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Body: in sickness and in health

I won't lie; this body and I have had our issues with each other for many years. Body image -- sure. Physical and mental overextension -- comes with being a Type A kind of girl. I still struggle with these things, so they show up from time to time in my writing.

More recently, illness, pure but not simple, has added itself to the mix in a multi-system sort of way. And the challenges in figuring out exactly what's gone wrong are many. As problems have revealed themselves in the last few years, beginning with reactive hypoglycemia in late 2008, I've documented them here, partly to gain a little clarity on managing complex conditions but mostly to give voice to vulnerabilities I feel but don't normally share with anyone face to face. Better out than in, they say, right? (Oh yes, humor is one way I deal.)

The links below cover the different angles I've examined (and from which I've been examined) within that experience.

Travel: neither here nor there

When the person you're married to lives two time zones away, you log a fair number of frequent flier miles. And if you blog about commuter relationships, you log quite a few posts en route too.

Since we're no longer in separate places, I blog less often from airports. But we do travel -- together now! -- which is much more fun to write about. So in addition to thoughts on our years of commuting, the links below cover the places we've been as a pair and, in some cases, the adventures that have happened on the way.

Writing: the long and short of it

Why do I do it? Good question. Maybe it's not so much that I like to write but that I have to write, even when the words refuse to stick to the page. Believe me, I've tried doing other things like majoring in biochemistry (freshman fall, many semesters ago). Within a year, I'd switched to English with a concentration in creative writing and wasn't looking back.

After graduating, I taught English for a few years and then worked as an editor, which I still do freelance. In 2007, I applied and got into an MFA program at a place I like to call Little U. on the Prairie. I finished my degree in 2011 and have been balancing tutoring and writing on my own ever since.

The following links cover the writing I've done about writing: process, content, obstacles, you name it. It's not always pretty. But some part of me loves it, even when it's hard. And this is the result.

Heart: family and friends

I'd have a hard time explaining who I am without being able to talk about the family I grew up in as well as the people I've met beyond its bounds. But even with such context, it's not easy! In the simplest terms, I'm a first-generation Asian-American who has spent most of this life caught between cultures. That, of course, doesn't even begin to describe what I mean to, but there's my first stab at the heart of it all.

That's what this group of posts is reserved for -- heart. The essential parts of my life whose influences I carry with me, for better or worse. The links below cover what I've written as I've learned how these forces work within me, for me, against me, in spite of me. They anchor me even as they change me, and they keep life interesting.

Recommended reading

What do I do when there's too much on my mind and my words won't stick to the page? I escape into someone else's thoughts. Below is a collection of books and articles that have been sources of information, inspiration, and occasional insight for my own work.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Funny that you should ask ...

You know those people you run into while you're waiting for the bus, the kind who are total strangers but like to engage you in conversation anyway? Somehow, I seem to attract them.

Most of the time, I don't mind the chitchat -- I mean, it's only polite to respond when someone says, "How are you today?" and generally, out here where the heat is as extreme as the cold, there's always something to say about the weather. After a few exchanges about rain/snow/ ice/all of the above, the conversation peters out or the bus arrives and you can part ways.

So yesterday, at my bus stop, a man started talking to me. "You going to school?" he asked. Seemed like a fairly innocuous opener. So I said yes, I was going in to campus to hold office hours. "You're a teacher," he said. Not wanting to mislead him, I explained that I was a student too. A few moments of silence, and I assumed we were done.

"I see some lucky man's already made you a promise," he said suddenly.

"What? Oh." I realized he was looking at my left hand. "Yes."

Inevitably, after a few more questions, the conversation reached the admission that D and I have a commuter marriage. To which, without any hesitation, the man said, "I guess in a relationship like that, you must have to be abstinent, huh?"

"Um" -- and here I think my brain sort of lurched to a sudden halt because it couldn't believe what it had heard -- "we do see each other as often as we can."

Now, I'm sure the guy didn't mean any harm, but how do you answer (or get out of answering) something like that? Clearly, he understood the institution of marriage -- at its simplest, a promise to be faithful -- so what further confirmation needed to be made about that? And yet, if I had offered no response, what would that have implied?

I think it's time to start carrying a book to the bus stop. Either to look really engrossed in it so as not to be disturbed or to thunk people on the head with it when they ask inappropriate questions.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Say what?

I now know why I became a writer. Because I like composing words on paper, not assembling them on the fly in front of other people. Like, say, a room full of college sophomores, some of whom are definitely smirking at you as you charge through your own introduction so unceremoniously that it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. Even things that I've scripted for myself turn to gobbledygook when I try to make myself say them out loud. Non sequiturs? Redundancies? Rambling sentences that trail off into awkward attempts at humor? A total absence of humor?

Yep.

I taught my first class today, which I thought I was prepared for. Last week, I printed off all the handouts I would need and set up my university website for posting supplementary materials and had my lesson plan all written out with timing and even segues to use so I wouldn't have to ad-lib any. I went so far as to put everything I would need into my car so that in case I got stranded on the way back from wedding #5 (this past weekend -- more on that in a separate post), I could go directly from the airport to campus. But I might as well have left everything at home because I didn't follow what I had written for myself. Well, okay, it wasn't quite as bad as that sounds -- I stuck to the agenda I'd put together, but for the parts where I had to open my mouth and say meaningful things about the goals of the course, expectations, and all that administrative stuff you use to set the tone for the semester, I kept straying from my crib sheet. Badly. I don't think I contradicted myself, but I definitely felt like I was making a mess of things. Oy.

Of course, where I almost never strayed was my tone -- I stuck close to the tough side of my teacher persona (borderline mean, I'm afraid to say) while enumerating what I expected of my students. Definitely stern and a little scowly. Shudder. I'm sure it will pay off in terms of preventing behavior issues -- I only had to use the teacher look once when a girl started talking to someone next to her while another student was talking, and she stopped chatting right away when I cocked an eyebrow at her rather pointedly. But man, did I dislike the persona I was projecting. I was more than stern about the workload, my being a tough grader, my standards in general. My little sis's reaction after my description of how I thought I sounded: "Dude, I'd drop your class."

Yeah, me too.

At least I used nearly all the time I was allotted (70 out of 75 minutes). Having to manage a room full of 13-year-olds for sometimes twice that amount of time when I last taught made planning my agenda for today way easier. Maybe Wednesday will be better on the speaking front. We'll be doing discussion-based activities that don't require me to lecture, which is the heart of what this course is about. I can't wait for this to feel more routine. Right now, I just feel rusty.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

In which I suddenly become a local

... in two places at once. Yes, it's possible.

I'm back in Iowa, and surprisingly, I haven't really felt much need to "adjust" because my home here is more or less the way I left it in May. And my body remembers its routines in this space. On the first morning, I hopped into the shower after my workout as if I'd never been gone, turning the knobs for the tap just so for that perfect mix of hot and cold, reaching for my face towel hanging just outside the curtain on the towel bar without having to look. It was so familiar it was eerie.

It is nice, too. Last year, when I arrived, everything was new and awkward and I was anxious about learning how the bus system worked and uncertain about where to get my books and ID and parking pass and bombarded with orientation meetings in buildings I couldn't find and welcome-to-campus potlucks among people whose names I couldn't keep straight. This year, all I had to figure out was what I wanted to get from the grocery store for dinner on my first night back.

