Category Archives: Friends

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.

Pandora’s box gets opened: the endless piles of letters from my middle and high school years

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A few months ago, one of my close friends from middle/high school said her mom was cleaning out her garage, and she noticed that there were two boxes with my name on it. My friend retrieved the boxes, messaged me, and asked if I could take them back the next time I was in town. I remember asking my friend to store these for me back in high school: it happened after a very painful and excruciating episode of my mom going through all my belongings (even my electronic files on my computer) and reading things that people had written me, as well as things I had written. My mom even went so far as to call one of my friends and ask what she meant when she wrote, “I don’t know how you deal with your parents.” My mom never wanted to have conversations with me about life or how I felt; instead, she always went through my things and claimed that she had a right to given that she birthed me, raised me, and put a roof over my head. We screamed and yelled. I even considered suicide for about a minute. I felt trapped in that prison of a house. I felt angry and violated, and I wanted to remove anything that could be spied upon or read far away from my parents’ house and in a place where they would be safe.

Fast forward 23+ years later, most of these letters and their contents are completely meaningless to me. Though there are a handful of funny and sentimental gems, nothing here could possibly be “used against me” today. Though I will say: I am truly amazed at the sheer volume and quantity of letters and cards from a number of friends who still remain and are close to me today. After spending a lot of time reading and sorting through old cards and letters this week from middle and high school friends, I realize that I’m really lucky to still have a handful of those friends still in my life in a meaningful way. As life goes on and people mature, have different experiences and priorities, move away and come back (sometimes), have intense jobs and have children, people evolve and grow apart. Yet, we’ve managed to stay friends and make the effort to keep in touch. Not everyone is as lucky as me in this regard. I went through the piles and piles of letters, each organized by the letter writer, and I could not count with all my fingers and toes how many letters (and even more pages) were all handwritten just for my reading pleasure. I admired the cute stationery (ranging from Tare Panda to Hello Kitty to various other Japanese characters I no longer know the names of) and the still-in-tact writing done by endless glittery and sparkly Sakura Gelly Roll pens (one of our teen obsessions!). Some letters were painfully emo. Others were more on the mundane side obsessing over SATs and grades. A handful were so heavy with then-current slang and Asian ghetto expressions that I could barely understand what the point of the correspondence was.

Of course, I couldn’t go through everything; to save time and effort, I immediately discarded all piles from former boyfriends, guys who were interested in me, and friends/acquaintances I no longer keep in touch with. Some of the letters were absolutely atrocious to read (oh, the teenage angst I had managed to block out of my memory all these years!), but some of them were truly endearing and laugh-out-loud hilarious. In one letter, my friend wrote: “You are like my mommy, always scolding me and making sure I stay in line.” I laughed to myself reading that.

I also had some cards from people I had completely forgotten about: a good friend of my mom named April, who she knew from work, would regularly send me very fancy (for me back then, anyway) birthday gifts every year along with a card. She gave me beautifully wrapped and packaged gifts, things like wallets and watches, in brands I never thought I’d ever own. In one card, she wrote, “I’m so sorry that I am late, but happy belated birthday!” I laughed, thinking, why are you even apologizing? You don’t need to send me anything or acknowledge my birthday at all! Then, there were a few birthday cards (which likely came with accompanying gifts) from my mom’s former boss Chris(tine), who she got along with very well. And lastly, some of my most treasured (and all beautifully handwritten) letters came from my sixth grade English teacher, Mary Rudden, who I still think of today as one of my all-time favorite teachers in the world. She was the one who made me feel like I had a voice, a real talent in writing and expression, and as though I actually mattered as a kid. I look back at my childhood, and I truly credit her plus two other teachers for my general confidence and self esteem. Adults who speak to young children like their voice and opinions matter can truly help children grow into good, self-confident, well-meaning adults who contribute to society. These are letters that I am definitely not tossing into the recycling bin.

The rest got ripped up and tossed into the recycling bin. I re-read them, wished them well and thanked them for their place once in my life, and bid them adieu. I don’t want to hold onto the past… well, maybe just a handful of them.

