wouldn’t be able to make the pancakes until this weekend. She doesn’t know this, but the bananas I’d use were actually overripe in the freezer, and so I needed to defrost those for these pancakes, as well. The bananas on the counter were for a different use. Luckily, she didn’t have a melt down and seemed to understand.

“That means you’re gonna make them for me this Saturday, before martial arts?” she replied, grinning. “I’m gonna have banana pancakes with maple syrup this weekend!”

Kaia started squeezing my leg. Though it was like she was tugging on my heart. This felt bittersweet, as in that moment, I wondered when she would become too tall so that when she’d grab me, she’d no longer reach just my legs anymore. It’s one of the many sweet parts of early childhood that I’ve always loved the physical feeling of.

The other thing I love about her pancake eating is that it’s definitely evolving. In the second half of this year, we started letting her have just a little bit of maple syrup regularly with pancakes. She does this really cute thing where she likes the maple syrup, but just on half of each pancake or each serving. And she prefers the maple syrup always on the side to “dip.” So, I never pour any maple syrup on top of her pancakes. It is always poured away from the pancakes, wherever on the plate they are. It’s cute that even at this young age, she has a preference (just like adults!) for maple syrup placement!

As cute as this is, Kaia is not a fan of every single thing I make. This week, I was excited to make my first butternut squash soup of the season, this time with my chicken/duck stock. Chris and I really enjoyed it; it came out thicker than I’d ideally like. I was planning to thin it out with more stock, but Chris insisted he liked the thicker texture, so I left it as is. Well, Kaia did not agree with this; she kept saying that it was “too thick!” and that it was “yucky!” Yet over the course of this week, she had three whole bowls to herself.

A week or two ago, she had butternut squash at school lunchtime. I asked her what she liked more, school lunch butternut squash or mama’s butternut squash. I did not get the answer I wanted.

“Butter Beans (that’s the name of the lunch provider) butternut squash!” Kaia responded enthusiastically. “It’s not yucky!”

Ughhhhhh.

Parent teacher conferences

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We’ve had parent-teacher conferences since Kaia was in daycare. We had them in 3K and 4K; all of them seemed fairly straightforward. We never heard anything that really surprised us about how Kaia behaves in class. She’s always been a very social, enthusiastic child who loves spending time with others. She generally respects authority figures while also occasionally attempts to test them. Today we had two parent-teacher conferences, the first with her English teacher and the second with her main two Chinese/homeroom teachers.

As expected, we heard about her growth in areas like attention span and writing mechanics in the short time she’s been in kindergarten, so almost two months now. One thing I have thought a lot about in our homework struggles, especially in the weekday evenings, is how maybe the muscles in her hands just haven’t developed enough, and that’s why she finds it uncomfortable to write… and thus dreads doing weeknight homework. One way to really develop that is to encourage her to keep writing in smaller spurts. And for fun things, she could do things like use a water spray bottle (strengthens the same muscles, surprise surprise, which she loves doing already!), roll and make shapes with Play Doh (which will need to be played with at the table, ONLY), and use kid-friendly scissors to cut shapes, tear paper, and crumple balls. Some of these were suggested by the teachers; others I looked up after the discussion. I think this could be another fun form of play that could help develop her hand muscles to make writing less annoying. And we all know she loves to draw and color, so of course we want her to continue that.

These are all the little things we don’t really think about as adults because we take these skills for granted; we’ve been doing them for so long, so we don’t immediately think these could be issues. But it’s comforting to know that Kaia has supportive teachers who want to help and can give us ideas at home to support. On the other hand, these are all things that are hard for me to relate to because unlike Kaia, I was not the youngest in my class; I was usually the oldest or one of the oldest (and biggest in kindergarten!). I also was writing letters (very regularly) before I even got to kindergarten. So this is about learning to be patient and helping my baby grow, which is going to be at a different rate than I remember for myself.

Sibling loss survivors meeting

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When I was at the AFSP NYC Out of the Darkness walk on October 25, as the walk ceremony concluded and the actual walk commenced, a lady walking alongside me tapped me on my shoulder and asked if I was Yvonne, who gave the speech on stage. I said I was, and she proceeded to give me her business card and introduced herself as J. She thanked me for my speech and said it really moved her, then burst into tears. I hugged her (well, as best as I could since we were a sea of walkers at that point along a route!), thanked her for reaching out to me, and let her know that I’d contact her after the walk.

