What the Constitution Means to Me

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Last night, Chris and I went to see the Broadway show What the Constitution Means to Me, which is a 2017 play by Heidi Shreck. It was first produced at a smaller theater downtown, and after gaining a lot of traction, opened in off-Broadway in 2018. And this year, the play made its Broadway premiere in the spring.

The general storyline of the play is a woman who reflects back on the speeches she gave as a teenager about the U.S. Constitution and then talks about how she feels about it now, both based on her own personal life experiences from her teen years to the present day, as well as regarding the experiences of women in her own family. She switches between her 15-year-old self and her current adult self several decades later.

The part that struck me the most was how she reflected that overall, the Constitution does not necessarily outline what is your right; it’s actually mostly there to outline what is not your right. And a large part of the Constitution is fully dedicated to the lack of legal protection for women, as she highlights the 2005 Supreme Court case of Castle Rock vs. Gonzalez. The Supreme Court, led by Antonin Scalia then, somehow incredulously ruled that “shall” does not mean “must,” as in, “law enforcement shall protect victims of domestic abuse. Jessica Gonzalez had gotten a restraining order from her then-husband, who then kidnapped their three daughters, shooting and killing all three of them to death. Gonzalez tried to sue the police for ignoring multiple reports of her husband’s abuse and kidnapping, but in the end, she was overruled.

This is the country we live in, huh? I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize it was that awful, especially since this case just happened 14 years ago. That is in my lifetime.

The real cincher here was when she stated, “More American women have been killed by violent male partners in the last century than Americans have been killed in wars, including 9/11,” Schreck said in the show. “That is not the number of women who have been killed in this country; that is only the number of women who have been killed by the men who supposedly loved them.”

The entire theater went so silent that you probably could have heard someone drop a pin. I couldn’t even hear anyone breathing. The saddest thing about this statement was that I actually wondered a few years ago what the statistic was for the number of women who have died from domestic abuse, in light of learning about the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning series written about violence against women in South Carolina. In the series, which I read in full, we learn that in South Carolina, abuse against pet dogs has a harsher and lengthier penalty than abuse against one’s wife. In other words, pets have more rights than women, yet women are human beings. Pets… are just animals.

This is the reality we live in… here in the 21st century, in what is supposed to be one of the most developed nations in the world. And no one seems to care or want to do anything about it.

Shopping in Manhattan Chinatown

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Today, we went to Manhattan Chinatown for a massage, grocery shopping, and a quick early dinner before our show. Chris always makes fun of me because of how excited I get before our Chinatown treks. He knows that I love grocery shopping in Chinatown, and because he is who he is, he loves to poke fun at me endlessly about it.

What can I say? Lots of reasons exist to get excited about shopping in Chinatown for food: it’s the only place in Manhattan where I can reliably get a good selection of all the Asian vegetables I want (hello, morning glory/kong xin cai, gai lan, amaranth, among a dozen others, while Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s only recognize bok choy; where I can find the freshest in-season “exotic fruit” for a reasonable price (six mangoes for $5 in May? $3/pound for longans in July? $2/pound for rambutans in August? Sign me up!); where I can get freshly pressed and made rice noodles and tofu if I wanted (honestly, I rarely buy these… which I am a bit embarrassed to admit). In addition, once I finish buying all my fresh food, I can move onto things that I can stock up on and store, whether it’s fresh egg or wheat noodles for the next day’s dinner (or our freezer), 100% sesame seed paste, or the best brand of soy sauce available in the U.S. for a reasonable price ($1.95! for nearly 16 oz.!). And after all that, we can get a cheap, tasty, and filling meal at a local restaurant before heading home to fill our fridge and freezer. That’s a pretty productive trip!

