Category Archives: Family

Grand Central and Rockefeller Center

(Continued from last week)

My friend Rosita and I strode out of our hotel with our almost 13-year-old sons. We headed for the subway in high spirits to begin our Boys’ Birthday Adventure in New York City…If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that I have a spectacularly bad sense of direction, aaaaaand you can probably guess what happened next. After a couple of false starts we had to stop and consult our iPhone maps to get us back on course for the station.

 

Rosita and her beloved, permanent iPhone prosthesis!

Rosita and I laughed as we remembered another earlier trip we had made to New York City with our friend Katherine. Rosita was the only one of us, who had an excuse for not knowing her way around a city that was new to her. Katherine, like me, had been a student in NYC, but despite the years we had lived in the city, and despite the fact that it is rationally laid out in a fairly systematic grid, we were still constantly getting lost and disoriented. At one point, when we were having trouble figuring out which way was north, Katherine said in all seriousness, “Let’s figure out which way the sun is shining on the buildings!”

“Oh yeah, and let’s also look for which side of the buildings the moss is growing on!” I suggested.

 

The boys wait…

We stopped to smell the roses along the way…

 

 

 

First stop: Grand Central Station, celebrating its 100th birthday this year…

 

…and looking grander than ever!

 

 

 

 

Rosita caught the frenetic activity of shoe shiners:

 

The beautiful food court

 

Teas

 

Spices

Rosita’s photo:

 

We caught the last day of the Nick Cave installation of raffia horses on the ground floor of Grand Central, but sadly missed the Alvin Ailey dancers donning the horse suits to bring the sculptures to life.

 

 

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins was commissioned to write this poem for Grand Central’s Centennial
Golden Clock

The iconic Chrysler Building:

 

The quintessential mode of transportation in NYC:

 

Rockefeller Center

 

 

 

 

 

Minamoto Kitchoan, the Japanese confectionary at Rockefeller Center.

 

 

 

 

 

Cherry confection captured by Rosita

It’s not so much about the taste, as it is about the aesthetic experience. I still maintain that desserts are not the forté of Asian cuisine, (red bean paste — need I say more?), but everything in this store is absolutely  exquisite…to look at, anyway!

Next stop: F.A.O. Schwartz, Dylan’s Candy Store, and Times Square

*Check out Rosita’s blog post about our trip.

 

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Chronic Chroniclers

My friend Rosita and I are both chronic chroniclers…

I love that you can see us both with our cameras aimed at our sons in this shadow photo…

Occasionally, our subjects tire of the relentless flashbulbs:

“No more pictures!”

But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree:

“Say cheese!”…(That’s a waterproof camera, by the way).

Here’s Nicholas recording his FaceTime conversation with his little sister.

Next week: More photos, of course! Until then – have a wonderful weekend!

Odyssey in the Odyssey

Part 1: C’ville – DC

Everyone makes the occasional dunderhead move while driving. As an Asian woman driver, I have always felt unduly burdened by the weight of negative expectations on the part of other drivers on the road. I worry that to them, my occasional driving blunder is no mere momentary lapse, but rather: further evidence that Asian Women Can’t Drive.

“Damn!” I think when a wheel goes over a curb, or when I am forced to make an inelegant seventeen point turn in my big honking Honda Odyssey minivan. It’s not the action itself that bothers me so much as the reaction I imagine witnesses having.

“Mmmhmmm,” I imagine them saying to themselves, “Asian Woman Driver.”

This is all to say that our trip to New York City was somewhat tortuous, and maybe even a little torturous. I started out in Charlottesville and picked up our friends at a hotel in D.C. From there, we planned to drive on to Gettysburg to pick up my son, who was there finishing up a weeklong field trip with his school.

As I have written before, navigation is not my strength. In preparation for the trip, I had printed out a sheaf of google maps for every leg of the journey. I had also set up my iPhone maps to help me navigate. Despite my best efforts, I was in trouble not five minutes after leaving my parents’ house in Arlington to pick up our friends. As I approached I-66, I called my sister in bewilderment.