Interestingly, though, I'm also a West Coaster -- at least, in the eyes of the new first-years from California (I've met two, one from Los Angeles and the other from San Francisco). On our lunch break from TA training today, we ate with a girl from Hawaii. Add to our group another Seattleite who found us earlier this morning, and suddenly the "I'm from a time zone significantly behind this one" club has its charter members. And I'm one of them, even though I've barely spent more than six months in Washington -- ? Well, yes. I feel more at home talking with these girls about life on the Pacific than I do talking with Midwesterners about growing up in Illinois. But maybe that's because Midwesterners don't talk much (comparatively speaking) and those growing up years were very awkward in general ...

D and I also made our localness official on my last day in Seattle by getting library cards. We spent most of Saturday morning and early afternoon downtown, with the goal of enjoying being out and about so we wouldn't mope in the apartment about my having to leave the next day. One of the places we had intended to explore all summer was the Central Library, which is an incredible ten-story contemporary structure in the heart of the city. Parts of its stacks are arranged in a spiral going up the center of the building, and you can wander from floor to floor without having to use a single stairwell. Escalators are available, though, if you want to take an express route through those levels. The top floor space is devoted to a sun-soaked (but comfortably air-conditioned) reading room and a special collection of Pacific Northwest reference materials and rare books. This promises to be a great place to retreat to during those occasional heat waves in the summer (one of which we endured over the weekend).



So that's the latest landmark in Seattle that we've gotten to know. Iowa has a few of its own worth noting as well -- including the "World's Largest Truckstop"(!), which I passed on the way back to school:


I had intended to take a picture of this place last year at some point, but I never got around to it. Now that I have, I can say that if the Central Library is interested in a copy, I know exactly where they can shelve it:


In all seriousness, I do wish Iowa had a home for the printed word as attractive as what we saw last weekend. All the same, I've also heard good things about the public library here. Maybe I'll check it out as well, if only to give myself an escape from the academic aura (read: tension) that dominates the quiet corners of campus where I'd ordinarily hole up to work. Being local is fine, but I'm in no hurry to feel like an overtaxed grad student again.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Stay this moment

... to use one's hands & eyes; to talk to people; to be a straw on the river, now & then -- passive, not striving to say this is this. If one does not lie back & sum up & say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one's gain, dying? No: stay, this moment. No one ever says that enough.
~ Virginia Woolf, December 1932

Tomorrow will be my last day in Seattle for a while.

D's been amazing -- he's already bought tickets for September and October, so we have several visits lined up. Which means no anxiety about when we'll next get to see each other (that is, if you don't count a certain well-justified sense of foreboding over airline punctuality).

I should be finishing up the first draft of my syllabus right now, but I know if I don't write this post today, I won't get to do it without fifteen other distractions once I get back to Iowa. So any thoughts on grading breakdowns and plagiarism policies will just have to wait. There's still time (even if the Type A in me says otherwise).

I went to Toronto early last week to spend some time with my mom and her mother. At one time, my grandmother was an enthusiastic storyteller, full of tales from her youth and her escape from the Japanese during World War II. Now that she is largely isolated from her family, she has no one to tell her stories to. In fact, the only time that they are ever told is when my mom recounts them for me.

Like my mother and her mother before her, I have the storytelling gene (even if I don't do the recounting as well as they do, the desire to do it is there). And while it is premature to say whether I'll actually be able to accomplish this, I want to try to cull all of the history from family memory and write it down. But first, I have to tell the story of this visit in order to explain why.

My grandmother is 92, and she is in a nursing home. Her doctors say she has Alzheimer's. It's hard to say whether this is completely accurate -- as far as I know, no one has actually done a scan of her brain to see what's going on in there -- but she is wheelchair-bound (more from advanced osteoporosis than anything else) and can no longer feed herself. She has trouble remembering the names of her children and difficulty recognizing some of their faces. But she's still there, deep in her mind, where her oldest memories live.

She rarely speaks now -- in fact, one of the nurses walking down the hall while we were visiting came into the room because she heard my grandmother talking to us and couldn't believe her ears. But given time, and more questions than "What's my name?" from every person who drops by, she can hold a good conversation, even with someone who barely speaks Cantonese (me).

On the day I arrived, my mom and I went to the nursing home right away to have lunch with my grandmother. I knew that she had physically deteriorated a lot from what my mom described after a visit nearly a year ago, but it was still a bit of a shock to see my grandmother in a room full of other vacant-eyed elderly men and women draped with large bibs, many of them being fed by the staff. There were also several residents who were fairly self-sufficient and very alert, but most of them had already finished eating and were making their way to the TV room down the hall. When we got to my grandmother's table, she was asleep with her head hanging over her tray.

One of my uncles was with us and had brought some homemade chicken soup, so we wheeled my grandmother to a quiet spot in the TV room to feed her ourselves. She was rather hazy -- the staff gives her some kind of sedative in the morning because she's supposedly developed aggressive tendencies toward them and other residents -- but we did manage to wake her up a little. She glanced at each of our faces repeatedly, staring for a few seconds then closing her eyes again from what seemed like exhaustion. For a while, she wouldn't eat. My mom kept offering her spoonfuls of rice and mashed vegetables, but my grandmother would turn her head or push the spoon away with one hand.

Then one of the aides walked by and said hello, chatting briefly with my mom in Shanghainese. My grandmother's eyes immediately flew open -- she had recognized the dialect she grew up speaking. "Did you see that?" I asked, nudging my mom. "Try asking her to eat in Shanghainese."

"Mine's terrible," my mom said, but she went at it gamely, offering a bite of chicken and laughing at the sounds coming out of her mouth. "God knows what I'm actually saying to her," she whispered.

It worked. My grandmother took the mouthful of chicken and let us feed her more. She still grimaced when we offered her vegetables, so we hid them in the rice. "I wouldn't like them either," I said to her in English (my Shanghainese is nonexistent). She stared at me again, trying to find me in her memory. "Hello, Nga Po," I said, calling her by the name I had used for her from age 1. I gave her my Chinese name too, but she closed her eyes again before it seemed to register.

That evening, we went back to feed her dinner. She was so much more alert that by the time we arrived, she had already finished (with the help of an aide), so we took her to a sitting area at the end of a hall. This time an aunt, in addition to my uncle, was with us.

"Who am I?" my uncle said. She stared and stared but shook her head. "Who am I?" he repeated. Then he began to talk about their life in Hong Kong, decades back, when my grandfather was an upholsterer doing all the furniture and drapes for the Peninsula Hotel. "Do you remember sewing all those curtains with Dad?" my uncle said. "We worked so hard with those needles that I got holes in my fingertips!"

A look of recognition began to filter into Nga Po's eyes. "You're Daniel," she said at last in Cantonese. They were the first words she spoke to us that day.

"Yes, yes," he said. Then Nga Po looked at my mother. "This is Mor Mor," my uncle said, giving the nickname her siblings called and still call her by -- littlest sister. Nga Po nodded, but we were unsure if she had really made the connection as to who my mother was.

My uncle talked on a little more until Nga Po suddenly pushed at his arm to indicate she wanted him to go away. Once he had stood up, she gestured to the wing chair he had vacated. "Let Mor Mor sit," she said very clearly. We all laughed. She remembered.

My mother took her turn until Nga Po asked for my aunt, also calling her by her nickname. Before we could try to explain who I was, though, we had to leave to meet more of my aunts and uncles for dinner. "We'll be back tomorrow," I said to her once we had wheeled her back to her room. She looked at me again, then her eyes glazed over a little and she retreated into fogginess.

*

The following morning, we found her not in the cafeteria but in her room. "She was hitting people again," an aide explained. "She wouldn't take her medication either, so we brought her back here."

Nga Po, lying flat in her bed, looked at us sweetly as we greeted her. Her gaze was alert as I leaned down and gave her my name again.

"My daughter," my mom said.