While I love shopping in Chinatown here, it also makes me reminisce about all the delicious fresh food in markets we’ve visited in Asia, as well as the meals we ate that were always screaming with freshness. In Vietnam, every noodle dish we had was unmistakably made with freshly made rice noodles… never, ever from dried rice noodles that were reconstituted with water. You could just tell from the bite and the chew of the noodle between your teeth. Fresh herbs and raw vegetables were always neatly assembled and laid out with almost every meal, no fail. They looked as though they’d been just washed and picked. In China, all the dry noodle dishes we ate were prepared with just assembled and tossed sauces. And in Thailand, all the curries and dressings used for our salads were made in a mortar and pestle as soon as we finished ordering. Asia was the Land of the Fresh to me. If freshness is key in food to you, Asia is where it’s at.

Reading Maya Angelou

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I got excited when I finally renewed my New York Public Library card after six months of delaying it. All I really needed to do was print out some proof of current residence, like a utility bill, but I kept putting it off until yesterday. I finally did it and renewed my card, which then allowed me not only to access the general public library system, but also to activate my library card and link it to my Libby app, which gives me free access to any digital version of a book that is available through my phone or Kindle. I successfully linked my account to the app, which now gives me access to any book I’d like for free. That’s tax payer dollars at work! The first book I pulled from my reading list was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I’m a little embarrassed to be reading this so late at age 33, given that in many schools across the country this is assigned reading, but hey, it’s better late than never, right? I also decided to commit myself to reading this given all the open bigotry and racism so overtly displayed by President Dipshit as of late. It’s always been going on since he started running to be president, but it’s truly gotten out of control in the last few weeks for anyone who has been paying even remote attention to the news.

This autobiography of Angelou is one of her most famous works, and the first of seven total books in her autobiography. She talks about growing up in the segregated south in the 1930s and 40s and all the bigotry and inequities she and her broken family faced. After her parents divorced, her mom moved to St. Louis, her dad moved to California, and they left her and her older brother Bailey with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The book is easy to follow and immediately sucks you into her world; I’m already half done with it after two evenings of reading it for about an hour each. I think what has really stuck with me is how close she and her brother Bailey are, and how much she truly loves him and constantly expresses it, both in writing and to him. It’s so endearing, yet heartbreaking at the same time. While temporarily in St. Louis staying with their mother and her boyfriend, the mother’s boyfriend rapes Maya. He threatens her and says, “Do you love Bailey?” to which Maya of course confirms she does, very much so. He responds, “If you tell anyone, I will kill him.” She is so shaken by the thought of Bailey dying that she keeps this atrocity she faced at such a young age to herself for days, until finally she got so sick that she had to be hospitalized and was forced to admit the truth.

Bailey kept asking her while in the hospital, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” over and over again. But Maya cannot stomach telling him the truth. She doesn’t want Bailey to know that she was trying to protect him, that she was scared that this man would actually take Bailey’s life.

That’s the power of sibling love. It just really stuck with me through the first half of this book. It reminded me of Ed a lot. He was as protective as he could be of me, and when bad things happened to me that he’d find out about later, he always asked why I wouldn’t tell him sooner. And I always responded the same way: I told him I didn’t want him to worry about me. Yet we did this to each other because he also hid so many things from me… because he didn’t want me to worry about him either.

Dreams from my brother

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I used to hope every year, around the time of the anniversary of Ed’s death, that he’d come back for a visit. This time, as though summoned, he came back a few nights ago during the 6th anniversary of his funeral, which happened seven days after he passed away. We sat in a fully furnished room I didn’t recognize, and out of nowhere came my childhood pet Willie. Willie was my turquoise parakeet, purchased from a private breeder in Pacifica early in my elementary school years. He was just five weeks old when we took him home. He was my little pride and joy; I took care of him fully on my own, feeding and cleaning him and his cage. We tamed him and taught him to speak a number of words, which was impressive given his small size. He passed away when he was about seven years old, when I was in seventh grade. Due to his dangerous curiosity and finding things in our house that had lead, he ate his way to his death, causing a massive accumulation of lead in his tiny tummy. This spurred a cancer growth in him that ultimately ended his little life. I was shocked to see him flying toward me. To see if this was all real (at least, “real” in my dream), and to verify that it was really him, I stood up and ran to the other side of the room, put my arm out, and said, “Willie, come here!”