Unexpected therapy

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A friend of mine has been dealing with a lot of usual life challenges: a stressful job, the job layoff her husband has recently experienced, a judgmental, critical, and cold relationship with her mother-in-law, a passive aggressive relationship with her sister-in-law (who she has been actively trying to get closer to, but said sister-in-law keeps rejecting), the stress of raising two strong-willed young children (one of whom has become, in her words, “a little monster,” and the second who is an entitled brat who seemingly wants every new toy that comes out ASAP). So it was kind of like the cherry-on-top of all her stressors when she discovered, earlier this year, that the house she owns and once lived in, which has been rented out, a place she hoped to move back to some day… the tenant occupying it hanged himself in it. He was discovered by his ex-girlfriend. And my friend and her husband had to deal with the aftermath and clean-up of it. This was really the incident that tipped her over the edge.

My friend and her family are superstitious, so they hired a Buddhist to do a cleansing ceremony of the house. But it wasn’t enough. My friend said the house would always be ruined for her. She had so many happy memories in the home, especially since her first child was born while she lived there, and she just could never imagine that something so awful would happen in the same space.

For the first time in her life, she sought therapy. But the person who saw her was the epitome of why a lot of people avoid therapy: they think most therapists are idiots who will just give them trite advice. That’s what this therapist did until she finally phased her out. She told her things like, “carve out some time for yourself during the day… even ten minutes,” “go on walks alone,” “meditate,” “hire a babysitter to make time for yourself.” No one wants to hear this crap, especially given the high rates that therapists charge (and even when your health insurance is fully covering it).

Later on, she saw someone who was recommended by a relative for a massage, but the appointment time for the massage ended up becoming a talk therapy session, as when the massage therapist asked her how she was doing as she entered the space, my friend just broke down crying. The massage therapist lightly suggested she didn’t need a massage and it seemed clear to her that she needed to talk it out. So they did just that for an hour. And my friend said that one 60-minute session, which was never intended to be talk therapy, was better than all of the many sessions (over a few months) combined she did with that idiot Kaiser therapist she saw and then dropped.

As it is always stated and known by most of us who have had challenging upbringings, she said that it all “goes back to childhood.” She takes on all the burdens because she once tried her best not to be a burden to her mom when her dad died unexpectedly when she and her younger brother were young. She always wants to have the front that she’s put together, can handle everything and more… even if she cannot. But this was really becoming all too much.

I suggested she try seeing another therapist, as it was clear that talk therapy could help her as long as she found the right person who asked the right questions. I think talk therapy could benefit the majority of people as long as a) the person is open-minded enough to pursue it, even if just for a little while, and b) they have a competent therapist who can ask the right (and oftentimes challenging) questions.

Getting older: Different vibes in the same places

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My friend is visiting from San Francisco this week for work, so we went out to dinner tonight at an izakaya in the East Village. While the food was fine, it wasn’t anything to get excited about, and there was no “wow” factor in any single dish of the small plates/bowls we ordered. It was a bit of a downer (and when I shared this with Chris, he poked at me for glorifying the East Village dining scene… which is probably fair in this case). But at least it gave us some quiet time to catch up without many others around. Similar to how we would “open” restaurants in Uruguay and Argentina, we ended up being the first guests to arrive at 6pm here, and no one really started coming in until around 7:30 when we getting towards the end of our meal.

Afterwards, we chatted while walking all the way up to Koreatown, where we ended up at HHD (Heuk Hwa Dang), an international Korean franchise of bubble tea, croffles, specialty drinks, shaved ice, and coffee. Unusual for Koreatown, the space is very large, with plenty of tables, as well as large “step” seating, and the menu for desserts is huge. So we shared a massive mango strawberry “snowflake” (it’s essentially a shaved ice, except with shaved sweetened milk “ice”), generously topped with freshly cut fruit, jellies, and some soft-serve vanilla ice cream. As we spoke, we realized that our own voices had to keep getting louder and louder because we were surrounded by other people who were at least 10-15 years younger than us, talking and laughing loudly while enjoying their own shared snowflakes.

My friend chuckled and said, “It’s as though I can’t hear because it’s so loud in here… I keep straining to hear you! Are we getting older and just can’t tolerate this much noise, or are the acoustics here just that bad?”