Nga Po's gaze locked on mine for a few seconds. "You've gotten so tall," she said.

I looked at my mother -- we silently seemed to agree that her recognizing me might have been a fluke, some kind of mistaken identity. But even if she wasn't remembering the right granddaughter, Nga Po allowed me to take her hand all the same, and she squeezed it and shook it gently. "She must be so hungry for physical contact," my mom whispered. We raised her bed so she could sit comfortably, and then we rubbed her shoulders and neck and stroked her hair, which she accepted quite peaceably.

"Are you sure this isn't bothering her?" I asked.

"She'll let you know what she wants," my mom said. "I'm sure she was hitting because the aides were trying to force her to do something she didn't want to."

"The medication," I said. "She knows what it does to her, and she knew we were coming back today."

We looked at Nga Po, but she gave no indication that she had heard us. I took my hand out of hers and reached to pull down her sweatshirt, which had ridden up behind her when we had raised the bed. Suddenly, she grabbed my hand firmly and pulled it toward her. She settled her own hand in her lap, her fingers still wrapped around mine. My mother was right. Nga Po knew what she wanted. I squeezed her hand, and she began to shake it again as if to say hello.

"Your hair is still so dark," my mom said after a moment, combing the thin black strands streaked with amazingly few white ones to the side of Nga Po's forehead. "Soon I'm going to have more white on my head than you!" She pointed to her own hair with its light sprinkling of silver.

"Whatever you say," Nga Po said. Her immediate response surprised us both.

"Well, of course!" my mom continued. "If your hair isn't changing anymore and mine still is, I'll catch up to you in no time."

And Nga Po laughed.

"My God, I haven't heard her do that in ages," my mom said, looking at me with wide eyes. "She's still in there."

That night we visited again with two of my aunts and uncles, a cousin, and her fiancé. Even though Nga Po's eyes were practically closing as we stood around her bed, she tried to force them to stay open, clearly recognizing many of her children, if not her grandchildren. We took turns again, sitting in front of her where she could see each of us more easily. "I can't remember," she repeated over and over as she tried to come up with our names.

"But you know our faces," one of my aunts reassured her. "That's all that matters."

Nga Po nodded a little uncertainly and smiled, the muscles in her face stiff from lack of use. And then she fell asleep.

*

On our last day, we took Nga Po to an outdoor pavilion on the nursing home grounds for lunch. After getting Nga Po's wheelchair settled, my mom went back to the car to get the fish sandwich from McDonald's -- one of Nga Po's favorite meals -- that we had brought, along with salads for ourselves. As we waited for her, I took Nga Po's hand and told her my name again. "You've gotten so tall," she said once more.

I nodded and took a breath. I knew this would be my last chance to talk with her for a while, and even if she couldn't connect my present-day identity to the granddaughter she could remember, I wanted to connect with her in the moment.

"I got married," I said.

"Really?" Her face brightened briefly, as if the broken filaments in the lights of her eyes were temporarily recoupled and glowing like flares. I wondered if she was remembering the day of her own wedding as a 16-year-old bride.

I pronounced D's name slowly for her. "That's my husband," I said.

Nga Po nodded and even repeated D's name. I knew she would not remember him after a few minutes, but knowing that she had understood me was enough.

After lunch, I took out my laptop and showed her a photo that had been taken on my wedding day. She turned to study my face and then looked at the image on the screen, as if to match them up. Then I pulled up a picture of her that had been taken at around the same age, one of several old photos that my mom had scanned for me. Nga Po stared at it intently then looked at my mom. "Is that me?" she asked.

"Yes," my mom replied.

"So pretty," I said. "I was never that pretty."

"With such an expression on my face!" Nga Po said, frowning critically at her younger self. "Hardly."

"Beautiful," I insisted and pointed at the lipstick carefully painted on her full lips.

Nga Po got quiet again. Then: "Is that me?"

My mom and I exchanged glances. "Let's keep moving," she said. I pulled up the next picture, one of Nga Po and me around age 7 wearing a red cable-knit cardigan. "Do you know who knit that sweater?" my mom asked.

Nga Po squinted and blinked. "I did," she said after a few seconds. "I did."

"I still have that sweater," I told her. "Someday, when I have children who can wear it, I'll tell them that you knit it for me."

For nearly half an hour, we looked at photos, some of whose events Nga Po was able to recall -- birthdays, engagements, trips. Even when she could not, though, she repeated over and over, "These are so good -- so good for remembering."

"We can take a picture now," my mom said, showing her the camera I had brought.

"And next time we come, I'll have it on the computer to show you," I said. Nga Po nodded. Very quickly, my mother composed the shot. But by the time she pressed the button, Nga Po was looking elsewhere in the room.

We had to leave in order to beat traffic to our hotel, and Nga Po was getting tired. No aides were available to get her out of the wheelchair into bed, so we took Nga Po back to the TV room where some of the staff were hosting a karaoke party for the residents. A few of the residents seemed to be following along as one aide sang along to a track in Cantonese, but the rest dozed or gazed at the TV screen expressionlessly.

"I don't want to tell her we're leaving," my mom whispered to me, her eyes beginning to well up with tears.

"I know," I said. "But we have to -- or else she might think we've abandoned her when we don't come back tomorrow."

My mom nodded. "She's understood every time before when I've told her we have to get on a plane. She knows it means goodbye." She bent forward and spoke quietly into her mother's ear beneath the warbling amplified through the sound system.

Nga Po nodded and raised her head to look up at us. And then, very clearly: "Thank you."

Both of us hustled toward the door of the TV room, tears streaming. When we turned to look one last time from the threshold, Nga Po was already staring straight ahead as if we had already vanished, figments of memory faded to black.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Food for thought, or how to get through customs in under 30 seconds

So after trying to remember everything D and I did with my parents during their visit, I have determined that they've turned into food tourists. Well, really, it's Dad who's the fanatic; Mom just gets dragged along. In any case, I expected that we would show them around our neighborhood, go to a museum or two, and maybe walk around Discovery Park.

Nope, we went grocery store hopping.

This was actually pretty entertaining and enjoyable because taking my dad to the local food markets was like turning a kid loose in a candy store. Both of my parents love fresh fruit, so we looked primarily for produce for breakfast and snacks on their first afternoon in town.

We had bought my dad a bottle of wine from a chateau in Sonoma Valley during our road trip to Seattle last summer, so we planned to grill some nice steaks for dinner on the same night (our apartment complex has an incredible gas grill for common use near the main office). Coincidentally, the apartment management team was hosting a wine tasting for residents, so we took turns tending the meat and sampling hors d'oeuvres.

The next day, we spent the morning looking at houses (see this post for how that went). Then Dad wanted to go downtown just to see the sights, so we did a drive-by tour of the Space Needle, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the piers. Which conveniently brought us to Pike Place Market, where Dad proceeded to check out all the fresh seafood. We ended up buying mussels and some Alaskan halibut fillets. We also stopped at Uwajimaya, the enormous Asian market in the International District, where my parents swooned over the fresh vegetables (being Chinese, they know good choy when they see it). They also bought more fruit.

That evening, we had reservations at Ray's Boathouse, a restaurant in Ballard with waterfront seating (wonderful at sunset). We had some time before we had to be there, so we took my parents to the Chittenden locks in the same neighborhood, where we managed to catch a glimpse of the salmon jumping in the fish ladder.

The following day, we went wine tasting in Woodinville, which was a pretty relaxed affair. Dad did most of the tasting while Mom and I wandered the gardens at one of our stops. Then we swung briefly through Bellevue to do a little shopping and headed back to the apartment to cook the seafood we had bought the day before.