He recognized his name immediately and flew over to me, landing on my forearm. He then climbed his way up my arm to my shoulder, affectionately nipping the tip of my ear. This was really my little parakeet. It had been too long since I’d last seen him.

“Yep, it’s Willie,” Ed said, staring over at Willie’s little face. “Even after he’s died, he still doesn’t care about me and prefers you.”

Ed used to occasionally taunt Willie, and Willie did not particularly like him very much. He was only attracted to him in the house if my dad or I were not in the room. Then, he’d fly to Ed.

“Do you see him where you are?” I asked him. “Since you’re both dead, do you ever run into him?”

Ed: “Not really. But after you die, it’s not like your relationships get better. They pretty much stay the same with the same people. Where we are, relationships don’t improve or change.”

He seemed so solemn when he said this, as though there was some hint of sadness or regret in his voice. I couldn’t quite understand it.

I didn’t know what to say to him. I was still shocked we were even together, discussing how he and my childhood pet are dead.

“I miss you,” I said to him, looking over at his face. It’s as though all his acne had cleared up and he had perfect skin. Maybe that’s what death does to you.

He put his head in his hands and wouldn’t look at me. “I know… I know,” he said, nearly inaudible. “I can’t do anything for you anymore.”

Then, I woke up. I felt a little distraught, wondering where the heck I was and what just happened. Did I really see Ed, see Willie, in the same place at the same time? Was it real?

I don’t know what any of that meant. But it just made me feel even worse. At least I got to see the both of them again.

When a tornado hits your airport

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My last customer meeting ended at 2pm today, so when I was originally booking my round-trip flight, I wasn’t sure when they would have availability with me and arranged to come back on a 7pm flight. I called AA to rebook me onto an earlier flight, and they placed me on the 5pm flight. At the airport as I was finishing up some work emails, I received a cancellation notice for my flight. While on my computer, some massive grey clouds descended upon Boston Logan airport. For a while, I couldn’t even see through the window because it was like we were being fully drenched in endless streams of water. When the rain dissipated, I tried to go to the nearest gate to see if I could get on the next flight out. And I overheard that a small tornado hovered over the entire Boston Logan airport, resulting in countless cancelled flights, including mine.

I was imagining a tornado spinning, fully surrounding this airport, and imagining all these people, including myself, sitting there, typing away on their computers, reading on their smart phones, completely oblivious. I’m not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.

I silently dealt with the flight rebooking and sat down. Unfortunately, not everyone was as quiet as I was because some rather overweight gentleman came barreling through the crowds of people surrounding the gate I was at while on his phone, complaining at the top of his lungs how mad he was that he had to rebook flights and hotels due to the weather here and how terrible everything is for him. And when he wasn’t done, he proceeded to call four more people to tell them the exact same story. His voice was nearly at shouting volume. Many, many people turned to look his way to give him disapproving looks. He had zero self awareness.

I realize that everyone has different coping mechanisms when travel plans do not work out, but is it really necessary to be complaining loudly so everyone within 200 feet can hear about how horrible your life is when a flight gets cancelled or delayed… when literally every single person standing around you is facing the exact same thing?

Overhyped Boston restaurants

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While I spent four years in college in the Boston area and then subsequently went back very regularly to visit my then boyfriend for three additional years, there was always one restaurant in the North End I always wanted to eat at, but just never got around to because it was infamous for its long wait (they don’t take reservations), plus it was cash only. From what I’d heard, they were also pretty arrogant and had terrible service, but sometimes, that’s just what you deal with to get good food, right?

