In the dream, she was visiting Santa Rosa and planning all these fun touristy things with some girlfriends of hers that she hadn't seen in a long time. She was really excited, girlish about it, happy. It was nice to see.
She had let me know she was coming--I think she and I were attending a wedding that we'd both come to independently, and I had had to find her among the wedding guests. When I found her, she seemed pleased but not ecstatic to see me, and she was distracted, talking to this friend and the other about their sightseeing plans. I realized she hadn't planned any time to spend with me on her trip.
I asked where she was staying, and when I found out it was just blocks away from our house, I suggested she come and see the place. I really, really wanted her to see it, and to see how happy my life is now with Jam Guy in our sweet little home.
And she dithered about it, looking uncomfortable, explained she just couldn't make the time, and when I didn't buy that, she made it more or less clear that she didn't think it would be that much fun, that in fact it sounded boring, and she was not on this trip to endure boredom. She didn't want to see the place or spend time with me; she wanted to have fun with her friends and enjoy wine country. She didn't want to spend her vacation being a mother. She wanted to take a break and just be, uncomplicatedly, a woman.
In the dream my feelings were deeply hurt. When I woke up, though, I thought, doesn't everyone deserve a break from their responsibilities once in a while? A breather? I am not really sure what the answer to this is. Maybe we don't. Maybe some responsibilities are ours to carry 24/7 and lifelong, whether we chose them or not.
Maybe we only escape them when we leave our lives for good. Maybe that's what my dream was about--my mother is no longer someone that I can ask for a stamp of approval on things like my house, my fiance, my life. Now the responsibility for that, for deciding I'm allowed this luxury of joy, lies on me. And that even if it took me a lifetime and hard loss to learn this, maybe it is time to see that the responsibility for claiming my happiness was always mine and mine alone, never truly hers, never anyone else's.
Or maybe the dream was just about wishing so hard my mother could come and see how happy I am, finally, and share it with me.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Year of abundance
Since about December 30th, I've been relentlessly insisting that 2009 will be "the year of abundance." So far, so very, very good: my genius sister placed first in a national playwriting competition, Jam Guy has with abundant energy replaced the roof on our greenhouse and built us a bed, Surfrunner welcomed a new baby nephew, I passed my boards and can start planning to start my practice. We are making new friends and enriching old friendships. Oh! And this afternoon, after like six months of applying to practically every single job I qualify for within a half-hour's drive because sitting at home not working is messing with my head, I started a part-time temp job at a county land preservation agency that's a ten-minute bike ride away--not a dream job, but exactly what I need in these months while I'm building a practice, and anyways in this economy a proffered job is a bird in the hand that I would be foolish to let go.
Meanwhile all the other manifestations of abundance that came into being in 2008 and in prior years are still novel to me: being engaged to someone so remarkable and kind and fun to hang out with, living in a home that is everything I want in a home, living in an area that is a phenomenal balance of rural and citified, landing in a career that makes me look forward to working.
In traditional Chinese medicine, all emotions taken to an extreme are pathological. It's easy to see how things like anger, grief, and anxiety can harm a person. But even joy is pathological when there is too much of it, when there is constant joy and no moments apart from it for quiet contemplation; joy as opposed to contentment, say, without a break from it, is not much to complain about but does overstimulate, exhaust. It is said to slow down the qi--a good example is the person who's constantly partying or seeking the next party, who however tends not to provide the most focused or logical conversation.
Again, it is not much to complain about, and I am not complaining. But in the last couple of years I've gone from a lot of despair to a lot of bliss , and there is a definite and necessary adjustment period. Adjusting to happiness is a very, very good situation to be in, even if it means I haven't slept well since getting my pass notice and have been all scatterbrained and underfocused. I am almost certain that this state of insomniac spaced-out-ness is a symptom of the deep, hard-to-reconcile contrast between my past and my present--the way that when you manage to stop a vehicle hurtling towards certain destruction, you get whiplash, but your gratitude at being alive at all makes the temporary ache so entirely bearable.
Meanwhile all the other manifestations of abundance that came into being in 2008 and in prior years are still novel to me: being engaged to someone so remarkable and kind and fun to hang out with, living in a home that is everything I want in a home, living in an area that is a phenomenal balance of rural and citified, landing in a career that makes me look forward to working.
In traditional Chinese medicine, all emotions taken to an extreme are pathological. It's easy to see how things like anger, grief, and anxiety can harm a person. But even joy is pathological when there is too much of it, when there is constant joy and no moments apart from it for quiet contemplation; joy as opposed to contentment, say, without a break from it, is not much to complain about but does overstimulate, exhaust. It is said to slow down the qi--a good example is the person who's constantly partying or seeking the next party, who however tends not to provide the most focused or logical conversation.