Saturday morning, we drove to Vancouver. First stop: Yaohan Centre, a mall whose food court is made up entirely of Asian food vendors. Most people would probably find it strange that we traveled 140 miles just to dine on food court fare, but this stuff is nothing like what you would get at Panda Express or Manchu Wok. It's the real thing -- wonton mein, rice congee, nin gou (the last is my favorite). An adjacent supermarket offers fresh Chinese pastries -- and, of course, fruit, which my parents could not resist.


Once sated, Dad wanted to go down to the docks in Steveston for a walk. While we were there, we passed the historic Gulf of Georgia Cannery, which offers tours. We were too late to sign up for one, but we did get to see what the fishing boats were bringing in (largely shrimp and sablefish). We also caught a glimpse of a wedding party having photos done along the shore.


Once dinnertime rolled around, Dad led us to a place called Kirin for traditional Chinese seafood prepared from live catch. There, we taught D how to strip and eat whole steamed shrimp. Dad was so pleased with the restaurant that we went back for dim sum (lunch) and dinner on Sunday.

Between those meals, we took my parents to the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden, where we walked off some calories and checked out some of the specialty gardens on the grounds. Dad, of course, was especially interested in the Food Garden, which grows produce for donation to local soup kitchens. I had never seen celery and cauliflower growing out of the ground before, so that was actually quite neat. And who knew that spring mix lettuce is actually one plant with variegated leaves! I had always thought that the mix you buy at the grocery store is a true mix of different lettuces. We also toured the Physic Garden, which held plants used by the modern pharmaceutical industry as well as those used by ancient healers.

Our second stop before dinner was downtown Vancouver's Chinatown, primarily for its herb merchants, who sell not only ginseng and patent medicine but also dried shark's fin, fish maw, and scallops. Once rehydrated for several hours in cold water, they can be used in traditional dishes that feature these delicacies prominently. D and I explored a few places on our own while my parents haggled with vendors. It was kind of funny -- my dad asked us to look around separately because D (being of Scandinavian, German, and Belgian descent) sticks out a bit and would give the merchants more reason to treat us like rookies. So I took him around and pointed out what my parents were shopping for. Every store is set up more or less the same way with huge glass jars of unusual ingredients lining the walls (I think dried whole gecko was the most bizarre item we came across). D's impression: "It's like being in a voodoo shop."

On our way through customs, we were a bit concerned about taking seafood across the border (you have to declare these items, but it's not entirely clear whether these are permitted, even though the vendors all insist that it's fine). As we approached the booth, we discussed what to call the goods ("dried fish" rather than anything more specific). As it turns out, though, we had nothing to worry about.

"What did you do while you were visiting?" the customs officer asked.

Since we'd been focusing so much on what to say when we were asked if we had anything to declare, D was caught a little off guard and blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Uh -- ate restaurant food," he said.

The officer looked at us quizzically, returned our passports, and waved us off. I don't think we stopped laughing for ten miles -- largely because it was true.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

"What does 'annulé' mean?"


It is so good to be home again.

The last week has been largely dominated by airport mayhem. Last Monday, I checked my flights to Toronto first thing in the morning and discovered that the first leg connecting through Chicago had been canceled on account of a serious storm system sitting over Lake Michigan. Managed to get rebooked on another flight leaving seven hours later, got to O'Hare, and was promptly trapped there by a second storm system. One that spawned a tornado. Second leg of the journey promptly canceled. No hotels with rooms within a half-hour drive. Prepared to spend the night with everyone else in the same boat.

Luckily, D's aunt, who lives in Chicago, rescued me and put me up on her couch for a few hours. Watched an incredible lightning storm over Lake Michigan from her 38th floor condo (the photo was shot at midnight but it looked bright enough to be close to dawn). Went back to O'Hare. Got on standby and flew out at 7 a.m. Tuesday. Baggage did not.

Arrived in Toronto, filled out paperwork for missing bag. Missing bag located after several phone calls to check automated reports. Scheduled delivery for after 6 p.m. Still no bag at 1 a.m.

Bag delivery rescheduled Wednesday morning after more phone calls. Bag finally arrived at 2:30 p.m. Contents of bag sopping wet and visibly molding (we won't mention the smell), including nearly all the items for the wedding on Saturday (most of which were dry clean only). Long phone call to local AA baggage people for explanation and questions on how to make a claim for damages. Clothing dropped off for emergency laundering at dry cleaner.

Clothing retrieved Thursday afternoon. Smell had not come out. Several items too small (from their initial soaking) and still stained. Emergency trip to mall to find something to wear to rehearsal dinner. Called D, asked him to bring another dress for the wedding (fortunately, there was one more hanging in the closet at home that was appropriate).

Lugged all damaged items -- including suitcase, which could not be cleaned and stank like a bog -- back to airport to meet with baggage supervisor on Friday. Supervisor authorized reimbursement for bag and dry cleaning, said he would get back to us about the rest of the goods. Supervisor also suggested that the courier service may have left the bag outside by accident during the storm that soaked the city Tuesday evening but said he would look into that too (I'm inclined to think the damage happened during the Chicago deluge). Went back to mall to buy suitcase. Waited for D to arrive.

Enjoyed wedding hoopla all day Saturday. Transferred belongings to new suitcase. Called AA just to make sure our next day's flights were going to go (with the 0 for 2 track record on the way to Toronto, I wasn't feeling optimistic). Confirmed all flights still scheduled and on time.

Headed for airport Sunday morning with D and little sis. While in line to check in, little sis asked for my flight info while looking at the departure screens.

"What does 'annulé' mean?" little sis asked.

"Canceled," I said. And then: "WHAT?!"

Yep, 0 for 3. This time for some kind of mechanical problem, not weather, but still -- !

Said goodbye to little sis, whose flight was still on. Dropped damaged suitcase off with baggage supervisor and picked up reimbursement check. Got flights rebooked on Air Canada going through Vancouver, arriving about four hours later than original flight. Killed time, watched some of the Olympics.

Went through customs in Vancouver. Final flight delayed. BUT (and I say this with a great deal of glass half full perspective) we got to fly in a prop plane, which I haven't done in over a decade. Lower flying altitude, amazing views all the way back to Seattle. A small consolation at the end of the most trying week of air travel I have ever experienced.

I know I said I would blog more about my parents' visit -- and I will! -- but let me recover a little first, okay? Then I'll also talk more about what I did while I wasn't dealing with airport-related chaos in Toronto (yes, I did get to spend some time on other things too). Just cross your fingers for me that next Sunday's flight back to school goes as planned ...

Monday, August 4, 2008

I have house lust


So we may have found the house that we want to buy!

But it's too soon, and now we have to stall!

!!!

My parents were interested in seeing some homes with us during their visit, so on their first morning in town, we went out with our realtor to take a second look at a few places. One of these was a house that D and I immediately loved on our first viewing, but we kept our sentiments under wraps. No sense giving our realtor more reasons to prod us about getting pre-approved for a loan.

Mom and Dad had already previewed the pictures of the house and looked it up on Zillow.com (a very useful website for previous sale information among other details the realtors are loath to disclose), so we had a pretty good idea about how reasonable the listing price was. The current owners are definitely asking way more than any smart buyer in this market should pay, so we've been watching the listing closely for any changes. Yesterday, our realtor forwarded us a notice that the owners have dropped the price. Not by much, but it might be enough for overeager buyers to jump on it.