I did what I said I would: I emailed her after the walk. She replied back within a day and we set a time to meet, which ended up being late afternoon today. We met at a little cafe close to Kaia’s school so I could pick her up easily after. She shared her story with me about how she lost her younger brother to suicide last year, how it took her by surprise because he was so high functioning, with a “picture perfect” life: married with two (now adult) kids, high powered, high earning career, living in the ‘burbs. Growing up, they lived in an affluent neighborhood and were part of a loving, “very functional” family. She said she’s trying to put together bread crumbs for why he took his life because she truly saw no signs, and that’s why it still hurts her so much. She has two brothers, but this was her closer sibling. She’s been in grief counseling every other week since his passing; she’s trying to find ways to support others to reduce the stigma around suicide and to get people to open up more about their struggles, their depression, their thoughts.

On the morning of the walk, I was interviewed by a New York City storyteller who asked what I wished more people understood about suicide. I only had time to give part of my answer, but one piece of it came back to me when I was talking with J this afternoon. I shared with her that some of the people who struggle most can also be the people who seem the most capable, successful, and the most put together from the outside. This is also known as “high functioning depression.” I’ve come to understand how easily impossibly high expectations can turn inward: when someone feels they are constantly falling short of the standard they’ve set for themselves, that disappointment can start to feel less like “I failed at something” and more like “I am a failure.” And in a very dark place, that belief can become the idea that they don’t deserve to be here, or that the people they love might somehow be better off without them. It was like a light went off in her head; J immediately responded to this and said this description was definitely her brother.

“Your speech was really beautiful,” J said to me over tea during our meeting. “I just thought it was so well written and spoken. It really spoke to me. And you and I are the same: we have both lost a brother we so dearly loved.”

She’s right: we are both sibling loss survivors. We are bonded through a shared experience of tragedy and despondency. I smiled and thanked her. It made me happy that at least one person in this audience felt something from hearing me speak. And it made me even happier to see that she was getting herself help and also trying to find ways to use her grief to help others in reducing the stigma around depression and suicide. That’s all we have left to do in life now to keep our brothers’ spirits alive.

Sharing memories

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To date for this year, I have raised $7,382 for AFSP in honor of Ed. I have a couple of pending corporate matches, but I have fundraised more than I thought I would given the slow start I had. After the walk, my friends shared videos they took of my speech during the opening ceremony, and for some close family and friends, I shared the video with them while thanking them for donating.

One of my college friends watched my speech, and she commented on the part in the beginning when I mentioned that Ed would always lavish generous gifts upon me. My friend said she used to remember when we were in college, and the rare packages I would get would always be from Ed. I completely forgot he had anything delivered to my dorm, but once she shared this, I started remembering. I remember he was skeptical of the bedsheets and bedding my parents bought me in a rush when I moved into my dorm during my first year. So he found a free shipping code at Macy’s while working there to send a bunch of proper bedding and pillows to me that were to his standard. Given he worked in the domestics department at Macy’s then (for regular people, that means bedding!), he wanted to make sure I was comfortable and slept well while studying. Over the phone, he muttered that “our parents won’t understand that.”

I always enjoy hearing memories that others have of my brother, even when they include me, because they are not always things I remember. Or they are things I of course knew, but with the passage of time, I have just forgotten and haven’t thought much about. I also obviously wasn’t part of every part of his life, so I also appreciated when his church friends shared memories of Ed with me at his funeral, in cards and letters after, and also at his funeral meal. That really meant a lot to me; they probably don’t think it meant anything, but it painted a wider picture of my brother for me than I ever knew when he was alive.

Shared memories, as they say, are like the “colors of my life.”

An interview with a NYC story teller

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A few months ago, the executive director of AFSP NYC asked if I’d be interested in featuring my story about why I walk at the national level. I’m an open book and am happy to find ways to help others, so I said that I’d be willing to participate. Fast forward to this last week, the AFSP head of social media reached out to schedule time before the walk at Pier 16/17 to meet with David Eng, a New York City-based videographer and story teller, to discuss why I walk and why I fundraise with AFSP. He would be producing videos showcasing personal stories of why people walk, and they asked me to sign off on some release forms so that they could post these videos publicly.

