Your children live such different lives than you.
Generations ago this wasn't true. You lived the life your mother, and your grandmother, and probably your 5 times great grandmother lived. Change came slowly; your family situation was immutable to a large extent.
Enter the 20th Century and the dislocation of tens of millions (hundreds of millions?) from the agrarian past. Without the connection to the land and the community, there was really no reason to try to live the life your father lived, and your grandfather's and great grandfather's life was now out of reach. Those on the land continued, perhaps, to follow their ancient traditions and lifestyles, but those in the cities couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't need to. And the cities increasingly beckoned more and more people from the life on the farm, where the rhythms were becoming increasingly urban, or at least controlled by people whose rhythms were urban.
Suddenly there was this strange modern thing called "choice."
But your children's lives will also differ in more personal ways. My own family had broken down by the time I was my children's ages. My mother was dead, my father immersed in an increasingly remote role that had no room for me. Wei's mother remained (and remains) connected, but his elderly father died before my daughter was born.
My children retain strong bonds with us, and I can't see that changing. It was something deliberate on my part. I feel very keenly how adrift Wei and I were as young adults, without the strong anchor of a stable existing home or parents and wanted my kids to know that we were always there for them. I watch my children struggle with relationships, jobs, and, frankly poverty, and am completely nonplussed about how Wei and I handled this. We just had to make it up; the "adults" in our lives were, for the most part, absent, or useless.
My kids know that they can come home.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
What's your talent?
We're in a phase right now, as a family, of admiring ourselves.
Every family dinner conversation seems to include a litany of how well we raised our marvelous children, usually in comparison with our newly-fledged ones encounters with their peers, who do not seem to have absorbed the same lessons of self-reliance that ours did.
At my son's birthday dinner last week we somehow got into a description of how talented we all were. DH is Mr. Music. Son Seng Lim is Mr. Music, Jr. I trotted out my old joke that I'm pretty good at everything and superlative at nothing.
And daughter Nga, who has always been a little bit of a cuckoo in this nest, says , "well what am I good at?
And everyone's first reaction was a moment of awkward silence while we all struggled for the answer.
It was awful.
N in fact has an amazing talent; she's a gifted professional figure skater who has traveled the world getting paid to do this. She's been to US Junior Nationals. But for just a moment our minds went blank.
And then we all realized what Nga's talent really is. She's amazing with people, something the rest of us fail at to varying degrees. She makes friends easily, and keeps them happy. She gets along with all sorts of people.
There are all kinds of talent. Our society thinks of talent as skill-- art or music or sports.
But some people are just talented at life.
Every family dinner conversation seems to include a litany of how well we raised our marvelous children, usually in comparison with our newly-fledged ones encounters with their peers, who do not seem to have absorbed the same lessons of self-reliance that ours did.
At my son's birthday dinner last week we somehow got into a description of how talented we all were. DH is Mr. Music. Son Seng Lim is Mr. Music, Jr. I trotted out my old joke that I'm pretty good at everything and superlative at nothing.
And daughter Nga, who has always been a little bit of a cuckoo in this nest, says , "well what am I good at?
And everyone's first reaction was a moment of awkward silence while we all struggled for the answer.
It was awful.
N in fact has an amazing talent; she's a gifted professional figure skater who has traveled the world getting paid to do this. She's been to US Junior Nationals. But for just a moment our minds went blank.
And then we all realized what Nga's talent really is. She's amazing with people, something the rest of us fail at to varying degrees. She makes friends easily, and keeps them happy. She gets along with all sorts of people.
There are all kinds of talent. Our society thinks of talent as skill-- art or music or sports.
But some people are just talented at life.
Friday, March 23, 2012
26 is the new 21
Today is my son Seng Lim's 26th birthday.
It's been making me feel melancholy all day, but not because I feel old, or because he's not completely awesome (he is).
It's because I feel somehow personally responsible for not fixing the world for him.