The house isn't perfect -- there are little things that we made sure to mention in front of the realtor to sort of throw her off how much we like the place -- but I have a feeling she may have seen through some of it. There's no tub in the master bathroom (not an issue for us since we're not tub people, but future buyers may find that to be one), and the furnace is in the attic with a questionably sized crawlspace for access. If that furnace breaks, it'll be a major operation to get it out of there (not to mention putting a new one in its place). Then there's the lot across from the house that looks like it's being reclaimed as a protected wetland, but the clearing that's going on also suggests new construction(?). And let's not forget the problem of the greenbelt overgrowth behind the house. Right now, the plants back there are young, but we're not sure what the law says about trimming all that stuff back when it gets higher than the fence. Are we allowed to touch it? Some sources say no. And that would mean a raggedy mess to try to market when it's our turn to sell ...

But how can we not love this house when D and my parents and I can envision our children sleeping in the bedrooms?!? Dad was so funny -- because of the depth of the greenbelt, he was concerned that mountain lions might be able to make off with his future grandchildren while they were playing in the backyard. The fact that he was even thinking about grandchildren was just too cute, but the fact that he was serious about the mountain lions was even cuter.

(It is highly unlikely that mountain lions would prowl the neighborhood we're looking at. There's more of a chance that they'd appear around our current apartment complex, which is not far from the foothills of the Cascades.)

This post has to stop here for now -- I am on my way to wedding #4 for the summer. The next installment on my parents' visit when I get to my next internet connection! And if anyone has ideas on how to prevent someone else from buying this house, we're all ears ...

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Funny that you should ask ...

You know those people you run into while you're waiting for the bus, the kind who are total strangers but like to engage you in conversation anyway? Somehow, I seem to attract them.

Most of the time, I don't mind the chitchat -- I mean, it's only polite to respond when someone says, "How are you today?" and generally, out here where the heat is as extreme as the cold, there's always something to say about the weather. After a few exchanges about rain/snow/ ice/all of the above, the conversation peters out or the bus arrives and you can part ways.

So yesterday, at my bus stop, a man started talking to me. "You going to school?" he asked. Seemed like a fairly innocuous opener. So I said yes, I was going in to campus to hold office hours. "You're a teacher," he said. Not wanting to mislead him, I explained that I was a student too. A few moments of silence, and I assumed we were done.

"I see some lucky man's already made you a promise," he said suddenly.

"What? Oh." I realized he was looking at my left hand. "Yes."

Inevitably, after a few more questions, the conversation reached the admission that D and I have a commuter marriage. To which, without any hesitation, the man said, "I guess in a relationship like that, you must have to be abstinent, huh?"

"Um" -- and here I think my brain sort of lurched to a sudden halt because it couldn't believe what it had heard -- "we do see each other as often as we can."

Now, I'm sure the guy didn't mean any harm, but how do you answer (or get out of answering) something like that? Clearly, he understood the institution of marriage -- at its simplest, a promise to be faithful -- so what further confirmation needed to be made about that? And yet, if I had offered no response, what would that have implied?

I think it's time to start carrying a book to the bus stop. Either to look really engrossed in it so as not to be disturbed or to thunk people on the head with it when they ask inappropriate questions.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Say what?

I now know why I became a writer. Because I like composing words on paper, not assembling them on the fly in front of other people. Like, say, a room full of college sophomores, some of whom are definitely smirking at you as you charge through your own introduction so unceremoniously that it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. Even things that I've scripted for myself turn to gobbledygook when I try to make myself say them out loud. Non sequiturs? Redundancies? Rambling sentences that trail off into awkward attempts at humor? A total absence of humor?

Yep.

I taught my first class today, which I thought I was prepared for. Last week, I printed off all the handouts I would need and set up my university website for posting supplementary materials and had my lesson plan all written out with timing and even segues to use so I wouldn't have to ad-lib any. I went so far as to put everything I would need into my car so that in case I got stranded on the way back from wedding #5 (this past weekend -- more on that in a separate post), I could go directly from the airport to campus. But I might as well have left everything at home because I didn't follow what I had written for myself. Well, okay, it wasn't quite as bad as that sounds -- I stuck to the agenda I'd put together, but for the parts where I had to open my mouth and say meaningful things about the goals of the course, expectations, and all that administrative stuff you use to set the tone for the semester, I kept straying from my crib sheet. Badly. I don't think I contradicted myself, but I definitely felt like I was making a mess of things. Oy.

Of course, where I almost never strayed was my tone -- I stuck close to the tough side of my teacher persona (borderline mean, I'm afraid to say) while enumerating what I expected of my students. Definitely stern and a little scowly. Shudder. I'm sure it will pay off in terms of preventing behavior issues -- I only had to use the teacher look once when a girl started talking to someone next to her while another student was talking, and she stopped chatting right away when I cocked an eyebrow at her rather pointedly. But man, did I dislike the persona I was projecting. I was more than stern about the workload, my being a tough grader, my standards in general. My little sis's reaction after my description of how I thought I sounded: "Dude, I'd drop your class."

Yeah, me too.

At least I used nearly all the time I was allotted (70 out of 75 minutes). Having to manage a room full of 13-year-olds for sometimes twice that amount of time when I last taught made planning my agenda for today way easier. Maybe Wednesday will be better on the speaking front. We'll be doing discussion-based activities that don't require me to lecture, which is the heart of what this course is about. I can't wait for this to feel more routine. Right now, I just feel rusty.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

In which I suddenly become a local

... in two places at once. Yes, it's possible.

I'm back in Iowa, and surprisingly, I haven't really felt much need to "adjust" because my home here is more or less the way I left it in May. And my body remembers its routines in this space. On the first morning, I hopped into the shower after my workout as if I'd never been gone, turning the knobs for the tap just so for that perfect mix of hot and cold, reaching for my face towel hanging just outside the curtain on the towel bar without having to look. It was so familiar it was eerie.

It is nice, too. Last year, when I arrived, everything was new and awkward and I was anxious about learning how the bus system worked and uncertain about where to get my books and ID and parking pass and bombarded with orientation meetings in buildings I couldn't find and welcome-to-campus potlucks among people whose names I couldn't keep straight. This year, all I had to figure out was what I wanted to get from the grocery store for dinner on my first night back.

Interestingly, though, I'm also a West Coaster -- at least, in the eyes of the new first-years from California (I've met two, one from Los Angeles and the other from San Francisco). On our lunch break from TA training today, we ate with a girl from Hawaii. Add to our group another Seattleite who found us earlier this morning, and suddenly the "I'm from a time zone significantly behind this one" club has its charter members. And I'm one of them, even though I've barely spent more than six months in Washington -- ? Well, yes. I feel more at home talking with these girls about life on the Pacific than I do talking with Midwesterners about growing up in Illinois. But maybe that's because Midwesterners don't talk much (comparatively speaking) and those growing up years were very awkward in general ...

D and I also made our localness official on my last day in Seattle by getting library cards. We spent most of Saturday morning and early afternoon downtown, with the goal of enjoying being out and about so we wouldn't mope in the apartment about my having to leave the next day. One of the places we had intended to explore all summer was the Central Library, which is an incredible ten-story contemporary structure in the heart of the city. Parts of its stacks are arranged in a spiral going up the center of the building, and you can wander from floor to floor without having to use a single stairwell. Escalators are available, though, if you want to take an express route through those levels. The top floor space is devoted to a sun-soaked (but comfortably air-conditioned) reading room and a special collection of Pacific Northwest reference materials and rare books. This promises to be a great place to retreat to during those occasional heat waves in the summer (one of which we endured over the weekend).