It’s probably a little of A and B. We prefer quieter places to catch up when we see each other since we don’t see each other too often living on opposite ends of the country. Yes, the acoustics were pretty poor. But it was comical to think that while we would have been happy spending hours hanging out at a place this loud and young in our early 20s, now in our late 30s, there’s definitely a limit to how much time we want to be at these places. We don’t necessarily blend in because of our age and how we dress into crowds like these anymore. And as much as I love the East Village, I am definitely on the older side when it comes to people wandering around its streets now, even if I can still pass for much younger.

Catch ups over black sesame lattes and chamomile mango mousse

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Chris always gets annoyed with me whenever I say that I don’t love our general neighborhood (Hell’s Kitchen / Upper West Side) for food. It’s not that I think the food options are terrible here (they are NOT by any standard), but it’s more that when I think of incredible places to eat with a lot of variety (cuisines) at multiple price points, these two neighborhoods that we’re right in the middle of are not within the top 10 (or even 20) across all of New York City for me. However, what I have noticed in the last five years is that a number of places that originally open in areas like East Village (my dream eating neighborhood), Lower East Side, or other great food areas downtown, are now opening their second or third locations in this general area. One of those places is Patisserie Fouet, which has been on my radar for a while. It’s owned and run by a Japanese pastry chef who was trained in French pastry, so the desserts are very much French in technique with hints of Asian flavors here and there. She opened her first location in the Union Square area (complete with a dessert tasting menu), and she decided to open a second location just eight blocks away from us in Hell’s Kitchen, in front of a popular udon spot called Raku. Raku is likely my favorite udon place in all of New York City. I went to their first (and then only location) about ten years ago and was obsessed with the udon and all the dishes I ate there with a friend. Since then, they’ve opened two other locations, one in SoHo and one in Hell’s Kitchen. So now, that’s two popular, fun, and semi-trendy places that are downtown that have now come uptown within short walking distance of us!

I went to Patisserie Fouet in Hell’s Kitchen and met my friend there for a mid-afternoon catch-up. We shared two desserts, while she had a cold brew barley tea, and I enjoyed an iced black sesame latte. I have always preferred one-on-one catch ups over group catchups, but I particularly love meeting with this friend 1:1 because she is so empathetic, insightful, and pointed in her questions and observations. She doesn’t shy away from vulnerable topics and instead, actually invites them. She sees a lot of things in people that most others either never notice or don’t want to point out. The older I get, and the more entrenched in being a parent I become, the harder it is to make real, lasting friendships with people who I find genuinely interesting. And in group situations, it can get awkward very quickly to discuss any touchy topic or anything seemingly exposing of yourself. So I feel thankful I’ve found this friend and we can be totally open and share unflattering things about ourselves, things we’ve done, and our relationships, and that it doesn’t negatively impact how we see each other. In fact, it actually does the opposite: it helps us better relate to and respect each other for being so candid… and being open about the fact that we’re all deeply flawed individuals who are just trying to do their best in life and with others. If anything, we should applaud ourselves for having that level of self-awareness to see that we probably do “wrong” things all the time but do make an intentional attempt to be better and do better.

Doing all the things with your visiting friend that you cannot normally do with littles

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A friend of mine who lives in San Francisco is coming to New York for work next week, and so we’re planning to meet up on Monday and Thursday night. She’s extended her trip to stay with us for Thursday night and will leave Friday evening. When I asked her what she wanted to do while in New York or if there were any restaurants or cafes she wanted to check out, she simply responded that she wanted to go restaurants or spots that she couldn’t do with young children or babies… so in other words, speakeasy-type venues, cramped and small restaurants you couldn’t easily roll a stroller into, or places where you’d never even think of asking the server for a high chair at.

It was kind of funny when she responded this way because I could completely relate. I have a growing list (as always) of places I’d like to eat at in New York, but given the weekends are with Pookster, a large percentage of those places are just a no-go with a young child. It’s not to blame your child, but more recognizing that some venues just are not suitable for families or young children. And that’s okay. So we’re planning to do a tiny izakaya meal and have afternoon tea during her time here. Even though we’re both mothers now, we still enjoy and crave adult time and time to catch up one on one… without the constant injections of screaming and toddler questions that would happen if our kids were around and we tried to converse.