I kept looking at his name and wondering why he sounded so familiar. I quickly looked him up on Instagram and discovered that he’s actually done the food videos for Banh and Kopitiam, some of my very favorite restaurants in the city. I actually already knew his work and really enjoyed it. I was a little nervous, thinking, wow, he’s interviewed and featured people who run some of the best businesses in the city, and now, he’s just sharing my (Ed’s) story?!

The head of social media found me, and we chatted while we walked over to David staking out some good recording spots with indirect light. I asked David about his Banh connection, and we geeked out over Vietnamese food for a bit; he was incredulous that I’d actually seen his Banh video since he said it was from over three years ago. He has since stopped doing food stories because they are very chaotic and stressful due to restaurant scheduling/hiccups. Now, he focuses most of his work on social media (for Banh Anh Em!!) and on telling human stories of real New Yorkers — like myself.

They had given me some prompt questions ahead of time to get my thoughts organized before the interview. But the interview itself ended up being a lot more thought-provoking and emotional than I had imagined. David was a really great, sensitive interviewer. He asked me a lot of questions that I don’t believe I’ve ever been point-blank asked before about Ed, about my journey toward healing and helping others.

One question he asked me, which I know no one, not even any therapist or close friend has asked, is, “If Ed were here today (assuming he’s still not alive), what would you say to him?”

I paused for a while on this. I didn’t tell him this, but I write Ed a letter on this blog for every birthday of his, every anniversary of his passing. So I do “speak” to him as though he’s in the other world, heaven, whatever you want to call it. But this question I suppose hit differently because this was a live conversation, in person, and I have never been asked that face to face by anyone. It’s a hard one.

I partially shared this, but not all my thoughts (no one has time for all of it). This is what I would say:

I love you. I miss you so, so much. I hope you are proud of everything I’ve accomplished, everything I’ve done to help others in your name. I want you to know that you didn’t die in vain, you did not die for nothing, that I’m doing everything with the little power that I have to keep your legacy going. Every person I can support and help — I do it in your honor and to keep your memory alive. You may not be here anymore, but in my heart, you are always, always living on in me. I have not forgotten you; I will never forget you. I will try to live my best possible life and do right by people because that’s what you would have wanted for me, for Kaia. You will always be a part of me — the best part of me. Your life mattered. It still matters.

AFSP New York City Out of the Darkness Walk at Pier 16/17: “Why I walk”

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Today was the day of the AFSP New York City Out of the Darkness Walk. This is my 13th walk, and my 12th in Manhattan. It was likely one of the largest turnouts for the walk I’ve seen in years, which was great to witness. Three friends came to support me for the walk; two of them even recorded most or all of my speech, which I was grateful for. It’s also my second year serving on the walk planning committee. As part of my role on the committee and given I have been the longest involved fundraiser/walker for this walk, I was asked to give a brief speech during the opening ceremony about why I walk. So, I wrote this speech below and delivered it this morning. I think overall it went well. Chris held up Kaia in his arms so that she could watch me speak. Chris thinks that Kaia would rate it a 3/5 stars, though, because she started squirming in his arms after less than halfway through…

Good morning, everyone. My name is Yvonne Wong. This is my 12th New York City Out of the Darkness Community Walk.

Every year, I walk for my big brother, Ed. Ed was one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever known. I always remember how he used to shower me with gifts for my birthday and sometimes would even get me a “welcome home” cake when I’d come back to San Francisco. 

I lost Ed to suicide in July 2013, after a long struggle with depression and anxiety. I was living here in New York City. He was in San Francisco, 3,000 miles away. I often felt helpless, and I didn’t know where to turn for support.

When I lost him, I was overwhelmed by guilt, anger, and grief. I couldn’t understand why he had to die. I struggled to understand why his suffering hadn’t been taken more seriously.

In searching for answers, I found AFSP. Here was a place where people spoke openly about suicide and called it what it is, suicide, where there was room for my grief, my anger, and my questions. Through AFSP, I found people who understood, and a community I could turn to.

I also found a way to keep honoring Ed. I began sharing his story through fundraising and community events. And year after year, I kept telling it.

Then, something I did not expect started to happen. People started reaching out: friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and even complete strangers. They shared their own experiences of loss and struggle. And many told me I was the very first person they had ever opened up to.

