Happy un-Valentine’s Day

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After our first year together, Chris and I have stopped “celebrating” Valentine’s Day. I still make him a card every year, but other than that, we typically don’t do anything special on that day. And a few days over the last several years, one of us has had work travel. This year, he’s away, so I ended up having a dinner of hand-pulled noodles tonight with my good friend instead.

My friend and I have been friends for 20 years, since we were both 11. Whenever I see her, I’m always excited to hang out. Nothing is ever scripted, sometimes things aren’t even fully planned, and I never have to think about topics to discuss. That’s the greatest thing about having a friend in your life that long: once you reach a certain level of comfort, you can feel free to literally shoot the shit, or really not talk about anything at all, and you will still have fun and enjoy each others’ company. We don’t talk about work or “popular topics” that people discuss; we just discuss whatever is on our minds. It’s like the way our minds work; we flow from one topic to another, even when the initial topic had nothing to do with the next.

Friendships like these are the reason it seems so exhausting to meet new people and start at square one again.

At the end of a Mother’s Reckoning

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After seeing the Sue Klebold TED Talk where Klebold discusses the mass murder her son participated in at Columbine High School, I felt compelled to read her book A Mother’s Reckoning, so I picked it up from the library and finished it in four days. Needless to say, the Columbine shooting shook the entire country, if not the world, and opened our eyes to so many issues that are still a problem today: mental health and illness, the dangers and life-long lingering effects of bullying, gun violence and control, among others. I’ve finished reading the book, and have also spent a decent amount of time reading news articles covering the mass murder at the time, and also Amazon reader reviews, and this is generally what I think.

Sue Klebold is so right in that it’s so easy for us to say as outsiders that it’s easy to blame the parents. If you have never experienced the suicide of a loved one, or a suicide-homicide in her case, it’s easy for you to think that it could never affect your own life or that of someone you love who is close to you. You think to yourself, “if I had a friend/brother/sister/daughter/son/etc. who was going through that, I’d have to know.” No, you don’t have to know. No, you wouldn’t always be able to tell the signs. Sometimes it’s the people closest to us who have the most to hide and are the best actors. All of our lives are busy, and all of us are always going to overlook things that in hindsight, may seem obvious. We are all human beings, after all, and we are prone to error in judgment. We need to accept that we are not infallible. I’ve personally had to accept that every day since Ed’s death.

It’s hard for me to blame Sue Klebold and her husband the way so many readers and outsiders do because at the end of the day, don’t all parents “try their best”? Their best may not be your best or my best, but it’s to the best of their ability, as all of our spheres of knowledge are so different. Of course, the book is written by her, so it’s obvious she would want to portray her and her (now ex-) husband as good parents (which could make a potential reader think she would be an unreliable narrator), but that also seems to be the general consensus of those around them, as well, who knew them. She is also brutally honest in revealing all the “danger signs” that she and Dylan’s dad chose to either ignore or overlook at the time. She’s really using this book as a way to be a warning to all parents even non-parents out there: be aware that you may never fully know your child, but also look out for signs like all these that I failed to see. And I personally think that is so brave of her. It’s even braver of her to put herself out there in the world, volunteering for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, going to conferences around the country to share her story, despite all the hate and death threats that she has received.

One thing she does repeatedly in the book is refer to mental health as “brain health” instead of mental health. She says she does this because “mental health” is not something people can see or grasp, and therefore it is easier to ignore or avoid it; if we refer to it as “brain health,” it’s more visible, and it forces us to see that it’s part of our head. It’s an interesting concept, one that a number of readers have complained about, but I do think it could have some merit. Her argument is correct: it’s hard even for the medical community to take “mental health” seriously. Isn’t that why so many suicide attempts and hospitalizations are treated so poorly and handled in a way that wrongly treats suicide attempts as a conscious and active “choice” rather than a poorly made decision in a medical state of emergency?

Bo ssam

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I spent 6.5 hours slow roasting a pork shoulder in preparation for bo ssam, or Korean-style slow roasted pork shoulder, to be torn up and served with ssamjang (homemade Korean barbecue paste), ginger scallion sauce, rice, and lettuce. It actually wasn’t much work, as the oven does the cooking. The one thing that took the most time were the ginger scallion sauce since I had to finely mince a decent amount of scallions and ginger.

