Category Archives: Love

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.”

 

Bastille Market’s poulet roti

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I’ve been hyped up to go to Marche Bastille on our last Sunday for the last several weeks in great anticipation of our French version of the Last Supper in Paris: poulet roti from the famous poulet roti woman at the market, along with chicken-fat-drenched tiny yellow potatoes. Poulet roti is just French for roast chicken, but this roast chicken is marinated for two days in sesame, soy, and a large variety of herbs, then roasted on a rotating spit over tiny little yellow potatoes. I’d read about it on multiple food blogs as the thing to eat when visiting Marche Bastille, so I knew we had to have it.

When we picked the chicken up and I ripped into it with a sad random spoon we had in our bag and my fingers, I knew we had made the right decision. The skin was crackling, crunchy and very complex tasting and flavorful. It was sweet and slightly salty and herby all at once. The flesh of the chicken came apart quite easily, and the dark meat was perfect. The breast meat was tasty, but the star of this chicken was clearly the skin and the dark meat. It even came with its little giblets on the inside cavity; that’s something you don’t normally get when you buy roasted chicken in an American supermarket. Americans can’t really handle their giblets. I wanted to inhale the entire chicken, and I almost did since Chris’s dad doesn’t like to eat with his hands, and Chris’s cousins shied away from eating that much.

It was a sweet finale to an end in France. I practiced a lot of French here, was received more happily than I was last time, and bought enough chocolate, butter, caramels, and pharmacy products to last me the next year. I can’t wait to come back and eat the rest of France.

Hey! Remember me?

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And then, when you least expect it, you get reminded of what you lost.

I went to sleep this morning at around 4am after leaving the dance floor at 3:30am. I’m proud to say I was one of the last ten people in the room for the DJ that would have gone on until 7am as per French wedding protocol. Then I woke up at around 8:30 having dreamt about going through my brother’s things after his passing. I’m sitting on the floor next to his desk in the dining room, rummaging through notes, books, and boxes. I come across a bag that has familiar writing on it; it’s my friend Natasha’s handwriting. I could identify that handwriting from miles away. It’s a note she wrote to my brother describing that she put together a care package for him of things to encourage him and make him smile. She included an inspirational book, some of his favorite snacks, among other things. Neither Natasha nor my brother told me that she did this for him. Finding it was bittersweet for me. I was touched that she did this for him, but felt awful that he’s now gone. In my dream, I sit there and stare at her handwriting, wondering what Ed thought when he was given the gift.

In the happiest and saddest times, he’s still there hanging out, saying, “Hey, remember me? I’m still here even though I’m not. I’ll watch over when you’re feeling good and terrible, and I’ll try to continue being happy for you.” I’d like to say this dream was more hopeful and positive, but in the back of my mind, these dreams just make me sad because it’s a reminder that he isn’t here, even if his presence is still felt halfway across the world. It’s the never ending thought, the sad and final truth.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over losing him, and I know when my wedding day comes, it will be hard because I’ll know he should have been there. I’ll try my best to be strong for him… as much as I can. I have to be strong for both of us, even more so than when he was alive.

 

Fairy tale wedding

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Today was one of those one-day-in-a-lifetime days when I got to experience a fairy tale in real life — a wedding at a chateau in the French countryside complete with endless white and pink roses, ending with torches shooting their flames up high toward a sky of fireworks. It’s one of those things that American girls dream about growing up, but they never really get that type of wedding in the end because how many American girls will have a destination wedding at a chateau in France?