Friends, near and far

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Most of the “friends” people make at work are friends out of convenience. You happen to be in the same place at the same time, doing similar work for a similar mission (or so you tell yourself), and so because you have to spend so much time together, you end up forming bonds. You learn each others’ senses of humor, what ticks, what tickles, and it gets comfortable. It’s no wonder so many office romances happen all the time.

But most of the time, all that “friendship” kind of ends once you stop working at the same company. You no longer are forced to spend time together, and you no longer have the same company or set of colleagues to complain and gossip about. Grievances are no longer shared. You move onto your next company and bond with your next set of colleagues in a similar way. So when you do meet friends at work who do remain your friends long after you no longer work at the same company, it’s a really nice feeling, a comforting one that is actually a real friendship.

Tonight, a former colleague and friend from my last company came over to see Kaia and have dinner with us. The last time I had seen her was when I was about eight months pregnant. Since then, she has since moved to Dallas for work, and so our times overlapping in the New York/New Jersey area have been almost zero since her Texas move. We talked like we had never really been apart, and it still felt good and comfortable, almost like we’d been friends our whole lives. Nothing felt awkward or forced. We’d had a few text and Zoom conversations since her move, but no in person time. I caught her up on all of Kaia’s developmental milestones and personality quirks. We shared about our dysfunctional relationships with my parents and her dad. We talked about letting go of expectations for people we can’t control. Even though she’s almost eight years younger than me, I’ve always felt like she was wise beyond her years. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that given her dad abandoned her family, as the oldest, she felt like she had to be the second mom/caregiver of the family amongst her brothers and younger sister. Everyone has their own story to share about how they got to be the way they are.

My friend even came with a gift for Kaia. My sweet baby Pookster has no idea exactly how lucky she is to have so many aunties who love her and oogle over her, near and far.

Closeness and vulnerability

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Today, Kaia and I went to Brooklyn Heights/Cobble Hill to hang out with a friend we usually catch up with while her husband and Chris are here, but we decided this would be a nice way to catch up with just us. We met at a Palestinian restaurant for lunch, had coffee at a nearby coffee shop after, took Kaia to the playground to run around and get out some energy, then walked around Brooklyn Bridge Park and enjoyed some delicious passion fruit ice cream with apricot jam swirls and pistachios. Even Pooks had a few licks before passing out from an entire afternoon of attempting to fight off a nap.

Since I was in high school, I realized that I’m just better in small group or 1:1 situations, and I enjoy them a lot more. Large groups certainly have their place, but you never truly get to know anyone unless you have some genuine one on one time with them. When you are one on one, it allows both sides to be more vulnerable, to ask harder, more interesting questions. There’s less of a need to posture or pretend that all is rainbows and flowers in your life. And you never truly know anyone unless you are able to be vulnerable around each other and expose things about ourselves that are not necessarily flattering, sometimes embarrassing or stigmatized, and other times even flat out damning (potentially).

But I feel really comfortable with this friend. She’s had a hard life, but she’s open about talking about it and you can tell she’s learned and grown so much from her tough experiences. And it kind of makes me intrigued to ask her more about what’s happened and how she’s handled it. In turn, she’s asked me a lot about things I normally don’t discuss with casual friends, like my family, Ed, and IVF. What was funny was that she projected onto me a bit. She’s never wanted children, and for the longest time, even while dating who is now her husband, she never even wanted to get married. So when I revealed to her that Kaia was conceived via IVF after a year of trying to conceive naturally and failing, she said she was surprised. She had, for some reason, assumed that Kaia was not planned. No, she was very much planned and wanted, I assured her.

As I’ve gotten older, and especially working 100 percent remotely now, it’s been harder to meet and make new friends. While I’ve met people through Kaia’s daycare/school, it’s not really the same because you’re bonded more because of the kids. But it’s been comforting to know that I’ve successfully made at least one friend since being pregnant who can be completely raw and real with me.