So that's the latest landmark in Seattle that we've gotten to know. Iowa has a few of its own worth noting as well -- including the "World's Largest Truckstop"(!), which I passed on the way back to school:


I had intended to take a picture of this place last year at some point, but I never got around to it. Now that I have, I can say that if the Central Library is interested in a copy, I know exactly where they can shelve it:


In all seriousness, I do wish Iowa had a home for the printed word as attractive as what we saw last weekend. All the same, I've also heard good things about the public library here. Maybe I'll check it out as well, if only to give myself an escape from the academic aura (read: tension) that dominates the quiet corners of campus where I'd ordinarily hole up to work. Being local is fine, but I'm in no hurry to feel like an overtaxed grad student again.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Stay this moment

... to use one's hands & eyes; to talk to people; to be a straw on the river, now & then -- passive, not striving to say this is this. If one does not lie back & sum up & say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one's gain, dying? No: stay, this moment. No one ever says that enough.
~ Virginia Woolf, December 1932

Tomorrow will be my last day in Seattle for a while.

D's been amazing -- he's already bought tickets for September and October, so we have several visits lined up. Which means no anxiety about when we'll next get to see each other (that is, if you don't count a certain well-justified sense of foreboding over airline punctuality).

I should be finishing up the first draft of my syllabus right now, but I know if I don't write this post today, I won't get to do it without fifteen other distractions once I get back to Iowa. So any thoughts on grading breakdowns and plagiarism policies will just have to wait. There's still time (even if the Type A in me says otherwise).

I went to Toronto early last week to spend some time with my mom and her mother. At one time, my grandmother was an enthusiastic storyteller, full of tales from her youth and her escape from the Japanese during World War II. Now that she is largely isolated from her family, she has no one to tell her stories to. In fact, the only time that they are ever told is when my mom recounts them for me.

Like my mother and her mother before her, I have the storytelling gene (even if I don't do the recounting as well as they do, the desire to do it is there). And while it is premature to say whether I'll actually be able to accomplish this, I want to try to cull all of the history from family memory and write it down. But first, I have to tell the story of this visit in order to explain why.

My grandmother is 92, and she is in a nursing home. Her doctors say she has Alzheimer's. It's hard to say whether this is completely accurate -- as far as I know, no one has actually done a scan of her brain to see what's going on in there -- but she is wheelchair-bound (more from advanced osteoporosis than anything else) and can no longer feed herself. She has trouble remembering the names of her children and difficulty recognizing some of their faces. But she's still there, deep in her mind, where her oldest memories live.

She rarely speaks now -- in fact, one of the nurses walking down the hall while we were visiting came into the room because she heard my grandmother talking to us and couldn't believe her ears. But given time, and more questions than "What's my name?" from every person who drops by, she can hold a good conversation, even with someone who barely speaks Cantonese (me).

On the day I arrived, my mom and I went to the nursing home right away to have lunch with my grandmother. I knew that she had physically deteriorated a lot from what my mom described after a visit nearly a year ago, but it was still a bit of a shock to see my grandmother in a room full of other vacant-eyed elderly men and women draped with large bibs, many of them being fed by the staff. There were also several residents who were fairly self-sufficient and very alert, but most of them had already finished eating and were making their way to the TV room down the hall. When we got to my grandmother's table, she was asleep with her head hanging over her tray.

One of my uncles was with us and had brought some homemade chicken soup, so we wheeled my grandmother to a quiet spot in the TV room to feed her ourselves. She was rather hazy -- the staff gives her some kind of sedative in the morning because she's supposedly developed aggressive tendencies toward them and other residents -- but we did manage to wake her up a little. She glanced at each of our faces repeatedly, staring for a few seconds then closing her eyes again from what seemed like exhaustion. For a while, she wouldn't eat. My mom kept offering her spoonfuls of rice and mashed vegetables, but my grandmother would turn her head or push the spoon away with one hand.

Then one of the aides walked by and said hello, chatting briefly with my mom in Shanghainese. My grandmother's eyes immediately flew open -- she had recognized the dialect she grew up speaking. "Did you see that?" I asked, nudging my mom. "Try asking her to eat in Shanghainese."

"Mine's terrible," my mom said, but she went at it gamely, offering a bite of chicken and laughing at the sounds coming out of her mouth. "God knows what I'm actually saying to her," she whispered.

It worked. My grandmother took the mouthful of chicken and let us feed her more. She still grimaced when we offered her vegetables, so we hid them in the rice. "I wouldn't like them either," I said to her in English (my Shanghainese is nonexistent). She stared at me again, trying to find me in her memory. "Hello, Nga Po," I said, calling her by the name I had used for her from age 1. I gave her my Chinese name too, but she closed her eyes again before it seemed to register.

That evening, we went back to feed her dinner. She was so much more alert that by the time we arrived, she had already finished (with the help of an aide), so we took her to a sitting area at the end of a hall. This time an aunt, in addition to my uncle, was with us.

"Who am I?" my uncle said. She stared and stared but shook her head. "Who am I?" he repeated. Then he began to talk about their life in Hong Kong, decades back, when my grandfather was an upholsterer doing all the furniture and drapes for the Peninsula Hotel. "Do you remember sewing all those curtains with Dad?" my uncle said. "We worked so hard with those needles that I got holes in my fingertips!"

A look of recognition began to filter into Nga Po's eyes. "You're Daniel," she said at last in Cantonese. They were the first words she spoke to us that day.

"Yes, yes," he said. Then Nga Po looked at my mother. "This is Mor Mor," my uncle said, giving the nickname her siblings called and still call her by -- littlest sister. Nga Po nodded, but we were unsure if she had really made the connection as to who my mother was.

My uncle talked on a little more until Nga Po suddenly pushed at his arm to indicate she wanted him to go away. Once he had stood up, she gestured to the wing chair he had vacated. "Let Mor Mor sit," she said very clearly. We all laughed. She remembered.

My mother took her turn until Nga Po asked for my aunt, also calling her by her nickname. Before we could try to explain who I was, though, we had to leave to meet more of my aunts and uncles for dinner. "We'll be back tomorrow," I said to her once we had wheeled her back to her room. She looked at me again, then her eyes glazed over a little and she retreated into fogginess.

*

The following morning, we found her not in the cafeteria but in her room. "She was hitting people again," an aide explained. "She wouldn't take her medication either, so we brought her back here."

Nga Po, lying flat in her bed, looked at us sweetly as we greeted her. Her gaze was alert as I leaned down and gave her my name again.

"My daughter," my mom said.

Nga Po's gaze locked on mine for a few seconds. "You've gotten so tall," she said.

I looked at my mother -- we silently seemed to agree that her recognizing me might have been a fluke, some kind of mistaken identity. But even if she wasn't remembering the right granddaughter, Nga Po allowed me to take her hand all the same, and she squeezed it and shook it gently. "She must be so hungry for physical contact," my mom whispered. We raised her bed so she could sit comfortably, and then we rubbed her shoulders and neck and stroked her hair, which she accepted quite peaceably.

"Are you sure this isn't bothering her?" I asked.

"She'll let you know what she wants," my mom said. "I'm sure she was hitting because the aides were trying to force her to do something she didn't want to."

"The medication," I said. "She knows what it does to her, and she knew we were coming back today."

We looked at Nga Po, but she gave no indication that she had heard us. I took my hand out of hers and reached to pull down her sweatshirt, which had ridden up behind her when we had raised the bed. Suddenly, she grabbed my hand firmly and pulled it toward her. She settled her own hand in her lap, her fingers still wrapped around mine. My mother was right. Nga Po knew what she wanted. I squeezed her hand, and she began to shake it again as if to say hello.

"Your hair is still so dark," my mom said after a moment, combing the thin black strands streaked with amazingly few white ones to the side of Nga Po's forehead. "Soon I'm going to have more white on my head than you!" She pointed to her own hair with its light sprinkling of silver.