Since I left home in 2004 for college, I’ve realized exactly how sheltered I’d been about the world, and every day I’m learning exactly how little I didn’t know the day before. When Navine and Andy began planning their wedding, Navine said to me that she originally didn’t want to have a chateau wedding, that she wanted to do something “different” and get married along the French Riviera where there was warm weather, sunny skies, and the beach. She grew up in Paris attending weddings at chateaux because that’s what the French do when they get married — have a multiple-day-long celebration at a chateau. I laughed out loud when she said this because I thought, yeah, that’s not what my version of “normal” and “what everyone does” was when I was growing up. I grew up thinking the normal, everyday thing to do when getting married was having a church wedding and having a Chinese banquet at a Chinese restaurant, or having a wedding and reception at a hotel or country club. Our versions of “normal” or “cliche” are so different depending on where we grew up and how we were raised. It still makes me laugh to think of Navine rolling her eyes at a chateau wedding and thinking it’s a cliche.

At the end of the night, she and I chatted, and I told her how beautiful it all was today and how it really was very much like a fairy tale. She was glowing and saying, “Screw the French Riviera and the beaches and the sun; this is perfect!”

That’s how I felt. But I guess she’ll get to see our wedding overlooking a beach in just a few months, and that will be incredible in its own way. I’ll be honest and say that after being a part of this wedding, I felt slightly insecure and thought our wedding may be nothing compared to the extravagance of today. But as corny as it sounds, as long as the people we care about are there and I don’t screw up my vows, I think our wedding day will be another version of “epic,” and that’s coming from someone who never uses that word.

Tea ceremony

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Today, the wedding events began with a tea ceremony at Navine’s parents’ home in Paris, and ended with the largest bonfire I’ve ever seen at the chateau about an hour away in the French countryside. As with most Chinese events, the food was endless, and the food offered to the ancestors to bless the marriage was even more endless. We left the bride’s family’s home wondering what would happen with that huge roasted suckling pig, the duck, and all the fruit and sticky rice cake offerings. My family has never hosted a tea ceremony, so I have no idea if all that food really gets eaten or not.

Chris’s cousins’ parents and family were asking me if we would also have a Chinese tea ceremony when we got married. My first response is laughter, not because I think it’s dumb or ludicrous, but more because my parents would barely understand what a tea ceremony is for or what they would do during it. My dad is less Chinese than I am, and my mom doesn’t know anything about tea ceremonies and is Vietnamese. I summed it up nicely by saying, “No, my family isn’t that Chinese.”

I think these traditions are a great thing to have and to continue, and I was happy to be able to be a part of this one. I’m honestly a little sad that my family isn’t that Chinese and won’t be doing it because it ultimately means that any potential future generation of our family will not do it. If I didn’t have a tea ceremony, it’d be like a farce if I ever wanted my future children to have one. None of my cousins had a tea ceremony when they got married, either. It’s like the degradation of cultural identity as the generations continue and the lack of understanding of what the value is to keep these traditions going.

Bridal and bachelorette scrapbook

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I spent almost all of today working on my bridal shower and bachelorette scrapbook. I saved all the cards, written memories shared during the shower, and even some of the wrapping paper and ribbon used to wrap my bridal shower gifts to compile this scrapbook using the memory book my friends got me. I’ve realized a big reason that scrapbooking can be so stressful; it forces me to hoard and save what most people generally will just throw away. So not only do I have to save a lot of “junk” and discardable material, but I have to organize it in such a way that it’s kept neat and in a certain order so I remember the timeline for the events in the order that they happened.

I finished it, though – 22 pages of documented events over the course of three days. I put a lot of work and thought into it, and I’m keeping it for myself as a treasure book of what my loved ones did for me.

The photo frame with a hidden message

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Today, I met briefly with a friend and her daughter at Spreckles Lake at Golden Gate Park. I cannot remember the last time I walked through that area, but Ed and I used to go all the time on the weekends as kids and feed the ducks by the water there. It made me feel nostalgic to walk along the lake today with them and see the ducks and the remote-controlled boats gliding across the water at rapid pace.

My friend and her daughter came to my bridal shower and gave me a silver photo frame from Gump’s. At the shower when I was opening gifts, she told me that there was a story behind the frame, and today, she shared it with me.