Again, it is not much to complain about, and I am not complaining. But in the last couple of years I've gone from a lot of despair to a lot of bliss , and there is a definite and necessary adjustment period. Adjusting to happiness is a very, very good situation to be in, even if it means I haven't slept well since getting my pass notice and have been all scatterbrained and underfocused. I am almost certain that this state of insomniac spaced-out-ness is a symptom of the deep, hard-to-reconcile contrast between my past and my present--the way that when you manage to stop a vehicle hurtling towards certain destruction, you get whiplash, but your gratitude at being alive at all makes the temporary ache so entirely bearable.
Monday, January 26, 2009
New Year's Day Dinner!
Happy Chinese New Year!
Okay--I took one of these photos, Jam Guy took the rest. Guess which one I took.
The spread
Fried trout with black bean sauce and garden greens
Wontons, from our inexact family recipe
Changde Rice Noodles with Red-Braised Beef, from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province by Fuschia Dunlop
and the somewhat incongruous but super-festive and delicious Chocolate-Cherry Upside Down Cake, from Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family, by Norma Jean and Carol Darden.
I know. We used the same camera and everything.
Okay--I took one of these photos, Jam Guy took the rest. Guess which one I took.
The spread
Fried trout with black bean sauce and garden greens
Wontons, from our inexact family recipe
Changde Rice Noodles with Red-Braised Beef, from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province by Fuschia Dunlop
and the somewhat incongruous but super-festive and delicious Chocolate-Cherry Upside Down Cake, from Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family, by Norma Jean and Carol Darden.
I know. We used the same camera and everything.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
RIP Stacey II.
Today we laid to rest a treasured member of our household, Stacey II, our betta fish.
Stacey II lived on the table in my San Diego apartment that served as a dining area, study zone, and entertainment center. I chatted with him every day that we lived there together. He was beautiful, with red and blue fins, and awfully assertive. He jumped for his food sometimes. He traveled to Santa Rosa with us in a Mason jar with holes in the lid, snuggled into the passenger-side cupholder, under a little awning of a Google Maps printout to protect him from the sun.
Yesterday Jam Guy and I noticed Stacey II--who was named after Stacey the First, a betta fish I loved and lost and deeply mourned when I was in second grade--was not acting himself. An internet search revealed that he most likely had "swim bladder disorder" and needed to fast for three days and then be fed a mashed up, peeled, thawed pea. We changed his water and made sure not to feed him, and by last night we were hopeful he was getting better. Today, though, he was clearly in bad shape, and he passed away this afternoon.
Jam Guy dug a hole in the garden, and we each said a few words for Stacey II. His little body will nourish our vegetables in this new year, and wherever he is, he is at peace and in a better place.
We will miss you, Stacey II. You were a good fish and a good friend.
Stacey II lived on the table in my San Diego apartment that served as a dining area, study zone, and entertainment center. I chatted with him every day that we lived there together. He was beautiful, with red and blue fins, and awfully assertive. He jumped for his food sometimes. He traveled to Santa Rosa with us in a Mason jar with holes in the lid, snuggled into the passenger-side cupholder, under a little awning of a Google Maps printout to protect him from the sun.
Yesterday Jam Guy and I noticed Stacey II--who was named after Stacey the First, a betta fish I loved and lost and deeply mourned when I was in second grade--was not acting himself. An internet search revealed that he most likely had "swim bladder disorder" and needed to fast for three days and then be fed a mashed up, peeled, thawed pea. We changed his water and made sure not to feed him, and by last night we were hopeful he was getting better. Today, though, he was clearly in bad shape, and he passed away this afternoon.
Jam Guy dug a hole in the garden, and we each said a few words for Stacey II. His little body will nourish our vegetables in this new year, and wherever he is, he is at peace and in a better place.
We will miss you, Stacey II. You were a good fish and a good friend.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Last week I dreamed
that I was back at Camp Timberline in Mokuleia, Hawai'i, where I'd spent at least one weekend a year at chorus rehearsal camp from sixth grade till I went to college, plus here and there a second or even third weekend in a year for some school event or another. I dreamed that I was there as the adult I am now, with a lot of the other alumnae of the chorus. But my sister was also there, and some other non-alumni of the choir and friends I'd met as an adult; none of them had been to the camp before. I couldn't wait to show them this place that held so many of my memories.