Finally, this work trip, some friends in the area suggested we eat in the North End, so I asked if we could go to Giacomo’s. We didn’t wait long; in fact, we waited just long enough for our third friend to arrive and got seated right away. It probably helped that it was a Monday night at around 6:30, too. But when we got seated and I took a look at the menu, it all seemed pretty standard. I couldn’t tell if these were all fresh pastas or not. We ordered the veal parmagianno, the fettuccine with mixed seafood, and the lobster ravioli, as well as the fried calamari to start. The fried calamari was mediocre at best, full of fillers, even fried onions and peppers! The veal and the lobster ravioli were delicious. The mixed seafood was all cooked well. But the fettuccine, although al dente, wasn’t anything remarkable. I wondered why a place this famous wouldn’t have fresh, homemade pasta as a default, or even an option on the menu… until I read a Yelp review that said you actually have to “know to ask” for the fresh pasta with a small uncharge. Why should an Italian place have that be an “off menu” item — isn’t that something so basic to their cuisine?! But almost to make up for it, the prices were pretty reasonable, especially for the North End of Boston; with one starter, three mains, and tax and tip, we ended up paying $26 per person, which is pretty unheard of in this part of town.

Giacomo’s has decent Italian food, but other than the for the prices, I’m not sure why this place is so popular and always has crazy lines. It seems far more overhyped than it should be. I definitely think that New York City is infinitely better for Italian food overall, for the range in price points, quality and variety of Italian dishes, as well as.. well, places that actually offer fresh pasta and don’t make it some senseless secret.

Monday, July 29th, again.

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Ed died on Monday, July 22, 2013. In this year 2019, six years have passed since his untimely death, and with Leap Year in between, it also meant that it was also Monday, July 22, just last week, which means that today, Monday, July 29, 2019, is also the same Monday as when we held his funeral. It made me sad to think about this last night, to think about the general somberness and misery in our parents’ house that week, how I edited my eulogy for him on the Sunday before, and even argued with our idiot selfish cousin the night before about some reprinting he wanted to do on the program that I refused.

But I also thought about how although time has passed, although my parents lost a child and my dad had heart surgery in this time, they’re probably even more miserable than ever before. You’d think that if someone had heart surgery, they’d rethink how they want to live life. You’d wonder if someone had something so gut-wrenching and tragic happen such as losing a child that they’d make some positive changes in their life, create a new start. But our parents really haven’t done anything like that at all; instead, they barely float in their day-to-day delusional life, my mom with believing Jehovah will save her if she continues her preaching with her Jehovah’s Witness acquaintances and friends (despite never having even converted a single person), my dad with believing that if he just keeps organizing his pills, pulling more cabinet doors apart and breaking them, and accumulating more clutter and junk in the house that everything will be just fine. But it isn’t. It’s like a big accident waiting to happen. And that freaks me out because we all know that if anything happens like that, I’ll have to suck it up and deal with it.

I like to think that a lot inside of me has changed since moving out on my own, losing Ed, leaving my dysfunctional and constantly angry and resentful family. I worry less. I’m still judgmental, but I judge a lot less. Frankly, I also “care” less than I used to about even the closest people in my life, but I think that’s for the better. I used to obsess about whether certain partners were the right fit for my friends, whether they were really making the right choices for themselves, if X action was really going to produce Y result like they’d romanticize… but then finally I realized that what I perceived as “care” (or really, what my mom perceives as “care” which she instilled in me) is really a disguised form of judgment. There’s an innate sense of “I know what’s better for you than you know what is good for you” message in that, and that’s not really right, is it? I am more patient about some things, like when my colleagues are telling me they’ve had a bad day and want to discuss their parents’ alcoholism or their dad’s abusiveness towards their mom. But I’m also a lot less patient at the same time; I have a higher tendency now than ever before to cut my parents off, tell them when I think they’re doing something thoughtless or stupid, and just to tell them that they’re wrong and going to cause their own premature deaths. It’s not very Confucian of me, but I kind of don’t care. What I will tolerate from them has changed quite a bit. They may never fully acknowledge they are wrong about anything because that’s just who they are and what they always will be. But that doesn’t mean I can’t let them know they’re screwing up along the way. The truth hurts.

