Category Archives: family

“Prezzies”

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Today was Christmas day and Chris’s birthday (which he always annoyingly tries to ignore and says he is trading birthdays with someone else every year), and this year, his parents hosted the day at their house. Everyone brings food, games, and gifts over for the two little boys and Nana, except for Chris and me, since he insists every single person in the family needs a gift (and guess who has to wrap it all?) and he doesn’t follow rules. We have a gift giving and opening session when the boys open their endless toys and Nana opens all her God- and crystal-related “prezzies” (Aussie slang for “presents”). And inevitably every year this has happened, I am bored to death and want to escape.

It’s not that I don’t like exchanging gifts; I actually love the act when everyone is exchanging and opening gifts… and the people are adults. Adult presents are interesting when they are opened; sometimes, they have inside jokes, hidden meanings, or are symbolic. Children gifts are never like this; what child is that complex? Children presents are so repetitive, and generally almost always very gendered. Because the family so far has two boys, all the toys and gifts are around things like cars, trucks, and Thomas the Tank. And because they are so young, they think all wrapped gifts are for them, so they immediately run to the Christmas tree and try to unwrap all the gifts even though they aren’t all for them. This is not a stage of childhood when I have my own children that I will look forward to. I wonder if I can ever host a child’s birthday party and get away with not opening gifts in front of everyone. Chances are, I probably won’t because that’s what everyone’s expectations are.

Wedding RSVPs

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We brought dinner over to Chris’s friend’s house last night. This friend and her husband recently had a baby in July, and despite that, they are planning to come to our California wedding — with the baby, a car seat, and a whole lot of diapers in tow. It’s a heart warming thing to think that despite all the people who have declined that these new parents will be coming, even when it is harder to travel with an unpredictable infant with unpredictable needs. I was so happy when I saw our wedding invitation posted up on their fridge with magnets. Our wedding invitation is being loved!

Since we have made our wedding date and location official, we’ve heard all kinds of reasons for declining, everything from cost (understandable), limited leave time (unfortunately, understandably), having conflicting international non-profit work travel at the time of the wedding (that sucks but at least someone is doing something to help others with his life), being due for a baby the week after our wedding (very unfortunately understandable), having three kids under the age of five and being too difficult to travel (well, I just feel sorry for them and having three kids to deal with and no life outside of being a parent, which is one of my many life nightmares), and scheduling an extended holiday right before our wedding (not so understandable, but I’ll get over it). At the end of the day, our wedding will be what it is with the people who will show up. The ones who don’t show up, it will be their loss. The best thing to know is that of the people who do show up, they are proving that they care enough and are willing to make the effort. The others won’t matter as much. On the morning of my wedding, I won’t be lamenting that these people didn’t show up; in fact, I won’t even think about them at all and could care less.The only person in the world I will be really sad about not being there is my Ed. And in his case, he really had no way of making it.

Aunt and uncle catch ups

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Today, we went to visit Chris’s paternal grandmother for about two hours, then spent about five hours at his aunt and uncle’s home nearby. The funny thing is that we spent five hours at his aunt and uncle’s home, yet we didn’t even realize that time had passed that quickly because there was so much to talk about between running around with their grandchildren, who they were babysitting for the weekend.

I thought about my lunch with my aunt last Tuesday before we left for Australia, and I realize how much of a far cry these conversations today were versus the very shallow conversation with my own aunt. My aunt is a well-meaning, happy, good person, but she just doesn’t have it in her to have a conversation with me past very surface level topics. She will ask me, “how is work?” But if I were to say anything more than “good” or “okay” or “terrible,” she wouldn’t know how to react or respond. She will ask me if I am planning to have children shortly after the wedding, and I will respond yes, no, or maybe, and that would be the end of that topic. There’s no deeper digging, no topic that develops past the first question and answer, and some answers are too complex or painful or long for her to fully be interested or engaged in. Tonight, we discussed our wedding preparations, everything from how we chose a photographer to the questions that he would ask us leading up to the wedding to prepare for the wedding day. I could never have that conversation with my aunt… or any of my aunts or uncles who are on my side at all.

As Tolstoy once wrote famously in his epic novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” All families have problems. All relationships have problems. But not all families and relationships see the same issues as “problems.” I’m positive my aunt doesn’t see our shallow conversations as a problem, but I do. I feel like she will never really know me. Even my dad asks me deeper questions than my aunt.

But this is my family. They are who they are, and our relationships aren’t going to change. So, as per usual, I have to keep reminding myself that I need to accept these situations as they are — not capable of change. And that’s okay because I can find deeper conversation with Chris’s family members and a select few of my own friends.

Leaving on a jet plane

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We’re leaving today to go home, as in home to Melbourne. I actually caught myself saying “I’m going home” to a colleague, before I added in that I’m going to Chris’s original home since I am obviously not Australian. I had this same thought last year when we flew back to Melbourne, that Melbourne was my home away from home (New York City) away from home (San Francisco), but this time it feels even more like going home because this will be my fourth time coming and staying, and my fourth Christmas in Australia. It’s like a real tradition now, a real “home coming,” and it actually feels comfortable and “normal” to say “I’m going home” when I come here now. I have a family and Chris’s friends here who eagerly look forward to my arrival, who actually want to have real conversations with me about what I am really up to and thinking, and who want to feed me and shower me with hugs and kisses when I walk through their doors. I have more love and affection here than I have ever or will ever have in San Francisco sadly, collectively across family and friends there. That is kind of a sad feeling that in my “real” place of origin I have less love, but I think as time is going on, I’m slowly getting used to it as my reality.

Macy’s Snoopy Christmas theme 2015

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Tonight before our company holiday party, a colleague and I went to see the Macy’s Christmas window displays. This year’s theme is Peanuts, so each window walked through moments from A Charlie Brown Christmas to acknowledge the fiftieth anniversary of this beloved movie.