The first place I wanted to take them was the mess hall, which I remembered being up a small flight of stairs. But the stairs were gone, apparently succumbed to neglect and covered with dirt. In their place was a steep hill, which I thought I could run up if I was quick enough. I tried, but found myself on my hands and knees, grasping handfuls of dirt, making slow and clumsy progress--while some of my fellow alumnae ran lightly past me, and quickly out of my field of vision.Eventually I found the old staircase, which was so much steeper than I remembered that I found myself trying to climb it like a ladder. But the wood was rotten and crumbled away in my hands as I grabbed it. I was already halfway up the hill, which seemed to be getting taller and taller, and I didn't want to fall. I found myself in a race against the crumbling wood, hoping I could grab it and pull myself upwards in the split-second between when I touched the ladder and when it disintegrated. It wasn't working, but it slowed my descent from a free fall into a slow, scrambling sink.
I sank down the hillside with my hands full of dirt and rotten wood, slowly, in spite of all my flailing, getting further and further away from the place I'd hoped to revisit some of my happier childhood memories.
It has been a difficult couple of weeks for me, recovering slowly from my trip to Tampa and the flu I seem to have brought home with me. In Tampa, my sister and I went through what felt like a million old photo albums that my father and his new wife did not want to store any more, filled with pictures of my parents as a young couple and the two of us as children. We mailed them to ourselves. We were presented with my mother's jewelry, most of which we vividly remember her wearing; we held her wedding ring set and wondered about another mysterious wedding ring set which we'd never seen her wear. We don't know anyone to ask about it. We divided the jewelry and brought it back to our respective homes.
Home, I held the pieces of jewelry in my hands. I pored over the photographs of my mother as a teenager, as a young woman, as a new mother, as a mother to two young women as emotionally fragile as she herself was, and I tried to find answers to questions I can't ask her anymore. I tried on her wedding ring set and found she had the same, tiny, difficult-to-find ring size as I do.
It is not enough.
I have spent the last two weeks mostly watching reruns of The Wonder Years, which I remembered after I started watching it is a show my mother loved. I haven't watched it since it originally aired starting twenty years ago. I didn't remember more than the very basic elements of its plot. But amazingly, as the episodes rolled forward, I remembered exactly the spots where she'd burst into laughter. I could almost hear her. I heard, certainly, the absence of her laughter in the spots where I hadn't realized I was expecting it until it wasn't there. I remembered, with cold-water clarity, her voice, which is the part of her, more than any other, I always fear I am forgetting, and the sound of her laughter, which I always fear I didn't hear enough.
I think I know what my dream was about. It was my subconscious poking at me, reminding me of the impossibility of regaining my childhood. It was telling me that no matter how many afternoons I spent staring at old photos or how many baubles I tried on, my past is at the top of a steep and unclimbable hill, something I can try to examine in a limited, distant way, but never re-enter. Trying to come back under its cover is futile, unproductive, messy, exhausting. Nothing there can be changed or kept. It is time to come all the way back into the present.
The first place I wanted to take them was the mess hall, which I remembered being up a small flight of stairs. But the stairs were gone, apparently succumbed to neglect and covered with dirt. In their place was a steep hill, which I thought I could run up if I was quick enough. I tried, but found myself on my hands and knees, grasping handfuls of dirt, making slow and clumsy progress--while some of my fellow alumnae ran lightly past me, and quickly out of my field of vision.Eventually I found the old staircase, which was so much steeper than I remembered that I found myself trying to climb it like a ladder. But the wood was rotten and crumbled away in my hands as I grabbed it. I was already halfway up the hill, which seemed to be getting taller and taller, and I didn't want to fall. I found myself in a race against the crumbling wood, hoping I could grab it and pull myself upwards in the split-second between when I touched the ladder and when it disintegrated. It wasn't working, but it slowed my descent from a free fall into a slow, scrambling sink.
I sank down the hillside with my hands full of dirt and rotten wood, slowly, in spite of all my flailing, getting further and further away from the place I'd hoped to revisit some of my happier childhood memories.
It has been a difficult couple of weeks for me, recovering slowly from my trip to Tampa and the flu I seem to have brought home with me. In Tampa, my sister and I went through what felt like a million old photo albums that my father and his new wife did not want to store any more, filled with pictures of my parents as a young couple and the two of us as children. We mailed them to ourselves. We were presented with my mother's jewelry, most of which we vividly remember her wearing; we held her wedding ring set and wondered about another mysterious wedding ring set which we'd never seen her wear. We don't know anyone to ask about it. We divided the jewelry and brought it back to our respective homes.