When I was growing up, up until I started eating dinner at my friends’ homes and out at restaurants with my friends’ families, I was exposed to an extremely limited amount of food. Sure, I had a lot of good food — my grandmother and aunt made some of the best (and most laborious) Cantonese dishes, my mom made delicious potstickers, stews, and Vietnamese dishes, and my dad exposed me to different types of meatloaf and biscuits — but they were all in the realm of Cantonese, Vietnamese, or generic American-household foods like spaghetti or mashed potatoes. I had no idea that Thai curry existed; I never knew people ate pasta with sauces that weren’t red. And I definitely would not have known that in many parts of the world and even within China, bread was actually the primary household staple, not rice.

But what I hope is that when we have children that I’ll continue to have the desire and love to experiment with recipes of cultures other than our own. So many people have found it comical that I know how to make Indian food, even making my own curry mixes. Other people laugh when they hear I am making Korean or Turkish dishes. But I think this is important for knowledge and to ensure our future children are exposed to a wide variety of cultures via these cultures’ foods. What better way to learn about and appreciate other cultures than eating their cuisine?

Linda

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Tonight, we went to see the play Linda, which is about the woman “who has it all” — a high powered career, a husband, and a family of two daughters. Funnily enough, she works for a beauty brand that has anti-aging products, and she attempts to change the brand direction in a way that her boss, the company, and the mainstream would not respond positively to. She is eventually replaced with a woman who is only 25 years old to give a “fresh” take on the anti-aging cream they are trying to market, and she is broken. Many other things start spiraling out of control: she catches her husband sleeping with a 20-something-year-old in their own home; her oldest daughter is haunted by the bullying she experienced in high school and fails to mature into the adult she hoped she become. The show was pretty much all working women’s dreams shattered into bits of glass.

It’s hard to watch shows like this without wondering what my life is going to be like once we have children and how to “balance” it all – husband, children, career; family life and work life all at once. How do you successfully be both a mom and a wife, someone who is engaged in her children but also is romantic and attentive to the man she had these children with? How do you show enough attention but not smother your children? How do you keep the romance of your married life going after so many years? How do you make sure your children understand why you work and that it’s also to set an example for them, not just to support them and keep the roof over their heads?

So many questions, and so few answers.

Homicide and suicide

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Since I was 11, I’ve been actively reading about mental health, illness, and suicide. It was obviously influenced by my brother’s first suicide attempt and his condition, as I’m quite certain the average 11-year-old doesn’t seek out information like this in his/her free time. Now, as a suicide loss survivor (as I’m told I am labeled now), I still actively read news and publications around mental health and suicide prevention. It seems as though it doesn’t matter whether I am 11 or 31, or whether I am a loss survivor or potentially one day a social worker or mental health educator; we will never fully know “enough” to completely and truly understand the complexities of depression, the desire for suicide, or the ultimate ways to rationally separate the notion of ending suffering from ending life for someone who is in need.

So a few days ago, a TED Talk from November 2016 popped up in my Facebook feed, and it happened to be done by Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two teenagers who were responsible for the mass murder at Columbine High School in 1999. Her son was deeply depressed, but his depression went completely undetected by both her and her husband, their older son, and the school and its staff. That then begs the question of: how does a suicidal tendency become a homicidal one at the same time? She doesn’t answer the question in her TED talk, as that would be very difficult to answer given the sparse data we have on this, but she does touch on the suffering that can go undetected with even the most careful eyes, and the idea that no matter how loving and attentive you are as a parent, you may never fully know your children at all.

It was only about 15 minutes of presentation, but it was still really hard for me to watch. We forget this when we remember Columbine, but it was a mass murder and a suicide. Two boys took their own lives after killing 13 others. Their parents have to live every day knowing that not only did their sons murder over a dozen people, but their sons also shot themselves dead by choice. I still have moments throughout the day now when I acutely feel the pain of losing my brother to suicide, and it’s been over three and a half years now. I cannot even begin to fathom the pain of losing him and knowing that he could have taken the lives of others, as well.

Isn’t that a scary thought, though, that you could bring human beings into the world who you never ultimately know or understand at all? The thought is so chilling.

That’s kind of how I feel about my parents. Except at least I’m not a mass murderer.

Snow storm day

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Today’s a snow day, which means the majority of white-collar New York City is not going into the office. It means there will be less traffic on the roads, less people on the subway, and not a whole lot of anyone outside. When I stepped outside to walk to the gym, I even saw cars and snow plowers running through red lights. This is the sleepy version of New York’s Upper East Side when vehicles don’t even obey the traffic lights.