“There’s a huge sign that says HOV-2 and motorcycles only! Is that a general prohibition, or just in the lanes with the diamonds?”

“Just the lanes with the diamonds!” my sister reassured me over the phone. I was still rattled. If I could have possibly figured out an alternate route, I would have, just to be sure not to get hit with the whopping $1000 fine single drivers are threatened with on those big electronic signs dotting the highway. Finding an alternate route on my own? Obviously, that was just not an option for the likes of me. I kept nervously glancing over at other cars hoping to spot other single drivers, but didn’t see any. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I managed to make it to the hotel hotel without getting pulled over.

When Rosita got in the car she immediately set up her own iPhone with google maps. Even with two different iPhone navigation apps and a set of printed directions, we still managed to get lost in D.C. None of our sources took into account the vagaries of D.C. traffic patterns, which change according to the hour and the day. At one point, we quite literally were directed straight into oncoming traffic. We kept having to make sudden last minute U-turns and lane changes. I was getting so frazzled that I started to make genuinely boneheaded driving maneuvers. I may have driven through a red light, for example.

“We’d make a lousy Thelma and Louise,” Rosita observed.

I followed her train of thought, “Yeah. We’d be like, ‘How do we get to the cliff? Which way should we go?! What does google maps say? Where’s the freaking cliff?! Oh, never mind…’.”

Later in New York, we met up with a high school friend of Rosita’s. He listened to our harrowing tale of escape from D.C. and told us that he had learned an expression for this when he lived in L.A.: “DWA,” or “Driving While Asian.” Whatever.

Part 2: Gettysburg – NYC

We made it to Gettysburg and met up with my son. We decided to kill some time walking around Gettysburg to wait for a cafe to open so we could have lunch before pushing on to NYC.

 

“How many more hours till we get to NYC?!”

 

Gettysburg Emporium

I got yelled at by a little old lady in Victorian garb in the Gettysburg Emporium for taking this picture:

 

The Cupcake Café! This perfectly pink and frothy venue was just the place to start our adventures with our two adolescent boys. They let us know how they felt about it:

 

Pit stop at the Cracker Barrel:

 

Pee/Tea/Checkers break

We finally made it!

 

New York-style pizza for dinner

 

Kicking back at the hotel

 

 

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My son and his buddy

My son and his buddy are both turning thirteen this month. The boys met when they were just three years old during storytime at the library, and they immediately hit it off.

(My son is on the right).

I became fast friends with the mother of my son’s friend. Besides the fact that our sons were born in April and have names beginning with “N,” we share other similarities. Rosita and I are both Korean. We married Englishmen, who happened to have studied at Cambridge at the same time, and whose families live in the same general part of England. When we met, we were both in the trenches of parenting our firstborns and were delighted to have found a kindred spirit in each other. (As you might guess from her name, Rosita has a fascinating background, which you can read more about on her blog).

The first time Rosita and her son came over for a “playdate,” (I put that word in quotation marks, because after all these years it still makes me wince and want to apologize for using it at all), the boys disappeared into the playroom. Rosita and I sat next door in the living room drinking tea and chatting happily. We kept hearing loud crashes and noises, interspersed with peals of laughter. We were not yet seasoned mothers, so we were foolishly reassured by the laughter. We had gotten past the point where we couldn’t blink for fear that the boys might drown in a toilet, impale themselves upon a sharp object, or tumble headfirst down the staircase. We thought we had at long last dropped our anchors into the relatively safe harbor of toddlerhood. In any case, we were desperate for adult conversation and companionship and it was easier to just ignore what was going on next door.

“Chitchat, chitchat, chitchat…” (Crash! Bang!)

My son’s friend kept popping into the room to drop hints that we should be paying more attention.

“We’re being Thing 1 and Thing 2,” he said.

“Oh, uh-huh,” we nodded absentmindedly and continued communing with each other like long-lost sisters, “Chitchat, chitchat, chitchat…” (Smash! Boom!)

He disappeared into the playroom again, only to reappear a few minutes later to announce plainly, “We’re doing terrible things in there.”