She told me that her husband was at work the week before the shower, and somehow dozed off, and when he did, he dreamt that he saw Ed. Yes, that’s Ed as in my Ed, my brother. He couldn’t quite make out his face clearly and could only see black, but he knew it was him. “Isn’t your wife attending a bridal shower this weekend?” Ed asked her husband.

“Yes, she’s attending a bridal shower,” the husband responds.

Ed reveals that it’s his sister’s bridal shower. “What is your wife getting as a gift for the shower?”

Her husband finds this amusing and said he actually had no idea, as they hadn’t discussed it.

“I think you should get her a photo frame from Gump’s,” Ed suggested. “I think she’d like it.”

The dream ended. Her husband woke up from his nap and asked his assistant to go to Gump’s and pick out a photo frame. He then took the photo frame back home to my friend, and said that she had to give this gift to me. “You can’t ignore a message like this,” her husband told her.

Ed’s still out there watching over me. My friend says this was his way of being part of the shower, of speaking to her husband and knowing that the message would get back to me. I’m not sure what I felt more when I heard this — happiness that his presence is still here, or sadness that he physically is no longer here.

I miss my Ed. I love you wherever you are.

Bridal shower day

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People always say that on days like bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, and weddings, there’s a thick emotional charge that clouds the air, and at any moment, it can be burst with the slightest thing said or alluded to. I guess that happened today when we had a “memory” activity, where all the attendees were asked to write down a fond memory they had with me. One of my cousins’ wives shared the memory of how she asked Ed and me to be candle sponsors at her wedding in July 2007. She said she remembered us walking down the aisle together to light two candles to become one for their future path together, and that she was thankful to have us to take part in this special ceremony on her wedding day. As soon as I saw Ed’s name on the card I was reading, I couldn’t help it and just burst into tears. It’s one of those extremely awkward moments where you know you have 15 other people literally gathered around and watching you, but you can’t do anything to control the tears from flowing. I had to keep taking deep breaths to control myself and prevent myself from needing to run out of the room. It was also a trigger for my mother, clearly, as I heard her sniffling and getting choked up with her own tears. That wedding was over eight years ago now. It’s still hard to believe he’s not here anymore, and these events only magnify that for me.

I’ve written this in my blog quite a number of times, but I feel like I can’t say enough how lucky and blessed a life I live. I had friends and family fly in from Phoenix, Seattle, New York, and even Singapore for my bridal shower and bachelorette weekend, and though I didn’t really need or ask for them, received extremely generous and thoughtful gifts and cards from them all. But as great as it is to have all of their love for me under the same roof at the same time, it’s hard for me to ignore the fact that my brother won’t be at home afterwards, asking me what gifts I got and what food he missed out on for being a guy who couldn’t be invited to a women-only bridal shower. I can even imagine his face and his exclamation if he were to see some of the lingerie our cousins-in-law got me as gifts. I know if he were here, he’d be excited for me, even through his own inner suffering. It’s as though every day that passes is another day of missing him and seeing all these things happening around me that he will never get to experience. I miss him the most on Thanksgiving, Christmas, his birthday, my birthday, our dad’s birthday, and the anniversary of his passing. Any wedding-related day can also now be added to that sad list.

“For my sister on her birthday”

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Every time I come home to San Francisco, I find myself reorganizing yet another one of my drawers in this house. I guess it goes to show that I’m not as neat and “organized” as I thought I was if I am constantly reorganizing and discarding things.

In my nightstand by my bed, while rummaging through old photos I put on the walls of my old dorm rooms, I found the only card Ed has ever given me. It’s a humorous and silly Hallmark card, and this is what it says:

For my sister on her birthday

(Front):

I’ve done all the things

siblings are

famous for —

I’ve bugged you,

I’ve embarrassed you.

I’ve made your life

a living nightmare…

But now that we’re older

I just want to say…

(Inside)

I was only doing my job!

