Category Archives: Friends

Twelve-years-aged tangerine peels from my friend’s mom

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When I met up with my friend for lunch this past Monday, I was shocked when she told me that her mom had brought me back a gift from her trip to China. Over a year ago, I told my friend that I was taking on “old Asian lady” habits by attempting to dry a bunch of mandarin peels that winter. In the winter time, we eat so much citrus that it felt wasteful just to dump the peels out. One winter during the pandemic, I was taking citrus peels and making homemade house cleaner with it, but I eventually got bored of that. I felt like a better and tastier way to use the peels was to preserve them via drying for future Chinese dishes. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, aka TCM, preserved mandarin or tangerine peels are known to be a warming ingredient that can warm your spleen and regulate your qi. It’s supposed to help with dampness and disperse phlegm from the lungs. But in general, even if you don’t believe in TCM, aged tangerine peels give an interesting, complex, complementary flavor to savory courses, such as braised pork belly, beef noodle soup, or tangerine beef or chicken dishes. In a lot of traditional homely Chinese soups, a single peel or two can be thrown into the pot for an extra flavor note.

So, when I shared this with my friend last year, she told her mom, who I’d only met once back in 2018. I went to her house so that I could meet my friend’s then new baby. And since then, she’s shared lots of stories of what I cook with her mom and also showed photos and videos, and I guess her mom has been very impressed. She remembered this story about my drying mandarin peels, and so she picked up this individually sealed bag of 12-years aged tangerine peels for me and carted it all the back from China to New York! If you are not aware, dried tangerine peels get more expensive with age (the color also gets deeper and darker brown), so 12-years aged tangerine peels cost a small fortune here.

I was honestly in shock when my friend told me this, and I felt like my eyes were going to bulge out of their eye sockets when she presented the bag to me at lunch on Monday. I kept on staring at the bag and turning it every which way, admiring how thin and dried and deep brown they were, and even trying to see if I could smell some aged citrus fragrance from the sealed bag. I was just so touched that her mom would not only think of me, but even be so generous as to buy me a highly prized Chinese cooking gift while in China and carry it all the way back here for me. I’d only met her mom once — ONE TIME. And somehow, she has remembered me AND gifted me something now! I love a lot of things about this scenario, but I guess I especially love it because it is such a unique gift, one that not just anyone would appreciate. Her mom thought specifically of me, how I dried mandarin peels, and knew I’d appreciate this a lot. And I really, really do. I am beyond grateful and felt so blessed in that moment — not just for her thoughtfulness and generosity for someone she only met once, but also for having this friend who would have a mother who would do something like this for me!

“That’s my mom’s love language: remembering random things I tell her about friends or me and then taking action on it and gifting something related!” my friend exclaimed. “She’s bad at most other things, but she’s really good at this!”

As with most things that matter, if you know, you know #iykyk. And if you know, you know that 12-years-aged tangerine peels in Chinese cooking is like aged fine wine.

“Startling” laugh

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I was out at a Yemeni cafe having saffron adeni tea and Dubai milk cake with a friend, when out of nowhere she said that she “has gotten used to” my laugh. I wasn’t sure what to say about this and waited for her to continue. “When I first met you and heard it, I found it a bit startling,” she said. “But now it just blends in and I anticipate it now!” I kind of chuckled at this when she said it because I wasn’t sure whether she was saying a good thing or a bad thing.

I told her that I’ve always had a loud laugh, and that in general, people either love or hate it, and if they hate it, chances are high that we won’t get along or be friends. I’m not really one of those Asian women who, stereotypically as Chris always half jokes, “covers their mouth and goes ‘heeheehee!'” really lightly. People should live their lives as their full selves without abandon. And if you cannot laugh comfortably or fully, I”m not really sure you are fun enough for me to want to be around.

This comment, for some reason, reminded me of my one of my best friends from childhood, who is now living here in New York City. I think that if there is just one thing I love about her, aside from her general personality, it’s her laugh. When she is really laughing and finds something extremely funny, her laugh is the loudest, most boisterous thing in the world. She has a laugh that almost makes you want to laugh along with her, even if you don’t find said topic funny. And so when we’re together laughing nonstop about something, I always notice that there is at least one or two tables around us (assuming we’re at a restaurant or bar) that will turn around and look at us. I’ve never gotten self conscious about it or seen that as a way to police us. If anything, I’ve always looked at it as: we’re just here having a good time. And if that bothers you in some way, then the problem is clearly you and not us. Who gets annoyed at other people having a good time in their own respective space?