Clearly, it was time to check on the boys. When we got to the playroom, our jaws dropped. We were aghast. We were speechless. Every single toy was on the floor. Every single puzzle had been upturned and all the pieces strewn about the room. Every single board game had been opened and the pieces shaken out all over the floor. Every single book had been taken from the shelves and had been dumped on the floor. There was literally no inch of carpet visible under the ungodly mess the two boys had created in a matter of fifteen minutes.

We scolded. We cleaned. We gave stern looks. We reorganized. We shook our fingers. We reshelved books. Finally, we got the room back in order.

Not wanting the boys to mess up all of our hard work again, we sent them upstairs to play in my son’s room.

“Don’t make a mess!” we warned and went back to our tea and sympathy.

“Chitchat, chitchat, chitchat. Chitchat, chitchat, chitcha–”

Suddenly, we realized that it was alarmingly quiet upstairs. I think most parents would agree that silence is far more ominous than noise.

We raced up the stairs to see the two boys hunched silently over stuffed animals, industriously giving them haircuts.

“We’re being barbers,” the boys announced proudly as they looked up from their work. The badly shorn lions and bald teddy bears stared at us reproachfully…

I’ve always been convinced that the boys will be lifelong friends. Rosita’s family moved away to Madison, Wisconsin four years ago, but we still stay in touch and we see each other at least once a year. This past weekend Rosita and I met up in New York City with our boys to celebrate their thirteenth birthday together.

Tomorrow I’ll share pictures from our trip, but for now, here are a few pictures I took of the supplies the boys travelled with:

Hair-spiking gel? Check.
Remote control fart machine? Check. Water-squirting camera? Check.
Video-recording spy glasses? Check.
The Googleyezer
Googly eyes in Chinatown
Googlyeyezed Starbucks Lady.
Best buddy? Check.
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The First 100 Days

After the 21st day of life, the next important Korean milestone is the 100th day of life, or baek-il. This is a relic of the days when infant mortality rates were high, and it was truly an occasion to celebrate when a baby made it to 100 days. On that 100th day, a family would traditionally pray and give food offerings to thank Samshin Halmoni (Birth Grandmother), the Shaman spirit of childbirth. The legend goes that a fifteen year old girl was seduced by a monk and became pregnant. Her scandalized and sanctimonious brothers locked her in a box and left her to die. Fortunately, her mother was able to free her, and she gave birth to triplet sons. Because of this heroic feat, she became Samshin Halmoni: the patron spirit of babies.

A party and feast are traditionally held for a baby’s baek-il. Samshin Halmoni is honored with prayers and food offerings. Red bean cakes are placed at the four compass points around the house to bring good fortune to the baby. It is also the custom to share rice cakes with 100 people to ensure long life for the baby.

Rice cakes

The first time I learned about baek-il was when my first son was born. My mother called to tell me we should have a party to celebrate. And so we did!

We had a party for my second son too:

I was looking for photos of my daughter’s 100 day party and sadly realized that we must not have done this for her. This is the fate of third children. I know. I’m a third child myself. I did manage to take pictures of her on her 100th day:

This is a girl who knows how to celebrate, party or no party!

Today I’m leaving for New York City to celebrate my son’s 13th birthday. We will be meeting up with one of his best buddies, who is also turning 13, and his mother, one of my best buddies. I’ll be back some time next week with more birthday stories and pictures to share!

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63 Bowls of Seaweed Soup, or: The First 21 Days

In Korea the 21st day of a baby’s life (Saei-rye), the 100th day of life (Baek-il), the 1st birthday (Dol, or Doljanchi) and the 60th birthday (Hwangap) are considered important milestones. Long ago, when infant mortality rates were higher and average life expectancy much lower than they are now, reaching these milestones was truly something to celebrate. Today, though life expectancy has greatly improved, these milestones are still marked with age-old traditions and celebrations.

A Korean mother and her baby are basically in solitary confinement (samchil-il) for the first 21 days of the baby’s life. They are not supposed to leave the house, and no one (except maybe the mother’s mother) is allowed to visit. Traditionally, a straw rope would be hung across the gate in front of the house to announce a baby’s birth and gender, to warn people away, and to ward off evil spirits. If the baby was a boy, anatomically suggestive red chili peppers or tassels in the shape of peppers would be entwined in the rope:

Does this remind you of anything?

