An Update

Jun 17, 2014

Remember my new grandchildren? The creepy little ones with pinchers?

My grandkids

They are far, far creepier than I could have even imagined. I had just about come to grips with the idea that I would now have two grandchildren, when that wayward son of mine brought home three.

This past weekend I was visiting my new niece in Minneapolis. (More on this tomorrow). When I got back, my son told me that while I was away, one of the hermit crabs had murdered the other one in the middle of the night. He had heard chirruping and had thought his new charges were playing with each other. When daylight broke, he awoke to the stink of dead fish and the sight of the hermit crab’s lifeless, dismembered body.

We have buried Abel and have painted the murderer’s shell with the mark of Cain. And now it’s just Cain and my namesake, Adrienne.

The next day we left on our family vacation. We are trying to regroup after the tragedy in a glamorous, exotic locale whose charms may help us forget, if only for a little while…We are in Pittsburgh.

I love you

Jun 15, 2014

Reposted…

Earlier this week, I wrote about how delighted I was to finally get junk mail from my grad school. It was the proof I needed to convince myself that it wasn’t all a dream…that I had in fact gotten the degree I had struggled to earn for far too many years. What finally got me to actually finish the degree long after my heart was no longer in it was a phone call from my mother during which she dropped the most devastating weapon in her arsenal: an emotional nuclear bomb that rained all over my angst-ridden psyche. “Just finish it for your father’s sake. It would mean so much to him. Please. Do this one last thing for him, before he dies,” she said to me over the phone in a quavering voice. It was a bravura performance, which could have won her an Oscar. It spurred me to drag my heaving flanks across the finish line, staggering and gasping all the way. Although my dad was in perfect health at the time, my mother wasn’t exaggerating about one thing. It did mean a lot to him. I wrote this essay five years ago about my father’s reaction when I finally received my Ph.D., but it always felt too personal to share. It still feels too personal, but I’m banking on the fact that my dad will never read this. Besides, after writing about being seen naked by my in-laws, what is there left to hide?

______________________________________________________________________________________

The words “I love you” have never, not once, either on purpose or by accident, ever fallen from my father’s lips. It’s not that he doesn’t feel genuine love. I think he worships my mother. His children know that he loves them deeply in his own way. It’s outward, obvious expressions of love that make him uncomfortable.

When we were little, we used to always give my mom and dad a goodnight kiss. One day, when I was about five, I kissed my mom, and then went to kiss my dad. As I drew near, he said, “You don’t have to do that,” and fended me off with a stiff arm. I froze in mortified hurt and wordlessly slunk off to bed. We never touched each other again until the day I went to college. My parents were about to drive back home after helping me unload my things and dropping me off at my dormitory. My mother gathered me into her arms as if I were five rather than seventeen. She kissed me and then hugged me for a long time as if she never intended to let me go, all the while tenderly whispering into my ear all of her hopes and dreams for me. When she finally did let me go, she wiped the tears from her eyes and urged me to give my father a hug. Deeply embarrassed, I tentatively approached him and awkwardly held out my arms to him. He patted me stiffly on the back and turned to leave with an “O.K., well, see ya.”

My mom is a woman who almost always gets what she wants when she wants it. One day she summoned all her considerable powers of persuasion to get my father to say the three words she’d never heard from him.

“Just say it,” she cajoled, “I won’t even look at you. Please, just once.”

My dad remained uncomfortably mute.

Never one to give up a battle and completely unaccustomed to failure, my mother tried a hundred different ways to get him to say those words.

Exhausted and demoralized, she tried a final tactic. “I’ll say it first and then you say it back to me…I love you.”

There was a long silence, and then finally he mustered a sheepish, “Me too.” She gave up. It was the best he could do.

Shortly after I defended my dissertation and was finally awarded my Ph.D., I got a letter from my dad addressed to Dr. Adrienne X. It was written on pages and pages of his favorite yellow lined pads. It must have taken him ages to write that letter. In his barely decipherable handwriting I read very formal words of congratulations and advice about my future. In those words I know he was really saying: “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

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I love you too, Dad.

Wheat Belly Weekend, Pt. 2

Jun 14, 2014

Reposted…

Every good Wheat Belly Breakfast should start with one of these:

Chocolate Croissant. Mmmmmmmm…

We spent Saturday shopping in Soho, home to one of my favorite stores: Pearl River.

For lunch we went to L’Ecole, where the prix fixe menus are prepared by student chefs at the International Culinary Center. Bobby Flay and David Chang of Momofuku fame got their start here!