Uniquely female burdens

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Last year when I was in Denver for work, I got an unexpected message from a friend’s friend saying that she and her family had actually moved here from New York, and that she’d like to catch up if possible. Unfortunately at that time, all my evenings were packed with pre-booked work events, so I wasn’t able to get away. It was a bit unexpected, to be frank, that she reached out. While I’d never really considered her a friend while in New York, I did see her from time to time at mutual friends’ events, and we did get along. We’d tried hanging out once before with our partners, but we never did much more than that. So when she reached out, I figured she was having a difficult time transitioning from urban to suburban life, coupled with transitioning into motherhood (her daughter is about six months younger than Kaia). She probably wanted to see a familiar face.

So this time ahead of this trip, I reached out to see if she could meet. We did have a decent amount in common on paper: we both love food, desserts, travel, and now we’re both mothers, so we’d have that to bond over. She immediately accepted and we made plans for dinner, which ended up happening last night. I was really touched; she actually drove almost an hour to see me (Denver traffic can be crazy during rush hour), and we spent three hours discussing marriage, motherhood, work, travel, moving, and life in general. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her, but it felt really good to have a deep chat… and to get away from colleagues for a night.

Sometimes, I think about all the trials and tribulations that women have to go through just to procreate, and I cannot believe that women still want to bear children. This friend had three miscarriages: two happened before her daughter was conceived; the third happened last year, before her current pregnancy. Miscarriages are more common than they are not, but her first one was particularly traumatic. At around 11 weeks of pregnancy, she started bleeding profusely. She drove herself to the hospital, where they confirmed she had miscarried. She was given the option of having a dilation and curettage (D&C) to remove the dead fetal tissue from her uterus, or letting it expel itself naturally. Her father, who is a doctor, advised her against the D&C, and suggested she just go home and let it happen naturally. Well, it just got worse from there: the next two days, everything she sat or lied on was soaked with pools of blood, and she basically laid on her bathroom floor most of that time, experiencing painful contractions for almost 48 hours. These are one of those scary miscarriage stories that no one warns you about, that for some women when they have miscarriages, regardless of whether it’s first trimester or not, they can actually go into labor.

The thought is just beyond sad and excruciating — to go through labor without seeing a living, breathing baby at the end. I think of all the women who have had stillbirths, where they know their fetus is dead, but they still have to go through the labor and “give birth” to a dead baby. The mere thought brings me to tears. And somehow, even after this horrible and painful experience, this friend kept trekking along to try to conceive. She went on to experience a second miscarriage, a viable pregnancy and birth and baby, and then a THIRD miscarriage, and finally a second viable pregnancy, and she’s still here and excited to be pregnant. It just shows how much burden women have to bear, literally on their own, and how resilient we all are. It takes a lot emotionally, mentally, physically, to go through all this stress and loss. It likely raises cortisol levels and puts you on the defensive for everything. In the end, we vacillate between surviving and thriving.

But it sounds like since she’s moved down to the southern suburbs of Denver, she’s been mostly in survival mode. She has no friends here. She works fully remotely. She has a sister and their family who live in a nearby suburb, but that’s it. She misses walking (people drive everywhere here, like in most of the U.S.) and going from store to store to restaurant by foot. She feels isolated and like she does 90 percent-plus of all the child rearing. When she saw me for dinner last night, it was the only time since they’d moved here that she’d actually gone out to dinner, alone without her daughter, to catch up with a friend. While she’s excited for her second baby, she’s terrified what it will mean for the division of labor at home, her marriage, and the effect it will have on her daughter, who is extremely attached to her and who has had an assortment of frustrating health issues since birth.