Remind you of anything?

Pine twigs, representing longevity and virtue, would announce the birth of a baby girl. Bits of charcoal, representing purity, would be interspersed with the chili peppers and the pine twigs to chase away evil spirits.

When each of our nieces and nephews was born, my siblings and I were dying to go visit the baby right away, but were strictly forbidden to do so by my mother until the baby was 21 days old. When she found out that I had gone to a book fair with one of my own babies only days after giving birth, she was positively apoplectic. During the period of samchil-il, both the new mother and her baby are supposed to stay at home bundled in warm clothing to rest and recover from the ordeal of childbirth.

My son’s birth was indeed an ordeal. After 20 hours of labor, he was born with an alarmingly pointy head, jaundice, and a fever. I had a broken tailbone that left me unable to sit for 10 weeks and was a physical and emotional wreck. When we were discharged from the hospital, I was panic-stricken. Couldn’t the doctors and nurses see that I had no idea what I was doing? I was astonished at how irresponsible they were being to entrust this poor, helpless babe to someone as obviously unfit for motherhood as I was.

Those first weeks were a time of constant anxiety. I was given strict orders to nurse my baby every two hours to clear up his jaundice, but because of the jaundice, he was extremely sleepy and lethargic. I was instructed to do whatever I had to do in order to wake him up to nurse. A visiting nurse suggested that I wake him up by putting a cold wet washcloth on his face, but even that didn’t work. Trying to keep him awake, nurse him, and keep him wrapped in the biliblanket that was also supposed to help clear up the jaundice felt like a Sisyphean task.

“Leave me alone, can’t you see I’m trying to sleep here?!” (Can you see how he’s giving me the finger)?

Fortunately for me, my mother didn’t wait 21 days to come visit. When she arrived, the clouds finally parted. It was Easter. The sun was shining and the flowers were blooming. I look at photos of this day and I can see the relief and joy on my face:

My mother came with a bag full of exotic ingredients with which she cooked a gigantic cauldron of seaweed soup (miyuk gook) for me. This is the traditional postpartum food that a mother is supposed to eat for the first  21 days after giving birth. Why seaweed soup? The new mother is not supposed to eat or drink anything cold. She is also not supposed to eat anything that is hard to chew, as the gums have been weakened. More importantly, the iron, calcium, and iodine in seaweed are supposed to aid in the recovery after childbirth and milk production. Koreans traditionally eat this soup every year on their birthday, because it is so closely associated with birth. My mother urged me to eat this soup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I love Korean food, and my mother’s culinary skills are legendary, but there is no alchemy that can transform thick, rubbery bits of seaweed floating in broth into a palatable dish, especially when one is required to eat it three times a day. Every day she was there, my mother would heat up the soup and then sit across the table from me as I choked it down under her watchful gaze. The day she left, my mom made me promise to keep eating the soup until it was all gone.

I’ll never forget the utter despair I felt as my mom and dad drove away from our house to return to their own. I stood in the driveway clutching my baby and wailing disconsolately as I watched the car until it disappeared around the corner. I truly didn’t know how I could possibly manage without my mother there to help and guide me. I went back inside and ladled out a bowl of her seaweed soup with tears streaming down my face. My mother was no longer there, but I could taste her love in every slimy spoonful. I ate every last drop.

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Weekend Snapshots

We bid a fond farewell to our friends Hiroshi and Naho, who return to Japan this week after two years in Charlottesville:

Helping Hands wrapped up its winter session. This is how much money we’re donating to some of our favorite organizations:

Soccer season began:

My sister and parents made the trek to C’ville, partly to see my son’s school play and partly for the bubble pancakes at Taste of China:

I wasn’t sure what the quickest route to my son’s school from the restaurant would be, so I asked my friend Siri. You know, the one who likes to mess with my head? (Lost) :

My mom said, “I can’t believe she called you a dummy!”

I can.