"Whatever you say," Nga Po said. Her immediate response surprised us both.

"Well, of course!" my mom continued. "If your hair isn't changing anymore and mine still is, I'll catch up to you in no time."

And Nga Po laughed.

"My God, I haven't heard her do that in ages," my mom said, looking at me with wide eyes. "She's still in there."

That night we visited again with two of my aunts and uncles, a cousin, and her fiancé. Even though Nga Po's eyes were practically closing as we stood around her bed, she tried to force them to stay open, clearly recognizing many of her children, if not her grandchildren. We took turns again, sitting in front of her where she could see each of us more easily. "I can't remember," she repeated over and over as she tried to come up with our names.

"But you know our faces," one of my aunts reassured her. "That's all that matters."

Nga Po nodded a little uncertainly and smiled, the muscles in her face stiff from lack of use. And then she fell asleep.

*

On our last day, we took Nga Po to an outdoor pavilion on the nursing home grounds for lunch. After getting Nga Po's wheelchair settled, my mom went back to the car to get the fish sandwich from McDonald's -- one of Nga Po's favorite meals -- that we had brought, along with salads for ourselves. As we waited for her, I took Nga Po's hand and told her my name again. "You've gotten so tall," she said once more.

I nodded and took a breath. I knew this would be my last chance to talk with her for a while, and even if she couldn't connect my present-day identity to the granddaughter she could remember, I wanted to connect with her in the moment.

"I got married," I said.

"Really?" Her face brightened briefly, as if the broken filaments in the lights of her eyes were temporarily recoupled and glowing like flares. I wondered if she was remembering the day of her own wedding as a 16-year-old bride.

I pronounced D's name slowly for her. "That's my husband," I said.

Nga Po nodded and even repeated D's name. I knew she would not remember him after a few minutes, but knowing that she had understood me was enough.

After lunch, I took out my laptop and showed her a photo that had been taken on my wedding day. She turned to study my face and then looked at the image on the screen, as if to match them up. Then I pulled up a picture of her that had been taken at around the same age, one of several old photos that my mom had scanned for me. Nga Po stared at it intently then looked at my mom. "Is that me?" she asked.

"Yes," my mom replied.

"So pretty," I said. "I was never that pretty."

"With such an expression on my face!" Nga Po said, frowning critically at her younger self. "Hardly."

"Beautiful," I insisted and pointed at the lipstick carefully painted on her full lips.

Nga Po got quiet again. Then: "Is that me?"

My mom and I exchanged glances. "Let's keep moving," she said. I pulled up the next picture, one of Nga Po and me around age 7 wearing a red cable-knit cardigan. "Do you know who knit that sweater?" my mom asked.

Nga Po squinted and blinked. "I did," she said after a few seconds. "I did."

"I still have that sweater," I told her. "Someday, when I have children who can wear it, I'll tell them that you knit it for me."

For nearly half an hour, we looked at photos, some of whose events Nga Po was able to recall -- birthdays, engagements, trips. Even when she could not, though, she repeated over and over, "These are so good -- so good for remembering."

"We can take a picture now," my mom said, showing her the camera I had brought.

"And next time we come, I'll have it on the computer to show you," I said. Nga Po nodded. Very quickly, my mother composed the shot. But by the time she pressed the button, Nga Po was looking elsewhere in the room.

We had to leave in order to beat traffic to our hotel, and Nga Po was getting tired. No aides were available to get her out of the wheelchair into bed, so we took Nga Po back to the TV room where some of the staff were hosting a karaoke party for the residents. A few of the residents seemed to be following along as one aide sang along to a track in Cantonese, but the rest dozed or gazed at the TV screen expressionlessly.

"I don't want to tell her we're leaving," my mom whispered to me, her eyes beginning to well up with tears.

"I know," I said. "But we have to -- or else she might think we've abandoned her when we don't come back tomorrow."

My mom nodded. "She's understood every time before when I've told her we have to get on a plane. She knows it means goodbye." She bent forward and spoke quietly into her mother's ear beneath the warbling amplified through the sound system.

Nga Po nodded and raised her head to look up at us. And then, very clearly: "Thank you."

Both of us hustled toward the door of the TV room, tears streaming. When we turned to look one last time from the threshold, Nga Po was already staring straight ahead as if we had already vanished, figments of memory faded to black.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Food for thought, or how to get through customs in under 30 seconds

So after trying to remember everything D and I did with my parents during their visit, I have determined that they've turned into food tourists. Well, really, it's Dad who's the fanatic; Mom just gets dragged along. In any case, I expected that we would show them around our neighborhood, go to a museum or two, and maybe walk around Discovery Park.

Nope, we went grocery store hopping.

This was actually pretty entertaining and enjoyable because taking my dad to the local food markets was like turning a kid loose in a candy store. Both of my parents love fresh fruit, so we looked primarily for produce for breakfast and snacks on their first afternoon in town.

We had bought my dad a bottle of wine from a chateau in Sonoma Valley during our road trip to Seattle last summer, so we planned to grill some nice steaks for dinner on the same night (our apartment complex has an incredible gas grill for common use near the main office). Coincidentally, the apartment management team was hosting a wine tasting for residents, so we took turns tending the meat and sampling hors d'oeuvres.

The next day, we spent the morning looking at houses (see this post for how that went). Then Dad wanted to go downtown just to see the sights, so we did a drive-by tour of the Space Needle, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the piers. Which conveniently brought us to Pike Place Market, where Dad proceeded to check out all the fresh seafood. We ended up buying mussels and some Alaskan halibut fillets. We also stopped at Uwajimaya, the enormous Asian market in the International District, where my parents swooned over the fresh vegetables (being Chinese, they know good choy when they see it). They also bought more fruit.

That evening, we had reservations at Ray's Boathouse, a restaurant in Ballard with waterfront seating (wonderful at sunset). We had some time before we had to be there, so we took my parents to the Chittenden locks in the same neighborhood, where we managed to catch a glimpse of the salmon jumping in the fish ladder.

The following day, we went wine tasting in Woodinville, which was a pretty relaxed affair. Dad did most of the tasting while Mom and I wandered the gardens at one of our stops. Then we swung briefly through Bellevue to do a little shopping and headed back to the apartment to cook the seafood we had bought the day before.

Saturday morning, we drove to Vancouver. First stop: Yaohan Centre, a mall whose food court is made up entirely of Asian food vendors. Most people would probably find it strange that we traveled 140 miles just to dine on food court fare, but this stuff is nothing like what you would get at Panda Express or Manchu Wok. It's the real thing -- wonton mein, rice congee, nin gou (the last is my favorite). An adjacent supermarket offers fresh Chinese pastries -- and, of course, fruit, which my parents could not resist.


Once sated, Dad wanted to go down to the docks in Steveston for a walk. While we were there, we passed the historic Gulf of Georgia Cannery, which offers tours. We were too late to sign up for one, but we did get to see what the fishing boats were bringing in (largely shrimp and sablefish). We also caught a glimpse of a wedding party having photos done along the shore.


Once dinnertime rolled around, Dad led us to a place called Kirin for traditional Chinese seafood prepared from live catch. There, we taught D how to strip and eat whole steamed shrimp. Dad was so pleased with the restaurant that we went back for dim sum (lunch) and dinner on Sunday.

Between those meals, we took my parents to the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden, where we walked off some calories and checked out some of the specialty gardens on the grounds. Dad, of course, was especially interested in the Food Garden, which grows produce for donation to local soup kitchens. I had never seen celery and cauliflower growing out of the ground before, so that was actually quite neat. And who knew that spring mix lettuce is actually one plant with variegated leaves! I had always thought that the mix you buy at the grocery store is a true mix of different lettuces. We also toured the Physic Garden, which held plants used by the modern pharmaceutical industry as well as those used by ancient healers.