I hear these stories, and I realize even more how lucky I am. Although IVF was certainly no walk on the beach, I went through just one stimulation cycle. I’ve never had a physically painful miscarriage experience (though I do still mourn my “vanishing twin”). I had a straightforward pregnancy and child birth. I was lucky and privileged to have a healthy, easy-going baby in Kaia Pookie. Kaia Pookie, knock on wood, is still thriving and impressing (while simultaneously infuriating) Chris and me every single day with all she learns and knows. I’m also lucky to have a partner who has done his share and tries to make sure I’m not carrying all the burden of child rearing. At the same time, it makes me sad and angry that women who are as smart, accomplished, well educated, and confident like this friend still allow themselves to be put into situations where they have to bear the brunt of all stereotypical gender roles, such as child rearing and the mental load of maintaining a functional household – much against their own wishes. Are men really that ill equipped for the current century, or are women just so desperate to have heterosexual partners to procreate with that we “settle” in that regard?

Annual Southern Hemisphere meetup with my Instagram friend

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This evening, I went to Elwood, a suburb close to where Chris’s parents live, to have dinner at a Greek restaurant with a friend I made on Instagram during the pandemic. Since 2022, I’ve been meeting with her once a year in December when we come back down here. In 2022, we met at a cafe here in Brighton with our respective babies. In 2023, we met at a children’s museum so the kids could play while we caught up. And this year, we actually went out without the kids and just caught up one on one. She seemed really relieved when I suggested we just meet up 1:1 (which was at Chris’s suggestion). She’s had a slightly difficult year, and she was looking forward to the child-free time with me and some wine.

We’ve only ever seen each other three times, but we’ve had a lot of conversations through Instagram messenger over the years. We have a lot in common, as we originally found out about each other through each others’ food handles, and with a shared culture, plus the fact that she’s Melbourne based, it added to our commonalities. Once we ended up coincidentally having kids around the same time, I thought it might even be like fate that we were supposed to be friends in opposite hemispheres. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that there are not only different definitions of “closeness,” but also different definitions of “comfort.” Even though I’ve only seen her in person three times, every time we’re together, it feels really comfortable, almost as though we can talk about anything and everything is just an open book. She opened up to me about her family problems, marital problems, debate about whether to have a second child. She talked to me about her own evolution in terms of her views on therapy, as she’s currently in therapy and had convinced her husband to do couples therapy, as well. I talked to her about my family dynamics, Ed’s struggles and suicide at her request, and we talked a lot about intergenerational trauma and how to heal and move on from it.

Sometimes, you can’t always have frequency of in-person meetups due to, well, geography and life. But I feel lucky to know I have one friend in Melbourne who has no connection to Chris I can meet up with and feel comfortable with when I come all the way here. It’s nice to have someone so far away that will make time for you and look forward to seeing you, even when you originally started as complete strangers. It’s a really nice kind of kinship that I am grateful for.

The sketch Wall Street pool where Kaia had a makeup swim class

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We were able to get a free swim class from Kaia’s swim school since they were doing a limited time promotion: if families upload an Instagram reel or TikTok video praising the school and our experience with them, then we can get a free class redeemable by the end of December. So on Monday of this week, after I picked Kaia up from school, we took the subway down to Wall Street to the makeup swim class location at a pool I’d never been to. The pool was located at Wall Street Bath and Spa. The directions to get there seemed a bit weird: Look for the Spa 88 sign between a sandwich shop and a dry cleaners. I saw the school sign and walked down a dark staircase with Kaia. We poked our heads into the place and asked if this was where the swim class was. They confirmed we were correct. We then walked down another flight of stairs, through a steamy sea of half naked old men, sipping away at their cocktails and beer and reading newspapers and books. I had to walk through this strange area just to get to the women’s locker room. But once I got there, I discovered it was actually a very fancy spa-like locker room, complete with complex hair styling accessories and even a whole shelf of pool-side sandals that I could borrow while on the pool deck. I was pretty happy about this since I had forgotten my flip-flops.

I thought to myself, what the heck kind of sketchy place is this? It’s supposed to be a Russian bathhouse, but given that about 99 percent of the clientele were all 50s+ old white men who were barely clothed, I wasn’t totally sure this was a child-friendly place. I spoke with the instructors of the class, and they said that they didn’t even feel comfortable walking through the place, so they set up a tent on the pool deck to allow their students to change into their swimwear inside. This whole time, they didn’t even know the locker rooms existed and that you just had to walk through the sea of half naked men! I had to show them that day!