We somehow made it to Back Pain Candidate for Gloades School without Siri’s help. Café 007  is an annual event at Tandem Friends School. It’s a series of skits, poems, musical numbers, and short films written and performed by the seventh graders, who are all required to take drama for the second half of the year. To me this is learning at its finest. Putting a show like this together involves creative writing, problem-solving, cooperation, and collaboration…It was hilarious and moving to watch the kids performing skits and songs they’d written themselves, dancing with wild abandon, and hurling themselves headlong into their goofy roles. You could tell they trusted each other and the support of their community.

A Fettucini Brother
Awkward Man!
Ghostbusters
A Knight
?!

Rite 13, Pt. 2

Continued from yesterday’s post…

We did a run-through of the liturgy. While all the other parents read the words out loud, I adopted a glazed, unfocused, slack-jawed look on my face and pretended I wasn’t even there. After the rehearsal, a couple of the youth leaders (saints of the highest order!) pulled me aside to warn me not to look in their direction during the actual ceremony. They would definitely be crying and they didn’t want to set me off. Please! Did they think they were dealing with an amateur? I was totally ready for this!

During the sermon, my son kept giving me sidelong glances. I could tell he was worried. Finally, it was time for Rite 13. He was called to the front along with eight other children and their parents.

As I took my place behind my son, I disassociated. I’m not quite sure where I went, but I was definitely not in that sanctuary with the rest of those poor souls. The only time my concentration was broken was when I heard my husband start to choke up. At that point, beads of sweat gathered on my brow, but I redoubled my efforts and managed to scramble and claw my way back to the safety of my alternate reality!

Those Episcopalians really know how to work the drama. At the end of the liturgy, the youth who had been sitting with their parents at the beginning of the service now leave them and sit together with their peers for the remainder of the hour. It’s the final jagged-edged knife to the heart, symbolizing the youth’s journey to adulthood.

I made it safely through. I know what you’re probably thinking. It was wrong of me not to have shown up for this once in a lifetime event. I should have experienced it, no matter how wrenching…A couple days after the service, in the privacy and sanctity of my own home, armed with a box of Kleenex, I did experience it. I pulled the text of the liturgy out of my purse where I had stowed it away. I allowed myself to really read it through, and I wept.

Here are some of the words:

Candidates, by the grace of God, you have lived through the pains and joys of childhood and have grown strong as young men and women. It is given to you to share in the power of God’s creation. You are blessed with the ability to create new ideas, new thoughts, new hopes for the world, and indeed to create new life. [Cue screeching of brakes sound effect! WHOA! Just…whoa!!!]

(Congregation in unison):
God of mercy and love, enfold these parents with your grace. Fill them with the joy of your presence. Rejoice with them as their sons and daughters become men and women. Strengthen them that they may support their daughters and sons as they begin the journey toward adulthood. Uphold them by your Spirit, that they may comfort them, although they can neither walk their road for them nor shield them from pain. Carry parents and children together safely through this journey, so that one day they may stand side by side as adults and friends, a joy and a comfort to each other all the days of their lives. Amen [These were the killer words that were the beginning of my undoing the first time I heard them].

(Parents address their sons and daughters in unison):
We thank God for the gift of your lives. As you begin to carve out the life that will be your own, we will stand behind you and support you. May we be patient and understanding, ready to guide and forgive, that in our love for you, you may know the love of God. You are holy and wonderful and blessed, and we will not look away from you. We are your parents, and we support you on this journey.

Phew.

That’s my baby:

Hope your weekend is wonderful!

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Rite 13, Pt. 1

Rite 13. It sounds ominous, doesn’t it? It’s way scarier than you can possibly imagine.

A few months ago I was sitting in church, innocently zoning out in my pew. The next thing I knew a bunch of kids I’ve known since they were toddlers were called to the front along with their parents. What followed was the single most devastating ritual I’ve ever witnessed. I began weeping uncontrollably. I felt keen empathy for the poor parents, many of them good friends of mine, who were standing at the altar with their children, completely exposed as they dissolved into quivering puddles of tears. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to make the sanctuary reverberate with my ugly racking sobs.