Because my gift to him today is the loss of his health care coverage. Generations ago kids got cut loose at 16, and then at 18. Back in the day it was 21. Now 26 is the year that we say "That's it. You're really an adult now. Make your own dentist appointments."
Even 26 years ago bringing a child into the world was a terrifying act of faith, because unlike the generations prior to my own, I didn't have to. Starting with my generation, sex in the modern West was decoupled from procreation, and child bearing became a chosen gift to the future. I really did give life to my children, because I had the capability to choose to do that.
But I wanted to bring them into a world that was better than the world I got. A world that honored artists, and tolerated alternate opinions, and took care of its vulnerable, and that didn't study war any more.
When Seng Lim was three, quite literally on his third birthday, the United States went to war. I remember sitting in a cafe with a friend and vowing that there would be no war when my son turned 18 and was vulnerable to a possible draft. But when he was 17 we did it again, starting a war in a place we had no business being. I went home that day and put a sign up in our window that says "NO WAR" and it is still there, almost 10 years later. We have been at war, somewhere, for that young man's entire life. How did that happen.
These thoughts are too sad for a birthday, which just makes me mad. Does it need to be my grandson to whom I can finally say "here is the clean, peaceful, just world that I promised your father when he was born"?
Happy Birthday, Seng Lim. I'm sorry.
It's been making me feel melancholy all day, but not because I feel old, or because he's not completely awesome (he is).
It's because I feel somehow personally responsible for not fixing the world for him.
Because my gift to him today is the loss of his health care coverage. Generations ago kids got cut loose at 16, and then at 18. Back in the day it was 21. Now 26 is the year that we say "That's it. You're really an adult now. Make your own dentist appointments."
Even 26 years ago bringing a child into the world was a terrifying act of faith, because unlike the generations prior to my own, I didn't have to. Starting with my generation, sex in the modern West was decoupled from procreation, and child bearing became a chosen gift to the future. I really did give life to my children, because I had the capability to choose to do that.
But I wanted to bring them into a world that was better than the world I got. A world that honored artists, and tolerated alternate opinions, and took care of its vulnerable, and that didn't study war any more.
When Seng Lim was three, quite literally on his third birthday, the United States went to war. I remember sitting in a cafe with a friend and vowing that there would be no war when my son turned 18 and was vulnerable to a possible draft. But when he was 17 we did it again, starting a war in a place we had no business being. I went home that day and put a sign up in our window that says "NO WAR" and it is still there, almost 10 years later. We have been at war, somewhere, for that young man's entire life. How did that happen.
These thoughts are too sad for a birthday, which just makes me mad. Does it need to be my grandson to whom I can finally say "here is the clean, peaceful, just world that I promised your father when he was born"?
Happy Birthday, Seng Lim. I'm sorry.
Friday, December 16, 2011
25 years
The best gift I ever gave my children was a childhood in a single home; they've lived their entire lives in the same house.
We moved in twenty-five years ago today. My son was 8 months old, my daughter still just an amorphous idea of a second child.
I've always wondered what this does to a psyche.
My children retain their keys. When they come home, they're coming home--they let themselves in; they know where things are. It is understood that they "live" here, even though they don't live here. I can't wrap my head around the sense of belonging and stability that this must give a child. For me this is the house that I chose and bought; for them it's their country. I think this house must feel to them like "theirs" in ways that I cannot fathom.
Americans are used to moving--it's practically a national pasttime. Companies think nothing of uprooting a family and sending them across the country because it's better for the business. Kids get out of college and home in on any community but home.
As a child, I lived at 7 different addresses in four states as my father worked his way up the academic heirarchy. From the age of 17, when I started college, to the age of 30, when we moved here, I lived at 8 addresses in 3 cities, including an entirely different country. I didn't even get to go "home;" between them in that period my parents also lived at 6 different addresses in 2 cities, none of them places that I had ever lived. When I visited them, it was to unfamiliar apartments furnished with unfamiliar objects.
