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Last week I pondered whether hell would consist of an
endless, uphill, dusty run/bike. I must
revise that. Surely my personal hell
would consist of some pack of toddlers w/ their delusional parents & naggy grandparents, and an endless stint
within a Fry’s electronics.
My cheery disposition today comes courtesy of multiple
factors. One is, I am coming up on the 12 month anniversary of working 3 jobs
& seriously on the verge of total burn out (my final day at my main job is just a few
more weeks to go…let’s hope my sanity holds).
More importantly, I am in the laughably named City of
Angels
visiting for Father’s day and my adorable nephew
Cam
’s 3rd birthday.
And to top it off by body is in some kind of dietary shock. Airport food was the start of the grim
transition. We left home munching
organic nectarines and apricots.
At OAK we ate industrial fried fish ‘n chips and a
thousand calorie Fenton’s hot fudge sundae. The food with my MIL is delicious, but foreign to me. Instead of
crumpets, oatmeal & fruit, breakast is a chicken broth porridge studded
with shrimp, meat, mushrooms and ginger. In the car we ate taro and banana slices breaded with coconut and sesame
and fried to perfection. Today’s
desayuno was deep fried homemade Pilipino empanadas. Our taste buds are singing, as my guts & arteries are
screaming for mercy.
At the kiddie party, cute kids in cute outfits cutely
wandered everywhere.
The little ones toddled all about the brand new playground,
and the adults grinned like idiots, in hot pursuit with video and digital
cams.
I know this madness a bit, applauding the Pinata
beating as if it were the Nobel Prize ceremony, and reveling in the momentary pleasures of a tiny hand
gripping mine firmly as Cali practices this newfangled thing called walking. It’s hard to resist touching those silken,
wispy, locks.
Our friend H4 pointed out that grandparents are nuts, “it’s
like they’re on crack cocaine regarding grandkids.”
I wish I had a buck for every question I have fielded this
week about why we don’t have a kid of three despite 4 years of matrimony. Heck, we’d have enough money for my plane
ticket home.
And it’s not just the
kiddie questions that are grating, it’s the random suggestions such as “have
your kid and we’ll raise it in
L.A.
and you can take him back after he’s walking.” (Uhhhh. “reactive attachment
disorder” anybody?!”) or “why do you need to work anyways?” (you mean why am I
not a kept woman eating bonbons and harassing a poolboy? Gee, better ask my
husband) or “Your mom can babysit.” (my
mother is a divorcee, too young for Medicare, who pays her own bills & has
interests, property, and a life of her own). Then there’s the helpful advice to “stop being outdoors too much, you’re
getting too skinny.” (all who’ve endured the experience of loving me know well
that keeping me indoors would foment psychosis) And besides, when I’m
not being appraised as too skinny, I am too “thick”, not waify & pale like
most Chinese ladies.
The crowning moment of
Cam
’s
party are 2 homemade works of art cakes from his Vietnamese grandma. Both are Thomas the Train themes, one
sculpted out of layers of coconutty Jell-o, with train tracks, letters, clouds,
all masterfully created with food dyes and molds. The layer cake is chocolate sponge with
strawberries and cream, featuring a Thomas cake topper that actually motors
around a tiny track atop the tinted frosting.
Bless their hearts, my in laws mean well, but it’s like
Martians trying to converse with Plutonians. I’m planning a curriculum to teach professional workshops in
Beijing
,
and she wants to talk to me about tenderizing shrimp. She teaches me a yummy recipe, and I bite my
tongue because I won’t use MSG tainted bouillion or deep fry things in my
home.
I’m proud of my years in community work, my commissioner
role, my volunteerism. I view my time
serving post-Katrina as among my finest hours of life purpose. She tells me not to be stupid, to make money
while I’m still young..
I want to increase my understanding of global politics & she’s commenting on my pores,
my hairstyle, and yet more of everyone’s favorite overused topic: my womb.