The snow day also meant that the New York Public Library, among endless businesses, either decided to remain closed for the day, or open much later or for limited hours. I tried to pick up some books I had at the library, but the doors were locked.

“It’s a snow day so you don’t even have to go to work?! Your city is so lazy!” Ben exclaimed to me over Whatsapp.

He’s probably right. We’re a bunch of entitled and lazy New Yorkers.

Taro root cake

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When I look back on my childhood, some of my fondest memories are of watching my grandmother cook. Like most Asian grandmothers, she never had any written recipes and measured and did everything by touch, feel, smell, and taste. Her taro root cake, or yu tou gao/wul tow gou, was always one of my very favorite things. She never skimped on Chinese sausage, Chinese bacon, shiitake, mushrooms, dried scallops, and dried shrimp, and she always steamed them and would serve them as is. She never fried them the way most Chinese households do, though I do this now when I make it because… who can resist these slices lightly pan-fried?

Remembering how good this tasted growing up, it was always such a miserable experience to select it during dim sum at any Cantonese restaurant and see what they called taro cake; the restaurants always skimped on the filling ingredients. Without the lush (and expensive) filling ingredients, the cake was never going to be as good as I remembered, so long ago I stopped ordering it to make it myself. It was no wonder I met so many people who didn’t care for Chinese savory taro cake; they weren’t having it in its prime form. It’s a massive labor of love, requiring soaking the dried mushrooms, scallops, and shrimp; steaming the Chinese sausage and bacon, a God-awful amount of cutting and mincing, then another batch of steaming and frying, but the end result has never left me feeling like I wasted time and could have just bought it outside. Homemade taro cake is unrivaled. When I see the sad cakes in bakeries across Chinatown, I can tell they were stingy on the ingredients, so no amount of money would be worth paying for those.

Some traditions are worth saving, and taro cake will be mine every Chinese New Year.

Wedding scrapbook completed

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It’s been less than a year since our wedding, and I’ve managed to finally complete our wedding scrapbook. It has all three days of our events, plus some of the planning documents (tasting notes, wedding day schedule) for it. It’s over 62 12×12-inch pages of memories. It’s crazy to think that we spent about 14 months planning this event that lasted three days and is now summarized into 62 pages.

I speak with a lot of people — friends, friends of friends, colleagues, and see so much negative wedding and wedding planning commentary. There’s always going to be a lot of stress in planning a large event with a group of people that is more than a handful, but when I flip through these pages and relive those three days in March, all I can think about is how worth it it was to have spent all that time and energy planning to be surrounded by the people we love most in life. It’s even more exciting when your friends and family still talk about it and marvel over how much fun it was, how delicious the food was, and how gorgeous my dress looked. It’s cliche, but I haven’t had a single regret about any of it, not even the money spent. This scrapbook is a reminder of a truly happy period, and is a seg way into the next happy and hopeful period of our life together.

Controlling food costs

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I’m in a number of different Facebook groups, and some of the most active ones are through my college network. We have a Foodies for Wellesley Alums group that I read almost every other day, and I occasionally contribute when I have recipes to recommend or suggestions based on questions that other alums post. One of the questions this week that left me thinking quite a bit was from an alum who is part of a growing family of four, and because her husband will be quitting his job soon, she wants to try to limit their household grocery bill to $100/week. I thought about this and how hard that would be, especially if you want a diet filled with fresh produce, meat, and dairy.

I go to a number of different places to buy our groceries, whether it’s staples like spices and rice, or fresh produce, and what inevitably always drives up the bill are the costs of fresh produce in New York city, whether it’s fruit or vegetables. If I’m buying fish or any type of seafood, that will increase the bill significantly, as well. The only way I’d see achieving this for a family of four in New York would be if you almost exclusively ate canned or frozen produce and kept fish and meat purchases to a minimum.

Lady Gaga and Half Time

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I’ve never liked the Super Bowl, and I will never like football — at least, the American kind. But one thing I have enjoyed in recent years is the Super Bowl Half Time performance (clearly, I am not representative of the American populace). I was especially looking forward to Lady Gaga’s performance tonight after reading that the NFL explicitly told her not to say anything political during the show. I knew she’d do something to make it political, and that the conservatives would probably be too blind to catch it.

From beginning with “This Land is Your Land” to the order of the songs she sang, it was very clear she was saying she was against President Dipshit’s poorly thought out travel ban, as well as just him as POTUS in general. I loved seeing all the commentary on Facebook after the show, where users are moaning on about people trying to make a non-political performance political. Wake up, peeps.