Category Archives: Friends

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.

A home cooked meal = a simple pleasure

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Since college, I always knew that once I graduated and started living on my own that I’d cook most meals at home. While cost is certainly something to think about because no one has unlimited funds, that was actually never my first concern. My first thought was about knowing what I was eating and what was going into it; almost all pre-made food outside, whether it’s pre-made food at a grocery store or takeout from a restaurant, will have far more salt, oil/fats, sugar, or all the above added to it. Oftentimes weird preservatives with names that no one knows how to pronounce are used to keep things edible longer. And in a food supply as frustrating as this country’s, I think we’d all be healthier and happier if we ate more home cooked meals. I did exactly what I thought I’d do: since I moved to New York, I cook most of my meals. It helps, of course, that I love cooking and find it very fun and therapeutic. And with tiny human in the house, I really want to make sure the majority of her food is homemade, too. So it’s easy for me to forget sometimes that for the average American, they are *not* eating homemade meals as the majority of their diet. And then somehow, I get surprised, and then I forget once again.

My friend is in town visiting from the Bay Area for the next several days. We ate out together on Thursday night, and on Friday, I suggested that she come over for dinner. I’d make food, but we’d also get a couple dishes for takeout from a nearby spot. On Thursday during our meal, she told me that she and her boyfriend, who she lives with, rarely cook at home and eat pretty much all their meals out. They barely have any food in the fridge, and their pantry is pretty bare. So I hoped she’d appreciate the home cooked meal more given this. For dinner on Friday, I made za’atar roasted chicken thighs with lemons and red onions, Middle Eastern-style eggplant with tahini sauce, steamed beets, charred bok choy with Sichuanese chili crisp, and pea pulao. Chris ordered some lamb manti from a nearby Turkish restaurant. We had freshly cut mangoes and pineapple for dessert. It was kind of a hodge podge of dishes without a real united theme, but I figured it would all still be tasty. While my friend enjoyed all the food, surprisingly enough, what she seemed to enjoy the most (and had fourth helpings of!) were the steamed beets. It was, by far, the simplest, easiest thing on the table, yet she was obsessed with them.

I always forget that the simplest dishes seem to please people the most. But I was happy to feed my friend a homemade meal since she doesn’t get them very often at all. Though I do hope, for her own health, that she and her boyfriend will try to make more food at home, even if it’s an activity they can do together. It would help them spend less money and also be more healthy. Who doesn’t want to be healthier and spend less money on frivolous things?

Stranger friends who tease, but never commit

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I have a friend who lives in New York City who I haven’t seen in almost two years, come next month. She got fired from her job early in 2022 unexpectedly, and since it happened, I have only seen her twice. In April 2022, I took her out for lunch to celebrated her belated birthday. That was the last time I’ve seen her. In June 2022, we were scheduled to catch up over tea at a local cafe, and she declined just three hours before, saying she couldn’t make it — no reason, even after I asked a few times after if she was okay. I checked in with her over text and phone several times that year, but she would always give cryptic responses and never commit to seeing me. Last year, I just let it go; if she wanted to see me, she could reach out whenever she wanted. I eventually found out she got a new phone number, deleted her Facebook account, and was “starting over.” She messaged me on her new number to save her new number and said “let’s catch up soon,” but never committed to a date. She said she started a new job, and in November of last year, she asked to see the opera together. When I suggested a date/time, she said she couldn’t go anymore because she lost her job. Then, she kept saying we would catch up soon, but no dates suggested.

I was so confused. What was going on?

I made multiple efforts over the last month to see her, yet again, she still wouldn’t commit. So I messaged her to let her know that I care about her and have worried about her, but if she kept refusing to commit to see me, it would drive me away, and I would actually stay away and not contact her again. I’m 38 years old. I’ve experienced a decent amount of trauma in my life and unjust experiences. I do not need excess baggage in my life, and I definitely do not need anyone in my life who doesn’t want to be in it. She said she appreciated my directness, but it wasn’t about me.

That’s fine. If it has nothing to do with me, then let it be. Or I’ll just stop responding. There’s only so much bullshit that one can take to continue to be a sane, productive, relatively happy person.

Supercommunicators: laughter to connect with others

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Endless books have been written about how to “make friends and influence people,” create solid, lasting relationships, and ultimately to communicate better with others. I was recently listening to a podcast where the journalist Charles Duhigg was being interviewed, and he was discussing some stories he shared in his latest book called Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Power of Connection. He talked about some personal stories, like the types of arguments he and his wife have had and how they’ve improved on their arguing as a result of techniques he talks about in this book. But the part that really got me was when he discussed the simple act of laughter. Most of the time at a superficial level, when people see others laughing, they think they’re laughing because something is funny. But the majority of the time, people actually are not laughing because something is literally funny. They’re really laughing to build a connection with another person or to in some way “match” the emotions or sentiments of the person they are with. People who can “match” emotions (and there’s various definitions/principles around this) tend to be better communicators; those who don’t do this tend to be poorer communicators.

This reminded me of a very painful dinner that I sat through about 12 years ago. My good friend, who I was maid of honor for, wanted two of her bridesmaids and me to establish better rapport. My friend was temporarily living in New York for a year, and these two bridesmaids came to visit. She arranged for all four of us to have dinner together. We all went to high school together, yet I never clicked with her other bridesmaids. In high school, I found them boring, generic, drab, opinion-less, and humorless. I’m sure they had their judgments of me, but my “DGAF” attitude was already apparent back then. But I figured — so much time had passed since then, so why not try to give them another chance?

Well, that second chance was probably one of the most painful dinners I’ve ever had to sit through. We talked about a whole lot of meaningless nothing in between periods of extremely awkward silences, and while it may have lasted an hour or two, it felt like 10 hours of torture. Every time I shared any kind of opinion or anecdote, I was met with blank stares or straight faces. The many times I told dumb jokes or laughed, I was met with silence or shy chuckles with their hands covering their mouths. They didn’t share any interesting or insightful opinion about anything; they were exactly as boring as I remembered them to be in high school. I suppose time does not always change people.

I was triggered to remember this awful dinner because of what Duhigg was trying to say: laughter can connect people, and even if you laugh out of nowhere and the person next to you gives a little chuckle, they’re in some way communicating with you and “matching” your sentiments to build a rapport with you. Back then, it was hard to properly express why their lack of laughter bothered me so much, but after listening to this podcast about this “matching” principle, it completely makes more sense to me and how to convey why this was frustrating. Laughter isn’t just some empty thing that people do; we laugh to connect with each other. And when we don’t laugh, not only are we not connecting with those around us, but well, as Chris puts it, we’re probably just boring as fuck.

Kaia’s first real play date outside of daycare

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Yesterday, the three of us met Kaia’s bestie from her class named Jacob and his parents (and their newborn in a sling) and took a trip to the Central Park Zoo together. Jacob’s dad had reached out to Chris, as they usually dropped off the kids together in the morning and had become friendly. We all knew that Kaia and Jacob got along really well and could be seen frequently holding hands and running around class and the multi-purpose room together. While we enjoyed our catch up and seeing the animals together, it was actually a little bittersweet: though the two were close, it seems like a lot of these things have to come to an end, as Jacob and his family would soon be relocating to New Jersey. His parents are under contract with a new house, and with their expanding family, they will need more space. Plus, they’ll also be closer to both sides of their families.

I remember being in pre-school and elementary school and always being sad when a friend moved away and left. You inevitably knew you were never going to see each other again. But I wonder if that even resonates with Kaia and Jacob at their ages. Or who knows: maybe we as parents may loosely keep in touch, and maybe there might actually be future play dates after they move. Only time will tell.