Home, I held the pieces of jewelry in my hands. I pored over the photographs of my mother as a teenager, as a young woman, as a new mother, as a mother to two young women as emotionally fragile as she herself was, and I tried to find answers to questions I can't ask her anymore. I tried on her wedding ring set and found she had the same, tiny, difficult-to-find ring size as I do.
It is not enough.
I have spent the last two weeks mostly watching reruns of The Wonder Years, which I remembered after I started watching it is a show my mother loved. I haven't watched it since it originally aired starting twenty years ago. I didn't remember more than the very basic elements of its plot. But amazingly, as the episodes rolled forward, I remembered exactly the spots where she'd burst into laughter. I could almost hear her. I heard, certainly, the absence of her laughter in the spots where I hadn't realized I was expecting it until it wasn't there. I remembered, with cold-water clarity, her voice, which is the part of her, more than any other, I always fear I am forgetting, and the sound of her laughter, which I always fear I didn't hear enough.
I think I know what my dream was about. It was my subconscious poking at me, reminding me of the impossibility of regaining my childhood. It was telling me that no matter how many afternoons I spent staring at old photos or how many baubles I tried on, my past is at the top of a steep and unclimbable hill, something I can try to examine in a limited, distant way, but never re-enter. Trying to come back under its cover is futile, unproductive, messy, exhausting. Nothing there can be changed or kept. It is time to come all the way back into the present.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Last night I dreamed
that my good friend D., whom I originally met in New York but got to know well in San Diego, was housesitting this amazing place in Hawai'i or the Caribbean, or somewhere sort of tropical. It was a beautiful, slightly ominous mansion--more like a castle or a palace, all white marble, overlooking cliffs where huge waves crashed under dark roiling clouds. It wasn't really beach weather, which is probably why the people who owned the house weren't there.
So D.'s job in this house was to feed their collection of this exotic, red crustacean. Sounds simple, except that these crustaceans lived in this very deep, narrow pool that occupied its own room of the house--a pool with a very small circumference that went down maybe 20 yards--like a well. The little crabs or crayfish or whatever they were couldn't swim and couldn't breathe above water; they just all clung to the sides of the pool, so that its entire inner surface except for the very bottom was plastered with their small, hard, burn-colored shells.
Apparently the only way to feed the crustaceans was for a reasonably strong, experienced swimmer to dive straight to the bottom of the well, place the food there at the bottom (I guess it was some sort of weighted packet that gradually dispersed food upwards) and then ascend straight upwards. The key was to not touch any of the little crustacean bodies on the way up--because apparently these crustaceans, while not aggressive, would lash out and bite if touched, and their bite was fatally venomous. All of this made feeding them a very stressful undertaking.
Nervously, I watched D. feed the crustaceans. When he came up not dead, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then he asked me if I'd feed them while he went out of town over the next couple of days. I thought, No way, while hearing myself say "Okay, sure."
I dreamed of peering into the well the next day, reminding myself that I am a pretty decent swimmer, though not by any means an expert diver. I drew a deep breath and dove in headfirst, letting out my breath as I descended in a straight line, clutching the food packet, somehow managing not to touch any of the deadly little shells surrounding me. I thought about how much I was risking, how no one besides D., who was out of town, knew I was doing this. I thought, I just have to get through the next few seconds and I will be fine--just put the food down, turn around, swim straight back up, pull yourself out. One step at a time. Then I thought, How am I going to turn around?
I put the food down and then curled myself double somehow, touching my toes, and, in the improbable kind of thing we do in dreams, somehow snaked myself right-side-up and held myself rigidly straight as I floated to the surface.
When I was safely out of the water, I decided I would never, ever, ever again agree to feed someone's pet deadly-poisonous crustaceans at the bottom of a well. Shaken, I started to walk--I don't know where--home?
In dreams, I am almost always somewhere that I don't live--on vacation, or on a business trip, or at camp, or fleeing a war zone. I am often some kind of fugitive, or on some kind of mission, or both. Rarely in a dream do I sigh and think, well, my errands for the day are done; I'll just go home.
But in this dream, after successfully feeding the toxic crustaceans*, I was walking along one of those outdoor hallways that apartment buildings in warm climates tend to have. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement, and when I turned, I saw Miss Laura Van Holt (of The Famous Chronicles) whom I know via my dear friend Mayumi, washing the outside wall of her 30th-floor apartment. She was standing on one of those ladders like they have outside water towers, comprised entirely of metal rungs stuck into the side of the building. I called to her, "Laura! Honey, what are you doing?" (It is only in dreams, mostly in dreams that occur after I visit places like Tampa, that I ever call people "Honey" in a Southern accent.)