It is dated January 22, 2007, five days after I turned 21. It’s dated that late because that year, our parents took me on a Hawaiian cruise as a birthday gift, and Ed as per usual refused to go because he hated traveling with them anywhere. That was the day we got back from the cruise.

Waiting for me when we arrived home was this card, a massive bouquet of multicolored flowers that Ed had delivered to the house, and a birthday cake for me. “21 is a big deal,” Ed said when he proudly presented the gifts. “Read the card I got you!” I obediently read it and chuckled a little and thanked him. He was clearly so proud of this card. “Isn’t this card so funny? That’s exactly us! It’s so great!” He was obsessed, and I could tell he obsessed about it at Walgreens or wherever else he picked up this card as he went through many cards.

After I read it today and stared longingly at his hand writing, I looked up at the photo of him on his old dresser in our bedroom, and I felt sick. How the hell is he not here anymore? Look at that innocent smile of his. It’s like all he wanted was a bit of encouragement, and he could barely get it from anyone other than his pastor and me. Every time I am back home, his absence is more painfully apparent because his photos and his bed and his dresser are here, but he is not. That bed just beckons him to come back, as it stares at me and asks, who will sleep in me? Will Ed ever come back? And I have to silently tell it that no, Ed will never be back to sleep in you again. The last night he ever slept in you was July 21, 2013, and that was the final night ever. I bend down to smell the sheets, and it smells just like him. You smell just like Ed, I tell the bed. Maybe he’s just hiding in the bed somewhere? Or maybe with that large framed photo from his funeral, if I wipe it down hard enough to get rid of all the dust, maybe he’ll pop out and hug me again?

These are my silly hopes and delusions, that I will see him again on earth, that he is still out there somewhere. My one wish in life is one that cannot be granted with even the all of the money and power in the world. I just want Ed back and healthy and happy. It’s so lonely to think that one day, you had a sibling, and the next, you don’t. It’s not fair that good, innocent people like him are gone.

A message for a message seven years later

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Facebook has its pluses and minuses. However you’d like to categorize it, being able to message people in your Facebook “network” can be a plus or a minus. Yesterday, it felt like a big plus. Seven years ago, a former high school classmate experienced the death of her father. She was clearly stricken with grief by it, and posted the eulogy she wrote for him as a note on Facebook. I saw it in my feed that day in 2008, which was the year we both graduated from college, and I felt so awful when I read it. I could feel myself tearing up, my face getting hot while reading through it, wondering how terrible and alone she must have felt while delivering that speech at her father’s funeral. I knew I had to say something to her, even if we were never officially friends in real life. So I sent her a Facebook message, expressing my condolences, and I told her that I really believed her father was watching over her life now in another form, and that in another form, he’d always be with her.

Yesterday, after I uploaded my Facebook/Instagram post about Bart representing Ed on Ed’s birthday, this same person reached out to me to say how moved she was by my post. She said that because Facebook stores all old messages, my message to her all those years ago immediately came up when she started typing in my name to message me, and she remembered how happy and grateful she felt that I’d reached out to her all those years ago. Honestly, if she had never messaged me today, I never would have remembered ever reaching out to her and writing this message. This was part of her message to me yesterday:

“I saw the photo you posted for your brother’s birthday and I wanted to tell you I’m very sorry for your loss and that you’ve been so strong. I think it’s wonderful that you bring Bart with you wherever you go. It’s really beautiful and I’m sitting here with a couple tears in my eyes looking at your Instagram photos with Bart everywhere with you around the world. Ed is so lucky to have you as a sister, because he can still see the world through you. I think you already know without me saying this that it’s totally fine to cry, even after years have passed – because I still cried this year on my dad’s birthday, too! No one will forget. Thanks for sharing with us all.”

Facebook forces us to remember the thoughtful messages that others have written us, which I guess is sort of a nice thing. It also allows us to reach out and be supportive to others who may not be close to us, but sort of still know us, because sometimes when you least expect it, you can get support from those you never really thought cared at all. That’s pretty amazing sometimes.