That… has stayed with me. By telling Ed’s story, I was helping make room for other people to tell theirs; I was creating a safe space for them. What began as a way to honor my brother became a way to connect with people whose pain I might otherwise never have known about. And in those connections, I found some healing of my own.

Today, I’m proud to serve on the New York City Walk Planning Committee as a volunteer and fundraiser. This community has given me a way to keep showing up for Ed… and for other people who need understanding, support, and hope.

I can’t bring my brother back. But I can keep saying his name. I can keep listening when someone is ready to talk. And I can keep working toward a future where fewer families experience this kind of loss. 

That is why I walk. I walk for Ed. I walk for the people who have trusted me with their stories. And I walk for anyone who is still carrying their grief or their struggle alone… so they can find what I found here: understanding, connection, and hope.

If that’s you, I’m so glad you’re here. You belong here. And you don’t have to walk alone. Thank you for walking with me.

Back to back kids events in a single day

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We were invited to a joint birthday party of Kaia’s classmates today, so we knew we would take her. But then her school also decided to host a Halloween fest later in the afternoon, and we thought it would be good for community building (and for Kaia) if we went to both. It seemed like a lot for us, and highly unusual given our usual Saturdays, but we do things to make our child happy, right? The birthday party would be at a large kids indoor play space from 11:30-2:30; the school’s Halloween fest would be held just blocks away from us from 3-5pm. Time was tight. And I told Chris that I was always envious of other friends with kids and how they attended preschools and schools with a strong sense of community/friendship. I wanted that, too. So now that I have it, I should take advantage of it by going to most of these events that I am here for, right?

“Well, there goes my Saturday,” Chris grumbled as Friday approached and he knew we would be forgoing our usual Saturday food crawl.

He doesn’t really mean to grumble, though. Chris enjoys socializing, and we have a pretty decent group of parents in our kindergarten class. We’re still getting to know everyone and their personalities. We’re also still discovering who we get along better with than others.

I would say that almost two months into being at this school and interacting with the parents in our class I have met, I have definitely identified people I jive with more than others. There are the people who are very thoughtful and insightful; some seem to have views and perspectives that mirror ours; some are more analytical (and anal) than others; some show they are always thinking about how others perceive them; some are trying to get into higher level parents association positions at the school; some are trying to do everything within their power to increase the school’s enrollment; one is definitely a complainer all around. So far, it’s a good mix of parents and it feels comfortable.

In the meantime, Kaia seems to be identifying friends who are her favorites or “best friends,” though, and sometimes, they change by the day. It sounds like a typical girl thing of this age range. Chris got her this book from a used book store last week called The Invisible Boy, and with its theme, we’re trying to teach her to try to be friends and play with everyone. You never know who you might get along with unless you branch out. (Adults are a different story, but hey, she’s not even five yet!).

Chicken and lentil soup, majorly improvised from NYT Cooking

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Because we have The New York Times app, we also have access to their cooking app. I don’t actually make the recipes from here that frequently, but I do browse it a decent amount and bookmark recipes for inspiration. I had recently bookmarked lots of soup recipes (it’s soup season, remember?), including one for red lentil and chicken soup. As soon as I read through the recipe, though, I knew I would need to improvise a lot from the original: the soup uses no stock at all, just water. It also has one spice other than pepper: turmeric. If you cook with spices at all, you know that turmeric is never used for its flavor, but rather its color and health properties. If you want to “flavor” something with just turmeric, you are basically saying you want to taste dirt, which to me, is not that tasty (to each their own, though…). I like the idea of using lentils and chicken together in an autumn soup, so I used the base and immediately started doctoring it: I used my chicken/duck stock. I added coriander, cumin, paprika, and my self-blended Madras curry powder for additional flavor. I also added spinach at the end, along with a generous sprinkle of minced cilantro for freshness. I also like it with a squirt of lemon when I’m too lazy to add the lemony yogurt to the top. It really hit the spot… after all the changes I made. If I made it as is, I definitely would not be giving it the 5-star rating it currently has! And if you read the recipe comments, you’ll see many people make the same changes I did… but likely still gave the recipe five stars! They are far more generous than I am. I would never give a recipe five stars unless I followed it to the T and found it absolutely perfect!