After my son came back from his world travels, seeing dozens of American, European and Mideast cities on tour as a musician, he remarked that he'd never seen a place where he couldn't do anything that he could do at home.
Because he has one. This one.
You're welcome.
We moved in twenty-five years ago today. My son was 8 months old, my daughter still just an amorphous idea of a second child.
I've always wondered what this does to a psyche.
My children retain their keys. When they come home, they're coming home--they let themselves in; they know where things are. It is understood that they "live" here, even though they don't live here. I can't wrap my head around the sense of belonging and stability that this must give a child. For me this is the house that I chose and bought; for them it's their country. I think this house must feel to them like "theirs" in ways that I cannot fathom.
Americans are used to moving--it's practically a national pasttime. Companies think nothing of uprooting a family and sending them across the country because it's better for the business. Kids get out of college and home in on any community but home.
As a child, I lived at 7 different addresses in four states as my father worked his way up the academic heirarchy. From the age of 17, when I started college, to the age of 30, when we moved here, I lived at 8 addresses in 3 cities, including an entirely different country. I didn't even get to go "home;" between them in that period my parents also lived at 6 different addresses in 2 cities, none of them places that I had ever lived. When I visited them, it was to unfamiliar apartments furnished with unfamiliar objects.
After my son came back from his world travels, seeing dozens of American, European and Mideast cities on tour as a musician, he remarked that he'd never seen a place where he couldn't do anything that he could do at home.
Because he has one. This one.
You're welcome.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Double nickle
That's right. 55. I turned 55.
My mother was never this old, in fact I actually noted the day, November 21, that I lived longer than my mother. So from here, I'm making it all up.
I went out to dinner with my old friends Holly and Chris. We always share birthdays, and have been doing this for years. They started this right out of college. I used to make it a bigger deal and invited other friends too, until Chris, bless her heart, asked if she and Holly and I could do it just among ourselves, because my other friends were either boring, arrogant, annoying, or all three.
Sadly, I realized she was right, so we started doing it with just us, and occasionally our friend Maggie.
Well, 55 was one for the record books. I decided I needed to write it down because birthday parties don't really get much worse than this. (Okay, there was the time Bill gave me a surprise party even though I begged him not to, and I spent the entire party locked in the bedroom, crying.)
First, I decided to walk to the restaurant since it wasn't very far (a little more than a mile). Five blocks short I tried to step off the sidewalk to get around this lumbering idiot who was slowly making his way along, and put my foot into a pothole, nicely breaking my ankle. Then I couldn't get a bus to stop for me, and had to walk the rest of the way.
The restaurant gave me ice, but refused to ask someone for ibuprofen, in case I sued them, so my friend had to go to the nearest store, several blocks away, to get me some. We get seated, right next to an unsealed door behind which is a very raucous wedding, playing music so loud that conversation was pretty much impossible. The waiter wouldn't move us, so we simply moved our selves, one 2-top over so there was a little more distance between us and the door.
At which point the hostess comes over and explains to us that the table we've moved to will actually need to be added to a large group scheduled to come in 45 minutes, so we're going to have to be done in 45 minutes so they can be seated. At this point I finally started to cry.
Happy Birthday. You're old, injured, and a pain in the neck.
It all worked out. The restaurant found a way to set up the needed table without ousting us; the other party didn't show up anyway. The wedding finally started dinner and turned the music off, and my friends more or less carried me home and made me tea.
No way Holly (June 4) and Chris (September 14) can top that.
My mother was never this old, in fact I actually noted the day, November 21, that I lived longer than my mother. So from here, I'm making it all up.
I went out to dinner with my old friends Holly and Chris. We always share birthdays, and have been doing this for years. They started this right out of college. I used to make it a bigger deal and invited other friends too, until Chris, bless her heart, asked if she and Holly and I could do it just among ourselves, because my other friends were either boring, arrogant, annoying, or all three.