The journey and experience were worth it, though. Kaia basically had a 1:1 private swim lesson given how few kids there were versus the number of teachers. This whole visit to the bath house just made me realize exactly how hidden and discreet a lot of these secrets spots are all over New York City, and that “if you know, you know,” and if you don’t know… well, you may find out given these strange and unexpected opportunities.

Friends you make in your youth vs. friends in your adulthood

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One of my good friends from my last company has been in town this week for work, so I met her for breakfast this morning after over a year of not seeing her. We talked a lot about work, the tech industry in general, layoffs and disguised PIPs (“performance improvement plans”), health insurance, politics, and family. I still remember when I met this friend over a Zoom call for the first time about seven years ago. I had been at the company for about six months; she had started a few months after me. But as soon as we started talking, I knew we clicked. It was like love at first conversation. I remember loving the sound of her boisterous laugh and loving how unrestrained it was. We were both loud, opinionated, laughed a lot, and loved food, cooking, and travel. She was like my West Coast equivalent on my team at the time. And since then, we’ve always confided in each other regarding all the work bullshit and hypocrisies around us. We no longer work at the same company, but we’ve stayed in touch. She’s one of a small handful of former colleagues from my last company who I still chat with and see. 

I was thinking a lot about friends I’ve made in my adulthood vs. friends I’ve made in childhood (K-12), and especially thinking about friends I’ve made in the last seven or so years of my life. The friends I’ve made in adulthood, as you’d predict, have values that more align to what I have. Relatively speaking, they are no-nonsense, ‘say what they think and mean’ people and don’t really tolerate much bullshit. They don’t say something to your face and say something different behind it. My good friends from childhood avoid confrontation like the plague; my adulthood friends confront stupid shit head on and stop it before it spirals out of control. They’re all striving to do something important with their lives and contribute to society. A lot of the friends I have kept from my childhood days are friends because of legacy; if I met them today, we’d unlikely “click” and become good friends. But I think all that is to say that different friends serve different purposes in your life. The friends you meet today and spend at most a couple hours a month with are less likely (due to time constraints) to reach the same comfort level of friends you’ve spent literally hundreds of hours with during your childhood; the context is just different. I’m lucky to have a happy and healthy selection of friends from both childhood and adulthood to keep me grounded. 

New friends in your 30s – an investment of time and energy

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This late afternoon, I met up with a new friend I met at the Sambal Lady’s Rendang Hang in mid October. While that event was fun and the food was delicious, I had to balance all the food and the bits of socializing with running around and making sure Kaia didn’t get her hands on anyone’s beer or ended up tearing all of Auria’s plants up. Kaia’s silliness and running around led me to the table of this friend that I ended up meeting with today. She clearly liked children, seemed friendly and outgoing, and like she could be someone I’d get along with. So after some chatting interspersed with running after Kaia, I suggested we exchange contact information (on Instagram first, just in case she thought I was some freak) and maybe meet up in the future. 

We met at a cafe in Nolita and had house-blended ube lattes while discussing the election, politics, life in multiple parts of the world, familial expectations, mental and physical health, college, work, family, and travel. We really packed a lot into almost 2.5 hours of conversation. I found the conversation really stimulating, like the kind of conversation I wish I had more of but don’t have the opportunity to have as much as I’d like given my remote work situation, child rearing, and general life responsibilities. Part of it is that I find it refreshing and stimulating to chat with people who work outside of my tech industry bubble; I learn about industries I have little to no exposure to, and that is always enjoyable and humbling to me. But the other part of it is that I love meeting people who have had very different experiences than my own in general. My friend has lived in four different countries throughout her life, and so she brings an interesting perspective to U.S. politics and also just life philosophy. 