Ed is gone. It’s really terrible. I feel the most hurt from it every time I go back to San Francisco and leave again. I think the other thing that always gets me is the lives our parents are living and how they do little to nothing to acknowledge him in any way. I’m sure our mom does some self reflection and self blame from time to time; she’s told me a few times. But with my dad, as per usual, I’m pretty certain he’s just blocked it all out of his head. He has no methodology for handling and acknowledging emotions. Instead, he chooses to spend most of his time talking to himself, yelling and swearing in all the ways he would have wanted to if he had more courage and confronting all the people who supposedly have wronged him… including Ed and me.

Ed would be sad to see them today. Even though his relationship with them was tumultuous, I think inside, he just wanted to them to be healthy and happy; towards the end of his life, he used to tell me that he’d pray for our mom’s health every night. But we both always knew that was pretty much impossible.

Suicide prevention advocate in action

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I’ve been fundraising for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) each year since my brother passed away, and this year will be my sixth year walking in their New York City Out of the Darkness walk to raise awareness. Given that I have been actively sharing my story through the fundraiser and via social media to spread the word, what this has also meant is that many people over the years have also reached out to me in need of help and guidance. I’ve been happy to be that shoulder and support for them, and if anything, I’ve felt really appreciated that they would remember me and my brother and how I’ve tried to increase awareness about suicide and mental health.

While in town in San Francisco this week, a former colleague who had left my company about two years ago reached out randomly on Facebook. She was always someone I respected a lot; she’s extremely intelligent and had a way of working with colleagues that I’d never quite seen before. I remember sending her note before she left, suggesting we stay in touch. We did that, but just over Facebook to date. In her private message, she said that her good friend’s son had attempted suicide and was currently under close watch at a psychiatric ward, and they were all terrified and had no idea what to do and how to help, and the first thought she had was of me. In her life, she said, she’d never met anyone who had talked about depression, mental illness, or suicide, except me, and she’s over 40 years old, and found this fact embarrassing when she shared this with me. She asked if there was a way for us to connect, and so I met her at a local coffee shop near my office here. We talked for over an hour about the situation, navigating through different options, and advising her on things they absolutely needed to do (and not to do).

It was a gut-wrenching situation, and while I do not wish this situation upon anyone, it just goes to show exactly how prevalent mental health is ignored and how suicide ideation and attempts are so much more frequent that we could possibly fathom. She just kept expressing how helpless and alone they all felt. This friend was like a sister to her, and her son was like her own nephew in terms of how close they were. I kept prefacing everything by saying that I wasn’t an expert, that I certainly did not know everything there is to know, but she insisted that just having this conversation openly and without needing to think before she spoke was what calmed her down so much after this horribly intense week. I told her I’d follow up with some resources that might help her and the family, and that I’d be in touch.

If I could help save just one person’s life in my efforts of being open about my own experience through Ed with mental illness, that would be enough for me to know that everything I have done in the last six years has been worthwhile.

When everything is filled with drama

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I had plans this morning to meet my friends for brunch and some time at the botanical gardens, and given timing, I told my parents that I would meet them at the Neptune Columbarium, where Ed’s niche is. I said I would leave the Golden Gate Park area at around 2 to meet them. Somehow, despite telling both of them this twice, they both “heard” me say that I would meet them at the Columbarium at 2pm. My mom called at 2pm as I was waiting for an Uber to pick me up, and she was panicking as she always days, asking me where I am and why I am not there. I repeated again what I originally said, and I can hear both her and my dad in the background claiming that I never said that, that I said I would meet them at 2pm. I told them that they both didn’t hear me correctly and that I was on my way.

Then, as I spent time at Ed’s niche, they both left me alone and wandered around, getting their free coffees from the front office as they always do, and sitting in their car. It’s a great way to bond with your dead son, making sure you are always getting free refreshments from the place that you spent tens of thousands of dollars on his niche at.