Another homework meltdown

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I know for a fact that when I was kindergarten, I did not have any homework. Homework did not start until first grade for me in my San Francisco public school. I had a bit of a head start with learning since my mom was diligent enough to force me to practice writing and reciting numbers and all letters of the alphabet, both lower and upper case, before I entered kindergarten. Discipline was taught to me pretty early, and when I wasn’t behaving, I was whacked (as were most kids of our generation by our immigrant parents). A common complaint of kids of Kaia’s generation is that they do not have enough self discipline. Every single action is monitored and manned. They have a high level of ADHC diagnoses because their parents cannot handle parenting and succumb to simply drugging their kids up, likely with medication that is not even needed. It’s not an individual parent problem, but rather a generational problem: every generation has its challenges that it needs to attempt to solve.

Although I did not have the self discipline or patience to do what my mom did and try to get Kaia to know how to write all her English letters and numbers before kindergarten, I am very much a fan of homework at this age, if just in shorter bursts. I like that her school starts homework at this age; other people will not agree with me, but the reason I like this is that it instills discipline young. It forces parents to carve out the time in the day to dedicate to learning and reinforcing learning in the classroom. At the end of the day as sucky as it sounds, it’s really a test of the parents and how much patience they can have when enforcing that homework is not optional; it must be done, and done by a certain date for teachers to review.

I was chatting with my friend over tea about this last week. She asked me if homework was really necessary at this age. She said it seemed excessive, that when she was in kindergarten 35 years ago, she didn’t have homework (and she’s just fine now!). I don’t think that using us as the example is necessarily the right thing since every generation and its standards for everything will be different. Yes, I also didn’t have homework in kindergarten, but just because I had that experience, does that necessarily mean I do not want my child to have homework in K? If discipline is an all around issue for kids of this generation, we should probably be doing more to instill it at a younger age. It needs to become a habit, one they understand that is repeatable.

So even though once again, Kaia had a meltdown after lunch today and refused to do a second page of Chinese character writing, I insisted she had to finish the second page. We took many breaks. She ran away screaming and crying from the table multiple times, yelling in Chinese that she doesn’t like homework. But I told her: in life, she’s going to have to do lots and lots of things that she doesn’t like, but they are very necessary for her life and well being. She won’t get that now, but this needs to be reinforced… forever, muah hahaha!

Okay, that sounded a little mean to laugh. But I do mean that. We need to repeat to her that there are endless things she will need to do in her life that she does not like. I hate doing half the things I do in a day, but I know they are beneficial to me, and I’m almost 36 years older than her!

Line up, line up!

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Kaia has really been immersed in Chinese since she started at her current school. Sometimes, she tells me what she’s learning and what things mean, even when I don’t ask. I never formally learned any Mandarin Chinese until college, so a lot of the seemingly basic, kindergarten-level things she’s learning are things I never learned myself. But because I did study it, I pick up a lot of these things simply based on context. For example, she kept saying that they often do work in small groups; she never explicitly said that. But she did say, “G and I are in B 组 (zǔ); but C and M are in A 组 (zǔ).” Based that, it’s clear to me that 组 (zǔ) means team or small group.

While observing the kids at soccer yesterday, I also saw a few of them line up and act silly. As they lined up when going up the stairs from the gym, they chanted, “排排队，排排队，一个跟着一个排. That is “Pái pái duì, pái pái duì, yīgè gēnzhe yīgè pái” or, “Line up, line up, one following right behind the other.” There is something really sweet and almost magical about a bunch of kindergarten kids, chanting the exact same words in perfect unison, all wearing the same uniform.

I wasn’t very pleased that her school had a dress code when we first learned about it; it’s essentially a school uniform, but the colors for top and bottom change by day of the week. But now that we’re over a month into it, I will admit that it does make life easier. I don’t have to fight with her in the morning regarding what she’s going to wear; she knows what day requires which colors. She sees all the other kids wearing the exact same thing, so there’s no reason to whine or have comparisons. Because all the kids are wearing the same thing, they all match, and she does enjoy matching. And well, I do admit that it is really adorable seeing all the kids matching and wearing the same thing every day: it does make school seem more formal and serious.

Plus, as they chant “排排队，排排队，一个跟着一个排,” it looks and sounds better to me when they are all in uniform! Plus yesterday, they were especially matching because three of them had the same single braid hairdo!