The more they tell me to bow at the altars, “sawadee” bow
and greet in Thai, the more fiesty and oppositional I become. Doubtless the more bizarre I become, the
harder they try to guide me. The
miscommunications are practically galactic. These conversations occur in Mandarin, so poor P sitting besides us
knows not what’s discussed.
“What did she say?’ He asks, helpfully working knots out of
my neck.
“You don’t want to know.” I reply.
No point in ranting and spreading anymore negativity in the
world. “I know they mean well, but they just never listen. We’ll leave it at
that.” Repeat the following mantra, I tell myself, "they mean well, they mean well, they mean well…"
After a windblown day at the park dealing with frosting
smudged little mouths and chasing balls our of the bushes for the babes, we
find ourselves at Fountain Valley Fry’s electronics. Many amigos find Fry’s a playground, but
it’s a conglomerate of everything I can’t stand. Flabby, pasty crowds of people who really
ought not be parked in front of any screen, stuffy air permeated with cancer-causing
electromagnetic fields, tacky faux romanesque columns and statues, dreary
lighting, noise pollution from a thousand competing appliances, grimy
restrooms, and worst of all-this Fry’s has no café. Just cases of crappy corn
syrup laden sop.
I stand helplessly with
P and his Dad before a hundred monitors and laptops. I peruse junk items and mourn that natural
resources were used for this crap. My
favorite kitschy piece of waste was the “humping dog” decoration for one’s monitor (I don’t make
this stuff up. Must be from the same manufacturer as the “
Battery
powered Farting man on toilet knickknack my BIL bought).
I imagine that surely
this sort of thing signals the collapse of American cultural supremacy…a throbbing headache ensues. I begin to fantasize about making a break for it, a bid for freedom, to ponder the fate of animals who gnaw off their legs to escape from bear traps…
Finally, I remind myself that we are here for a good cause (P to help Dad) & dashing away over yon hills singing "Born Free" would involve ditching my beloved and not endear me to the in laws one whit. Besides, for god’s sake I’d be stranded in freaking Orange county. I find 4 bottles of Perrier, an issue of COLORS magazine
featuring
Beijing (en espanol y ingles)
& a pack of red vines. With these
reinforcements I hunker on the steps of the Disneyesque statue to read and
drown out the electronics and bustle. This place, this geek paradise, is utter hell for H3.
I’ve oft told B and P about my struggles to practice the Buddhist advice to
“wish good things on your enemy.” I also
forever recall reading, way back in 7th grade or so, the quote that
“everything you dislike about others tells you something about yourself.”
Yes, yes, I know, I know, I swear I am trying hard to
practice such levity and empathy throughout my daily life.
I have a colleague named MC who is superwoman. A beautiful, kind-hearted lady who fled a war
torn country, eventually earning a Master’s degree, a mother, wife, and
grandmother, a funny and irreverant woman, and now also a fellow licensed
psychologist. We play favorites at work:
she feeds me hawaiian purple roast yams & home made organic salad dressings & I slip her Nunn better cherries
and wonderful reading materials. When things
at work are in an unusually sad state of clusterf**k we look at each other and
say : “breathe.” Or we laugh since
there’s no point weeping. We once took a
mental health day with 2 other therapist-supervisors- a blissful memory of
sunshine, spa, picnic and vino al fresco, and the company of such fine womyn
warriors/healers.
The other day, snippy as heck, I went to MC’s desk and
noticed this pinned within her cubicle:
“Truly recognize your own faults,
And don’t discuss the faults of others.
Other’s faults are just your own.
Being one with everyone is called great compassion.”
—-Chan Master Hsuan-hua.
Oh, I loved that little card. Copied it down and smiled to myself,.
Gotta laugh at our crabby, judgmental selves.
Others are irritating and infuriating
in the same way that surely I must be equally irritating (if not more
so!). I suppose it takes the great
masters’ a lifetime to learn their infinite compassion, so in this early phase
of life- I’m not TOO behind…
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