I got back into the car, and they immediately started arguing over where to eat for dinner. I told them that I didn’t mind, that they could choose; it wasn’t a big deal to me. My mom gave me an icy tone, saying she wants to “show respect” to me and have me choose. That’s her not-so-thinly-veiled way of saying that I should choose and “care.” I truly do not have a preference, so I said she could choose since she ate at these places more. Then randomly, my mom started marveling over the visit they had with us to the Salesforce Tower roof yesterday with Chris, and she said she really enjoyed the oat milk latte we ordered for her. Dad said out of nowhere that the free latte was tasteless and bland, and he had no idea how anyone could drink something like that. I told him he rarely drinks lattes and doesn’t know what they are supposed to taste like, plus he probably just had the oat foam. In his usual childish and defensive tone, he said I was wrong. Then, he continued to talk to himself and repeat the word “tasteless” about 10 times on our ride home.

Even after we got home, I could still hear him muttering “tasteless” over and over. This is after he not only had a free and beautiful visit at the tallest building in San Francisco to get a 360-degree view of the city, but he also got free coffee and food there, plus a gondola ride and a walk through the Salesforce Park with me, which he got annoyed about within ten minutes of walking around and said he wanted to leave.

I’ve read so many books and articles about mourning, about parent-child relationships, about death. One of the topics that seems to come up repeatedly is that once someone is dead, you start realizing that you end up missing all the things they used to do that would annoy the hell out of you and increase your blood pressure when they were living. For Ed, this could mean asking me really basic questions that I felt given his age, he should be aware of, or asking me the same question three times over the course of 30 minutes. In my parents’ case, it could mean… hey, one day, when my dad isn’t here anymore, I might actually miss how childish he is and how much mothering he needs. I could end up missing how he needs to ask you the same question three times in three different ways in an hour just because he probably wasn’t listening to your answer the first or second time when he asked. I could possibly end up longing for how ungrateful he is for experiences that I expose him to and how little appreciation he has of pretty everything in the world, whether it’s a beautiful view or a free coffee drink (that someone else is ultimately paying for, one way or another). For my mom, I will probably end up missing how she panics over my safety every second of the day, how she insists on packing me oranges or kiwis in my luggage even though I could easily buy these same fruits in New York, how she is overly critical of me and pretty much every human being on earth.

So when I get annoyed, I have to step back for a second and say to myself, maybe I should be grateful they are pissing me off right now and showing a complete lack of gratitude for how kind and generous Chris and I have been with them. Maybe I should be thankful that they are sitting here, able to complain and criticize everyone. Maybe I should be grateful because of the fact that they are actually still alive, and not everyone is as lucky as I am to have one or both parents still alive.

Annoying family meals

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Chris and I planned to have dinner with my parents tonight, but my mom told me last minute that she wanted to bring one of her good friends, as well. I think we all know the reason she wanted to do this: she loves being able to brag about how well her daughter is doing, whether it’s explicit or implicit. I really do not like it, but her friend is actually not the most boring of the people she spends time with, as she actually talks and seems somewhat cultured, so I figured it would be okay.

The conversation really just ended up being between her friend and me. We talked about her recent travels, her cruise, how well her husband, who is pretty much bed-ridden, is doing. And of course, she asked about when we were going to have a baby. She’s personally devastated because she has no faith that her oldest child, her son, will ever meet anyone and be serious enough to get married; then, her daughter, who has been married for over seven years now, seems to be facing some fertility issues. So as a result, she and her husband have decided they will not have children. And because she is so close to my mom, she claims she looks at me like her “second daughter,” so she has all eyes on me and a potential growing belly.

I told her she’d find out when anything new happened. I left it at that. But that answer apparently was not enough, as she asked a second time. “When will you have babies?”

I’m not really sure what kind of a different response you expect when ten minutes have passed, but it was not fun. And to add to the annoyance is my mom saying, “I’ve been waiting and looking forward, but I’ve heard no news!”

And then Chris, to stoke the fire, said, “We have no plans!”

I left to use the restroom. And Chris let me know afterwards that my mom and her friend proceeded to have a 1:1 conversation about why we were not having babies: they travel too much for fun, they travel too much for work, what are they going to do with travel once they have a baby; they might stop traveling; no, they will continue traveling.

When I hear conversations like these, I always wonder: are people choosing to have these pointless conversations because they truly have nothing else to discuss at all or look forward to?