When Macy’s has their theme each year, they also have a stuffed animal of said theme that you can buy in store. This year, you can buy a medium sized Snoopy wearing a down zip up vest with a Belle (Snoopy’s sister) backpack attachment. We went inside to hold the Snoopys, and they are noticeably lighter and less sturdy than the Snoopy that Ed got me when Snoopy was the Macy’s theme one year when I was in college and Ed still worked there. I remember when Snoopy was the theme in 2006, I asked Ed to get my friend Rebecca a Snoopy because she told me she tried to buy one but they sold out at her nearest Macy’s, and I knew he’d get better access to them as an employee. Well, Ed did this and also secretly got me one, too, for Christmas that year. “I thought you’d want one, too,” he said when he presented it to me and pulled it out of a big bag. “You never say you want anything. Stop being like that. You know you wanted one, too.” I loved it immediately and brought it back to college with me. Now, he sits on the bean bag in our living room.

Ed got me a lot of Snoopy related things, including that Macy’s Snoopy with an attached Woodstock, a little Snoopy with a graduation cap when I graduated from high school, and Snoopy themed cards. I guess one reason I love Snoopy so much is because he’s a part of my childhood, and he reminds me of Ed. The whole Peanuts series reminds me of my brother because it’s so innocent and distills complex ideas and feelings into very simple, concise thoughts. Isn’t that why Charles Schulz and Peanuts in general became so widely loved and cherished? We all just want to be loved and understood and have that demonstrated to us in simple ways. Sometimes, that’s all we need to be happy — a little humanity.

“Why do you love Snoopy so much?” my colleague asked me as I stared in wonderment at Snoopy ice skating in one of the windows.

I didn’t want to bring up Ed because I could feel myself getting choked up thinking about him, so I responded, “He just makes me really, really happy.”

 

New family

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I had an e-mail exchange today with my cousin who lives in Southern California, and I found out that he and his wife are expecting their second child this February. He said he had been meaning to message me for a while, but he just kept forgetting. Their first child, who was born on the day that Chris proposed, was a boy, and now they are having a girl. He said that his wife may or may not be able to attend our wedding and that it depended on how demanding the new little one will be.

They’re local to our wedding, though, which is the most frustrating part. They are the ones that are actually within a reasonable driving distance (about an hour). If anything, they should all be guaranteed to come our wedding if even for just a couple of hours. My cousin says he and his son are definitely coming; it’s just up in the air whether his wife will be. I saw firsthand how frustrating babies and kids can be at the wedding in October, but how can you consider missing a wedding of a family member when it’s this close to where you live? You really cannot count on anyone coming to your wedding ever.

Thanksgiving 2015

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I spent Thanksgiving this year traveling with Chris east on a Swiss rail train from Geneva to Zurich in the morning, then wandering through the old town of Zurich and its Christmas markets through the afternoon and evening. As we walked through this beautiful city, I thought about all the Thanksgivings in my past.

The last time I was home for Thanksgiving was November 2003, my senior year of high school. That seems like a hundred years ago even though it was just 12 years ago. Those were the days when my cousins, Ed, uncle, and I would have a Thanksgiving meal together, mostly prepared by my oldest cousin and me. Some sides would be brought over by my uncle, some crappy leftover food and chips from my second oldest cousin and his wife, who were always in a rush to leave our dinner to go to the wife’s family’s dinner in Vallejo, and a turkey that was painstakingly made by my oldest cousin. For some reason, we never called turkey gravy “gravy,” and instead my cousin insisted on calling it “au jus.” I don’t really get that even until today, but maybe that was his attempt at sounding fancy.

Family Thanksgivings for me are sadly a thing of the past. After I graduated from college and started earning an income where flying cross country to go home during a “peak” season wouldn’t break the bank, I realized I had little desire to go home during that period anyway. We were a broken family. The only reason I ever thought even for a second of going home was because I always felt bad about not seeing Ed that day, and his not having a “family” to have Thanksgiving with. After a while, the cousins stopped getting together, which meant my uncle stopped coming, which finally meant Ed had no one that day. Guilt is pretty much built into our DNA. Before he passed away, I thought, maybe I could go home for Thanksgiving in 2014, or he could come here, and we could have a meal together once again. Well, that never happened. I was too late.

“Experts” always say in those articles about grieving that everyone grieves on their own timeline, that it can take months to years to decades to let go of the regrets you have about things you wish you had done or not done or said or not said to those who have passed. That is all true. It’s hard to think of a major holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas and not think about my brother, which then leads me to wonder what else I could have done to have helped him. It’s futile since nothing will bring him back, but I always think about it anyway. He loved turkey, especially the dark meat, and we both loved the canned cranberry sauce we grew up with. It would be really great to have a Thanksgiving meal with him once again. Now it can only happen in dreams.

Mom’s take on terrorism

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I talked to my mom on the phone today, and she asked me if I was aware of the attacks that happened in Paris last week. Of course I know, I said. Everyone knows.

“You’re really lucky that it didn’t happen while you were there,” she said in an admonishing tone. “I’m telling you right now. It’s dangerous to be traveling.”

I reassured her that it didn’t matter where in the world I was because terrorism could happen anywhere, at any time and any place. And lo and behold, New York City has just received ISIS death threats! I had to add in that last part because, well, how can I not be where I live and work?!

“Yes, I know about New York,” she said. “That’s why I told you not to go anywhere at night! It’s dangerous! Just stay home!”

Yes, because terrorists would never think to be out and about, bombing and shooting random people in the morning or during business hours Monday through Friday. They have to wait until the evening when it is dark to start shooting and killing people.

I stopped responding. I need to get better at not responding and just nodding my head.

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.