"Washing my wall," Laura said. "I figured, why pay someone to do something I could do myself?"
"But you don't have a harness, or a net, or anything!"
"Well," she pointed out, "that's only a problem if I let go of the ladder."
I considered calling Mayumi to tell her that her friend was acting crazy, but then I wondered if maybe it was me being crazy, or paranoid, or hypervigilant. After all, I'd just voluntarily slipped underwater into a narrow space filled with deadly shrimps, or something, after watching my friend do exactly the same thing. Maybe, I pondered in my dream, that is just what life is--all of it is always at stake, everything is loaded with risk, every step you take is as precarious as the steps my friend balanced on thirty stories above the ground; every breath you take is as crucial, as potentially ultimate, as the one I took before diving into the well.
*Band name!
So D.'s job in this house was to feed their collection of this exotic, red crustacean. Sounds simple, except that these crustaceans lived in this very deep, narrow pool that occupied its own room of the house--a pool with a very small circumference that went down maybe 20 yards--like a well. The little crabs or crayfish or whatever they were couldn't swim and couldn't breathe above water; they just all clung to the sides of the pool, so that its entire inner surface except for the very bottom was plastered with their small, hard, burn-colored shells.
Apparently the only way to feed the crustaceans was for a reasonably strong, experienced swimmer to dive straight to the bottom of the well, place the food there at the bottom (I guess it was some sort of weighted packet that gradually dispersed food upwards) and then ascend straight upwards. The key was to not touch any of the little crustacean bodies on the way up--because apparently these crustaceans, while not aggressive, would lash out and bite if touched, and their bite was fatally venomous. All of this made feeding them a very stressful undertaking.
Nervously, I watched D. feed the crustaceans. When he came up not dead, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then he asked me if I'd feed them while he went out of town over the next couple of days. I thought, No way, while hearing myself say "Okay, sure."
I dreamed of peering into the well the next day, reminding myself that I am a pretty decent swimmer, though not by any means an expert diver. I drew a deep breath and dove in headfirst, letting out my breath as I descended in a straight line, clutching the food packet, somehow managing not to touch any of the deadly little shells surrounding me. I thought about how much I was risking, how no one besides D., who was out of town, knew I was doing this. I thought, I just have to get through the next few seconds and I will be fine--just put the food down, turn around, swim straight back up, pull yourself out. One step at a time. Then I thought, How am I going to turn around?
I put the food down and then curled myself double somehow, touching my toes, and, in the improbable kind of thing we do in dreams, somehow snaked myself right-side-up and held myself rigidly straight as I floated to the surface.
When I was safely out of the water, I decided I would never, ever, ever again agree to feed someone's pet deadly-poisonous crustaceans at the bottom of a well. Shaken, I started to walk--I don't know where--home?
In dreams, I am almost always somewhere that I don't live--on vacation, or on a business trip, or at camp, or fleeing a war zone. I am often some kind of fugitive, or on some kind of mission, or both. Rarely in a dream do I sigh and think, well, my errands for the day are done; I'll just go home.
But in this dream, after successfully feeding the toxic crustaceans*, I was walking along one of those outdoor hallways that apartment buildings in warm climates tend to have. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement, and when I turned, I saw Miss Laura Van Holt (of The Famous Chronicles) whom I know via my dear friend Mayumi, washing the outside wall of her 30th-floor apartment. She was standing on one of those ladders like they have outside water towers, comprised entirely of metal rungs stuck into the side of the building. I called to her, "Laura! Honey, what are you doing?" (It is only in dreams, mostly in dreams that occur after I visit places like Tampa, that I ever call people "Honey" in a Southern accent.)
"Washing my wall," Laura said. "I figured, why pay someone to do something I could do myself?"
"But you don't have a harness, or a net, or anything!"
"Well," she pointed out, "that's only a problem if I let go of the ladder."
I considered calling Mayumi to tell her that her friend was acting crazy, but then I wondered if maybe it was me being crazy, or paranoid, or hypervigilant. After all, I'd just voluntarily slipped underwater into a narrow space filled with deadly shrimps, or something, after watching my friend do exactly the same thing. Maybe, I pondered in my dream, that is just what life is--all of it is always at stake, everything is loaded with risk, every step you take is as precarious as the steps my friend balanced on thirty stories above the ground; every breath you take is as crucial, as potentially ultimate, as the one I took before diving into the well.
*Band name!
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