I’m turning 39 in a couple months, and many would already consider me “middle aged.” As I’ve gotten older, especially into my 30s, I’ve realized how much harder it’s been to make friends. We don’t have the endless amounts of leisure time we once had while in school or during summers or school breaks. So now, when I meet people who I find genuinely interesting, even if it’s for just a few minutes, I’ve realized I should take the leap and suggest meeting up for a coffee or meal. The worst thing that could happen is they say no or ghost me, and well, I’m tough and confident enough in my own skin now to not let that bother me if it were to happen. Life is short, and I’ve thought about that more so at two specific junctures of my life: when Ed died, and then after I gave birth to Kaia. Our time should be spent with people we care about who we respect and want to spend time with, people who make us feel full and full of life. So, that’s what I am trying to do with the few new friends I have been lucky to make in the last several years — make a real effort to be in touch with them and spend time with them, getting to know them deeply. 

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?

Listening as a skill

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A former colleague I was friendly with reached out to me a few weeks ago to let me know that she had relocated back to New York in the last year from San Francisco. She asked if I was still here and if I was, that she’d like to meet up for coffee to catch up. I hadn’t seen her in over two years, so I thought it would be good to see her. We met up late Friday afternoon for some tea and sat at a park in Chinatown before I went to pick up Kaia from school.

We chatted for over an hour about all the usual things: her relocation, our respective work situations, people we still kept in touch with from our last company. We talked about Kaia and parenthood, and we also talked about health. I was pretty stunned when she recounted to me things I’d shared with her over three years ago when she was last in town, and we met for coffee. I invited her and another former colleague to hang out on my roof, and she remembered me telling her about my cubital tunnel syndrome and random travel anecdotes that I didn’t even remember telling her. I was really endeared that she remembered, and it felt really comforting. I’m so used to being a broken record nowadays and sharing the same stories over and over again that I forget who I have shared them with… and frankly, who even cares and retains them.

But it made me realize how it feels like people have such short attention spans now that they don’t really listen. People complain about news articles being too long. There are even people now who think that some TikTok or Instagram videos are too long, so they just swipe to the next one that is faster. Chris even complains sometimes when his brother or I are telling a story and he keeps saying, “Get to the point!” People don’t seem to appreciate the art of story telling the way I always did as a kid and even now, as an adult. But I think the best stories are nuanced and have interesting arcs. There’s always a good lead up. Characters have different subtle personality quirks that only reveal themselves with time. And it’s comforting to know that there are still some people in existence who really do take the time to listen, and even remember.

Visiting Sacramento after three years

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If you asked me ten years ago if I had any interest in going to Sacramento, I would say… absolutely not. I had visited once years ago with my parents, and I found the place fairly lackluster and dull, especially when you compare it to other cities across the U.S. But given the increasing cost of living in major metro areas in California like L.A. and San Francisco, a lot of people who would have liked to live in those areas have now been moving further north to the capital of California. One of our friends grew up in Sacramento, so she and her husband returned to Sacramento to settle down several years ago. Then, my good friend from college ended up getting a job in Sacramento, and she relocated from Arkansas for work. Now that we have friends in the area, it makes more sense for us to go visit.

As more people have moved to Sacramento, the food options have gotten better and better. There’s two major Vietnamese areas with good restaurants and grocery shopping. It has a budding Indian population; I was thinking of the South Indian spot we went to three years ago and thought it would not be the worst idea to go back and eat there again. And tonight, we went to a delicious Burmese restaurant called Burma Light in Folsom, where pretty much everything we ordered (especially the tea leaf salad and the Burmese style lamb curry) was very, very good, minus the garlic noodles, which were quite plain. I didn’t think the garlic flavor was that pronounced.

Our friend who grew up in Sacramento had a baby, and sadly, just weeks after her baby was born, her husband, our friend, died. We still don’t know what the cause was. Sometimes I think about it, and I’m still haunted by his death. When we last visited, it was just months after his passing, so it was still raw for her and the family; it was terrifying for all of us. Three years later, she’s adjusted to life without her life partner, raising their son alone. She used to have the support of her mom and younger sister, but since her other siblings (she’s one of nine kids!) have been having babies, her mom hasn’t been helping her much anymore. So somehow, our friend manages to work from home full time AND care for her son, who is now 3, full time. Luckily, she has at most 3-4 meetings a month, but still: I have no idea how she gets anything done at all. Babies and toddlers are so demanding. She manages a full house, all chores and errands, a full-time job, and a toddler all on her own. I was just in awe when she told me this. She’s truly super woman.