Next on our agenda: ABC Carpet and Home at 888 & 881 Broadway at East 19th Street. Six floors of fabulousness.

Wheat Belly Weekend flew by like a dream…The next morning it was already time to go home.

My sister and I drove on to Arlington, making it just in time to take our mom and dad out for Father’s Day at their preferred dining hour of 4:30 pm!

A rare smile from the man we have affectionately dubbed: The Easter Island Head.

Finally, it was back to Charlottesville and this cozy bunch:

I love you, fellow Wheat Belly Sisters. And I love you, Teddy, for caring about your sisters enough to send us Wheat Belly, even though it hurt our feelings and made us feel rather grouchy. We forgive you, because you gave us the gift of Wheat Belly Weekend.

I’m already looking forward to next year!

Wheat Belly Weekend, Pt. 1

Jun 13, 2014

Reposted…

I drove up to Arlington last Thursday to pick up my sister for our Wheat Belly Weekend in New York City. There were alarming reports of tornadoes all the way there, but we would not, could not be deterred from our sisters’ weekend! Together, we drove on chatting and chortling for five hours straight. We cackled so hard we had to suck on cough drops to soothe our sore throats. (I’ll be writing about some of those funny stories soon)! Finally, we reached my second sister’s house in New Jersey, where we would spend the night.

I got to briefly hang out with my adorable niece and nephews:

It’s taken me many years, but I finally figured out how to get kids to pose for a picture…

Let them do this first:

Get it out of your system, boys!

I experimented a little with my brand new macro lens, a Canon EF 100 mm f/2.8L IS USM. I have no idea what I’m doing…

…but I’m having fun figuring it out!

We took the train to Penn Station from my sister’s house the next morning. As we made our way out of the station we were hit with the best smell of all:

“Mmmmmm….I smell carbs!”

We walked a couple blocks to Koreatown:

We stopped at Kangsuh for lunch, where I had my favorite Korean comfort food dduk gook:

After lunch, we went to get our hair done at Hydy Hair Salon on the second floor of this building. It was like a Korean version of the “Barbershop”/”Beauty Shop” movies! I got tsk tsked for the gross mismanagement of my hair by Hydy herself. She valiantly tried to set me straight, but in the end kept lifting locks of my hair with an air of dissatisfaction and saying, “I tried my best!” Which is exactly what you want to hear after a hair appointment.

We stayed in Koreatown for dinner. I was lured over to a restaurant across the street by their poster advertising Dduk boki. Dduk boki is typical Korean street vendor food that looks like this:

Carbalicious!

It’s got dense, chewy rice sticks that look like halved cheese sticks swimming in a red-hot and spicy sauce made out of fermented chili pepper paste. It’s hard to tell in the picture, but our “small portions” were actually enormous! By the time we left, there was a line out the door

Back at the hotel we collapsed in a carb-induced stupor…perfect for watching a movie in bed!

View from our window

Tomorrow: Wheat Belly Weekend, Pt. 2

Wheat Belly Sisters

Wheat Belly Sisters

Jun 12, 2014

Reposted…

In his current incarnation as a paleo adherent and owner of two CrossFit gyms, my brother has transformed himself into a rock solid mass of rippling lean muscle and sinew. Once the wearer of “husky” size clothing, he now refers to his more humanly-proportioned former self (the one we, his older sisters, always cherished and adored) as “that guy” and “morbidly obese.” He has found his passion and calling. His clients gush about him. He changes people’s lives. They say things like, “Thank you for creating an environment where people push each other to be the best that they can be.”

Last summer all my siblings and I got together at my parents’ house in Arlington. It had been awhile since we had seen each other. My brother sized up his three dear sisters and he came up with an action plan.

The following week three identical amazon.com packages were delivered to three different households. There was no note, just this:

Now of course on an intellectual level we understood that our brother was expressing his concern for his sisters. That this was, undoubtedly, a ham-fisted expression of love. But…Ouch. Just…ouch.

A three-way email flame-fest of epic proportions ensued. My oldest sister wrote the first message. She reported coming home exhausted from a long day at work, being happily surprised to see a package addressed to her, opening it…and bursting into tears. My second sister was incensed. Me? I opened my package and read lying on the couch, eating a bowl of Cheetos, the book propped up on my big fat wheat belly. Knowing that our little brother had sent all three of us the same, bluntly-named book (did a caveman come up with that title?!) was a sister-bonding experience like no other.