Mother’s Day flowers in a dusted off butterfly vase

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Since today was Thursday, Chris did his usual Whole Foods grocery run after dropping off Pookster at school. He came back with groceries and bouquet of 16 red-orange roses for me and his mum, who will be back along with his dad this Saturday evening from a side U.S. trip to San Antonio, Texas. The flowers are in honor of Mother’s Day, which is coming up this Sunday. It will be the first and only Mother’s Day we’ve celebrated with his parents since Pookster has been around.

I unwrapped the flowers, trimmed them, removed excess leaves, and added them to a round vase. They dropped to one side clumsily, so I wrapped them with a rubber band so that they’d all stay together. Because the flowers do not “fill” the vase, they still all stayed on one side and looked a little depressed. So I went back to my closet and unearthed a slim rectangular butterfly vase that my friend had gotten me over 12 years ago when I was still living in Elmhurst, Queens. She said she was at a gift shop at a science museum back home, and when she saw this vase, she immediately thought of me and bought it. I realize that I hadn’t used this vase since I lived in Queens, so I decided to try these flowers out in the butterfly vase. And it was a perfect fit: the flowers fully filled the vase and all stood beautifully upright. You could enjoy both the flowers as well as the beautiful butterfly prints on the clear glass vase altogether. I added some ice cubes into the vase to keep the flowers fresh for longer.

I thought about all the shopping mailing lists I’m on for one of my email accounts and how this year, there seems to be more awareness about how triggering of a holiday Mother’s Day can be for some people. I’ve gotten at least four different emails asking if I’d like to opt out of Mother’s Day related emails and promotions; I don’t recall ever getting these before this year. Whether it’s because people have lost their mothers, have a difficult relationship with their mothers, or are actively trying to become a mother but have not yet succeeded, there’s a lot of reasons that Mother’s Day and the period around it can be a painful time. I’m fully aware of that since I was once in the shoes of someone who wanted to be a mom but hadn’t yet gotten there. And for my whole life, I’ve had a difficult relationship with my own mother… and still do. I see those who are struggling and their pain, even if they choose not to be open about it. I can fully relate.

Cancer

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In the last several weeks, the world got the news about the British royal family that they’d all guessed, but weren’t 100 percent sure of: The Princess of Wales was diagnosed with cancer. She’s only 42 years old, so of course, this was met with much shock and sadness. Even I felt sad when I read the news. If someone who likely has access to the best food, nutrition, wellness, and healthcare, amongst other resources, can get a cancer diagnosis so young, then the rest of us are definitely screwed. My next thought was: yep, the rest of us… we’re all going to get cancer and die.

As I was checking in with a friend over text tonight about how her recent trip to Japan went with her parents and brother, I was shocked to learn of some health news about her dad: he just got diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called chordoma. Over the last several months, he’d had some lower back pain that kept getting worse. Initially, they just thought it was arthritis, so they had him see a physical therapist, but it didn’t help. He went in for a scan which showed nothing, but they failed to scan the part of the back where he felt the pain, so my friend pushed for an MRI of his lower back… which ended up revealing a malignant mass on his sacrum. Chordoma can occur anywhere along the spine and it’s extremely rare: only 1 in one million people get diagnosed with chordoma per year. He’s scheduled for an appointment later this week to determine the best course for his case, which may be surgery to remove the mass.

This made me so sad. When my friend was in high school, her mom got diagnosed with breast cancer. They all suspected that it might be related to her work, as she was a nail technician at a nail salon (we all know that nail salon workers are at a high risk of getting cancer due to all the fumes they inhale all day long). Luckily, she got chemo and the cancer disappeared. Then, at age 27 while my friend was in medical school, she got diagnosed with a rare lymphoma, and thus medical school got put on hold. Her type of lymphoma was even rarer: only 0.4 people per million per year are diagnosed with it each year. That would mean that in her family of five, 60 percent of her family had experienced cancer. There’s no way this diagnosis could have been easy to hear.

We can only hope for the best since we’re living in a toxic, chemical-laden world. I just hope her dad makes his way out alive in this for their family’s sake.