Our second stop before dinner was downtown Vancouver's Chinatown, primarily for its herb merchants, who sell not only ginseng and patent medicine but also dried shark's fin, fish maw, and scallops. Once rehydrated for several hours in cold water, they can be used in traditional dishes that feature these delicacies prominently. D and I explored a few places on our own while my parents haggled with vendors. It was kind of funny -- my dad asked us to look around separately because D (being of Scandinavian, German, and Belgian descent) sticks out a bit and would give the merchants more reason to treat us like rookies. So I took him around and pointed out what my parents were shopping for. Every store is set up more or less the same way with huge glass jars of unusual ingredients lining the walls (I think dried whole gecko was the most bizarre item we came across). D's impression: "It's like being in a voodoo shop."

On our way through customs, we were a bit concerned about taking seafood across the border (you have to declare these items, but it's not entirely clear whether these are permitted, even though the vendors all insist that it's fine). As we approached the booth, we discussed what to call the goods ("dried fish" rather than anything more specific). As it turns out, though, we had nothing to worry about.

"What did you do while you were visiting?" the customs officer asked.

Since we'd been focusing so much on what to say when we were asked if we had anything to declare, D was caught a little off guard and blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Uh -- ate restaurant food," he said.

The officer looked at us quizzically, returned our passports, and waved us off. I don't think we stopped laughing for ten miles -- largely because it was true.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

"What does 'annulé' mean?"


It is so good to be home again.

The last week has been largely dominated by airport mayhem. Last Monday, I checked my flights to Toronto first thing in the morning and discovered that the first leg connecting through Chicago had been canceled on account of a serious storm system sitting over Lake Michigan. Managed to get rebooked on another flight leaving seven hours later, got to O'Hare, and was promptly trapped there by a second storm system. One that spawned a tornado. Second leg of the journey promptly canceled. No hotels with rooms within a half-hour drive. Prepared to spend the night with everyone else in the same boat.

Luckily, D's aunt, who lives in Chicago, rescued me and put me up on her couch for a few hours. Watched an incredible lightning storm over Lake Michigan from her 38th floor condo (the photo was shot at midnight but it looked bright enough to be close to dawn). Went back to O'Hare. Got on standby and flew out at 7 a.m. Tuesday. Baggage did not.

Arrived in Toronto, filled out paperwork for missing bag. Missing bag located after several phone calls to check automated reports. Scheduled delivery for after 6 p.m. Still no bag at 1 a.m.

Bag delivery rescheduled Wednesday morning after more phone calls. Bag finally arrived at 2:30 p.m. Contents of bag sopping wet and visibly molding (we won't mention the smell), including nearly all the items for the wedding on Saturday (most of which were dry clean only). Long phone call to local AA baggage people for explanation and questions on how to make a claim for damages. Clothing dropped off for emergency laundering at dry cleaner.

Clothing retrieved Thursday afternoon. Smell had not come out. Several items too small (from their initial soaking) and still stained. Emergency trip to mall to find something to wear to rehearsal dinner. Called D, asked him to bring another dress for the wedding (fortunately, there was one more hanging in the closet at home that was appropriate).

Lugged all damaged items -- including suitcase, which could not be cleaned and stank like a bog -- back to airport to meet with baggage supervisor on Friday. Supervisor authorized reimbursement for bag and dry cleaning, said he would get back to us about the rest of the goods. Supervisor also suggested that the courier service may have left the bag outside by accident during the storm that soaked the city Tuesday evening but said he would look into that too (I'm inclined to think the damage happened during the Chicago deluge). Went back to mall to buy suitcase. Waited for D to arrive.

Enjoyed wedding hoopla all day Saturday. Transferred belongings to new suitcase. Called AA just to make sure our next day's flights were going to go (with the 0 for 2 track record on the way to Toronto, I wasn't feeling optimistic). Confirmed all flights still scheduled and on time.

Headed for airport Sunday morning with D and little sis. While in line to check in, little sis asked for my flight info while looking at the departure screens.

"What does 'annulé' mean?" little sis asked.

"Canceled," I said. And then: "WHAT?!"

Yep, 0 for 3. This time for some kind of mechanical problem, not weather, but still -- !

Said goodbye to little sis, whose flight was still on. Dropped damaged suitcase off with baggage supervisor and picked up reimbursement check. Got flights rebooked on Air Canada going through Vancouver, arriving about four hours later than original flight. Killed time, watched some of the Olympics.

Went through customs in Vancouver. Final flight delayed. BUT (and I say this with a great deal of glass half full perspective) we got to fly in a prop plane, which I haven't done in over a decade. Lower flying altitude, amazing views all the way back to Seattle. A small consolation at the end of the most trying week of air travel I have ever experienced.

I know I said I would blog more about my parents' visit -- and I will! -- but let me recover a little first, okay? Then I'll also talk more about what I did while I wasn't dealing with airport-related chaos in Toronto (yes, I did get to spend some time on other things too). Just cross your fingers for me that next Sunday's flight back to school goes as planned ...

Monday, August 4, 2008

I have house lust


So we may have found the house that we want to buy!

But it's too soon, and now we have to stall!

!!!

My parents were interested in seeing some homes with us during their visit, so on their first morning in town, we went out with our realtor to take a second look at a few places. One of these was a house that D and I immediately loved on our first viewing, but we kept our sentiments under wraps. No sense giving our realtor more reasons to prod us about getting pre-approved for a loan.

Mom and Dad had already previewed the pictures of the house and looked it up on Zillow.com (a very useful website for previous sale information among other details the realtors are loath to disclose), so we had a pretty good idea about how reasonable the listing price was. The current owners are definitely asking way more than any smart buyer in this market should pay, so we've been watching the listing closely for any changes. Yesterday, our realtor forwarded us a notice that the owners have dropped the price. Not by much, but it might be enough for overeager buyers to jump on it.

The house isn't perfect -- there are little things that we made sure to mention in front of the realtor to sort of throw her off how much we like the place -- but I have a feeling she may have seen through some of it. There's no tub in the master bathroom (not an issue for us since we're not tub people, but future buyers may find that to be one), and the furnace is in the attic with a questionably sized crawlspace for access. If that furnace breaks, it'll be a major operation to get it out of there (not to mention putting a new one in its place). Then there's the lot across from the house that looks like it's being reclaimed as a protected wetland, but the clearing that's going on also suggests new construction(?). And let's not forget the problem of the greenbelt overgrowth behind the house. Right now, the plants back there are young, but we're not sure what the law says about trimming all that stuff back when it gets higher than the fence. Are we allowed to touch it? Some sources say no. And that would mean a raggedy mess to try to market when it's our turn to sell ...

But how can we not love this house when D and my parents and I can envision our children sleeping in the bedrooms?!? Dad was so funny -- because of the depth of the greenbelt, he was concerned that mountain lions might be able to make off with his future grandchildren while they were playing in the backyard. The fact that he was even thinking about grandchildren was just too cute, but the fact that he was serious about the mountain lions was even cuter.

(It is highly unlikely that mountain lions would prowl the neighborhood we're looking at. There's more of a chance that they'd appear around our current apartment complex, which is not far from the foothills of the Cascades.)

This post has to stop here for now -- I am on my way to wedding #4 for the summer. The next installment on my parents' visit when I get to my next internet connection! And if anyone has ideas on how to prevent someone else from buying this house, we're all ears ...