Fairly early on in our email flame-athon, my sisters and I began addressing each other as “Wheat Belly” or even just: “Fatty.” When my oldest sister said that all she wanted to do to was to console herself by eating a bagel with her fellow Wheat Belly Sisters, it occurred to me that we really should and could do it. The Wheat Belly Harpy Weekend was born. (Oh, did I mention that my brother likes to refer to his sisters collectively as “The Harpies”?

The planning went a little something like this:

On Friday “we would have a delicious carb-laden dinner and then go to the movies…On Saturday, we would roll around on our wheat bellies by the pool after a huge breakfast of bagels, pancakes and waffles. Then another really starchy, carby dinner…”

The weekend was awesome. We spent the weekend in a hotel. We went to a spa. We filled our wheat bellies.

…And we made a special toast to our little brother, who had made it all happen:

I’m hitting the road again today. I’m going to be hanging with the harpies at our Second Annual Wheat Belly Weekend in NYC! Can’t wait to chow down on those fresh, piping hot H&H everything bagels smothered with cream cheese!

Chubs, Fatty, and Doughy

Thanks, brother! Love, Fatty

Nieces are Nice!

Jun 11, 2014

This past weekend we celebrated my niece’s sweet sixteen birthday party in Princeton, New Jersey. My niece was the first baby I ever fell in love with and the first of my parents’ nine grandchildren. I’m going to write more about this next week, but here’s a sneak peek:

The Girls

This weekend I’ll be traveling to Minneapolis for Wheat Belly Weekend III…The big twist this year is that we’re going to spend the weekend with my brother and his newly expanded family. We’re going to celebrate the birth of our newest niece and the youngest baby in the family.

For the next couple of days, I’ll be reposting the first Wheat Belly posts in honor of WBWIII!

My Mom’s Korean Salad Recipe

Jun 5, 2014

In my callow youth, all I wanted was to eat magically delicious neon yellow Kraft macaroni and cheese or that mysterious meat known as “Salisbury steak.” I’ve written before about the more challenging foods I grew up with instead. As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate the food that my mother prepares from vegetables harvested from her back (and front)! yards…I still don’t like eating sea cucumbers and acorns, though.

Here’s my mom’s own recipe for her Korean-style salad:

1. Harvest lettuce from your suburban plot turned farmscape.

2. Harvest other green, unidentifiable plants you’ve grown from seeds sent to you from Korea.

3. Dress with wild sesame oil (which is a bit thicker than regular sesame oil), soy sauce, garlic powder, sesame seeds and red pepper flakes.

I can’t tell you the proportions, because my mom makes it up as she goes along, but I can tell you it’s yummy!

Call Me Grandma

Jun 4, 2014

Momentous changes are afoot around here…

One minute, I was a brand new mother:

I blinked, and then this happened:

Middle School Graduation

It’s hard to believe that baby I held in my arms is now a high schooler who already towers over me.

It’s hard to face the fact that I can no longer be the one making all the decisions for him.

Like what he should wear for Halloween, for instance:

“What?! You don’t want to wear a skirt for Halloween again this year?!”

It’s hard to face the fact that I have to let this boy spread his wings and fly. It’s a daily struggle, but I’m doing the best I can.

Right after his middle school graduation ceremony, I saw him off on his own adventure. He is now at the beach for a week with friends from school and adults who are not his own mother and father. As I drove him to their house, I gave him a lecture on letting his conscience dictate his behavior and about making “good, responsible choices.”

The morning after they arrived at the beach, I got a message from one of the parent chaperones saying that my fourteen-year-old firstborn son was now himself “a proud parent.”

Attached was this photo:

My new grandchildren.

Sure, I know that every kid has to make his own mistakes. It’s all part of growing up. But had I known that sending my adolescent son off to the beach by himself would mean that I would become a grandmother overnight…I can assure you I would have locked that boy in his bedroom until he was…oh, I don’t know, 35? 40?

Obviously, what’s done is done. I had to find some way to make peace with this news. I had to regain some modicum of control over the situation. So, I reached out to him in the only way I knew how…Facebook instant messaging, of course. It hasn’t always worked out for me, as you’ll note from the message dated May 21st. This time, though, I think I really got through to him:

Oh yeah, Grandma’s still got it!

(And in case you’re wondering: UnYoung is my Korean name and NOT a reflection of my age. It means “bright like silver”…NOT old or decrepit or anything like that)!