What I was witnessing was “Rite 13,” a relatively new tradition and liturgy created in the eighties by sadistic Episcopalians in Durham, North Carolina to torture unsuspecting parents of adolescents everywhere. (As if we didn’t have enough to deal with already). It was conceived as a Protestant version of the bar and bat mitzvah of the Jewish tradition. This rite of passage has been adopted by many churches, including the Presbyterian church my family attends. Around their 13th birthday, youth are invited to participate in this liturgy with their parents.

This past Sunday my almost 13 year old son went through his Rite 13. I’ve been dreading this Sunday ever since witnessing the first one. Not wanting to make a complete spectacle of myself and embarrass him in front of all of his peers and the entire church with my ugly crying, I trained for this Sunday like it was an Olympic sport. Here’s how it all went down:

Over breakfast we discussed strategy. My son offered to piss me off so I wouldn’t cry.

“OK. That shouldn’t be too hard,” I readily agreed.

He wasn’t convinced. He kept narrowing his eyes at me and saying, “You’re not going to cry, right?”

I cracked my knuckles and said, “Nope. It’s going to be fine. I’ve got this.”

I told him he had to look respectable. I pulled out a pair of wrinkled khakis from the pile of clean, but unfolded laundry. They were horribly stained! I dug around his drawers and found an alternative: a pair of navy blue pants.

“Here, put these on!”

“Why can’t I just wear jeans?”

“PUT THEM ON!” I barked shrilly.

“Well, actually, I CAN’T, because the button’s missing.”

For the next fifteen minutes I hunted high and low for a needle. For the next ten minutes I tried to thread the needle. I swear it would have been easier to cram a camel through the eye of that needle. For the next ten minutes after that, my husband tried to thread the needle. Finally, I snatched it back from him, managed to thread the needle, find an extra button, and sew it on. We were now running late.

“OK! THEY’RE DONE! NOW PUT THEM ON, QUICK!” (Yes, from that point on, I really was speaking in all CAPS).

I ran out to the car where the rest of my family was already patiently waiting.

“WHERE IS HE?!” I asked impatiently as we waited and waited for the boy/man of the hour to make his appearance in his newly-mended pants.

My husband got out of the car and went back into the house to figure out what was taking him so long.

They both emerged from the house looking peevish and disgruntled.

“He can’t get it buttoned,” he grumbled.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the spare button I had found might not actually fit into the buttonhole.

“I’LL DO IT FOR YOU AS SOON AS WE GET THERE. NOW LET’S GO!”

We pulled into the parking lot and I managed to force the too-large button into the hole. (Are we detecting a recurring theme here)? I stood back to look at my son and only then realized that the size 16 pants he was wearing were at least two inches too short for his gangly legs. (Yep. There it is again).

“GAH!”

We made it in time for the rehearsal. The time had finally come to put my months of training to the test…

Friday: Rite 13, Pt. 2

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Roooaaar!/Baaaaaa!

“In like a lion, out like a lamb.”

A week ago today we woke up to no power and this:

Can you see the tree that fell in our backyard in this next picture?

School and work were cancelled! It was cold, but cozy to be hunkered down with everyone on that first day.

To their great chagrin, I insisted that the kids wear helmets to play out in the snow. There were trees down everywhere and I kept hearing the ominous creaking and cracking of limbs:

That night my oldest son said he would “test” his hardiness by roughing it in his own cold bedroom. My husband did the same. The sybarites among us, (including me), camped out in the living room with the gas fireplace going:

By the next morning the lack of power was getting really old. My husband and I had both done huge separate shopping trips the day the power went out to stock up for the storm. We made a pathetic attempt to salvage some of the food:

My husband tried valiantly to cut up a huge tree that was blocking our road with a rusty old saw. A neighbor with a chainsaw took pity on him and helped him clear the path:

Two and a half days without power left us feeling like primitive cave dwellers.

A week later, the bees are buzzing, the birds are chirping, and our yard looks like this:

What a miracle that this was hiding underneath all that snow!

Here’s that tree that fell. Over the weekend another kind neighbor with a chainsaw surprised us by performing this act of mercy:

I’m so thankful for good neighbors, a warm house, electricity, and signs of SPRING!