Sadly, I realized she was right, so we started doing it with just us, and occasionally our friend Maggie.
Well, 55 was one for the record books. I decided I needed to write it down because birthday parties don't really get much worse than this. (Okay, there was the time Bill gave me a surprise party even though I begged him not to, and I spent the entire party locked in the bedroom, crying.)
First, I decided to walk to the restaurant since it wasn't very far (a little more than a mile). Five blocks short I tried to step off the sidewalk to get around this lumbering idiot who was slowly making his way along, and put my foot into a pothole, nicely breaking my ankle. Then I couldn't get a bus to stop for me, and had to walk the rest of the way.
The restaurant gave me ice, but refused to ask someone for ibuprofen, in case I sued them, so my friend had to go to the nearest store, several blocks away, to get me some. We get seated, right next to an unsealed door behind which is a very raucous wedding, playing music so loud that conversation was pretty much impossible. The waiter wouldn't move us, so we simply moved our selves, one 2-top over so there was a little more distance between us and the door.
At which point the hostess comes over and explains to us that the table we've moved to will actually need to be added to a large group scheduled to come in 45 minutes, so we're going to have to be done in 45 minutes so they can be seated. At this point I finally started to cry.
Happy Birthday. You're old, injured, and a pain in the neck.
It all worked out. The restaurant found a way to set up the needed table without ousting us; the other party didn't show up anyway. The wedding finally started dinner and turned the music off, and my friends more or less carried me home and made me tea.
No way Holly (June 4) and Chris (September 14) can top that.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Remembrance, Life, Earth, and Faith.
I have a huge family. On my side, 9 aunts and uncles and 29 first cousins; on my husband’s 26 aunts and uncles and god knows how many cousins.
We know almost none of them.
Growing up, both families kept in better touch, but I lost track of all of my own relatives more than a decade ago, through neglect, poor sibling relations in the older generation, my own poor relationship with my father and a family culture that never emphasized togetherness. We’re better with my husband’s family, where we at least know everyone’s name, but as they all live out West (and by “out West” I mean anywhere from San Francisco to LA to China to Thailand), we see each other in spurts when some branch of the family vacations near another.
Or when someone dies.
My husband’s cousin June, daughter of his eldest aunt, died the day before the Solstice this year. We knew June rather well, and her children, who are my age. Therefore, this Solstice Sowing is for her; I hope to be able to plant some of them in my own garden in the spring, and get some to her family in San Francisco.
Solstice Sowing is a tradition among gardeners, to plant something for the spring on the darkest day of the year, to honor the return of the sun and the promise of next year's garden. Four types of seeds are planted.
The first set of seeds are seeds of remembrance and should be seeds of flowers that remind us of someone we knew and loved but who is now gone from our lives forever. I’ve planted Angelonia, for the Angel in the name.
The second set of seeds represent seeds of life and should be for plants that will make fruit or nectar and invite birds and butterflies to our gardens. I’ve planted sunflowers, which were a gift from Renee’s Garden.
The third set of seeds should be tree seeds. We can honor Mother Nature by growing trees that will help clean the air we breathe, reduce excess sun on the soil, and provide shade for our heads on a hot summer’s day. I took a cutting from my Magnolia; despite the cold and the date, the wood was green and pliable.
The fourth set of seeds are seeds of faith, for which I have chosen Anemone. The plant you sow for “faith” should be a zone that is beyond ours in warmth. It will help us to remember that we accept the “Leap of Faith” in our hearts and know that Mother Nature is capable of miracles. Anemone is a flower filled with meaning, both mythical, traditional and personal. They represent everlasting love in the language of flowers. These are also the flower of the god, whose blood renews the earth in the spring. As a flower of the Greek highlands, they represent my own Greek heritage.
Finally, these seeds showed up in my mailbox one day, with several others. I have never been able to determine who sent them, so perhaps they’re a gift of the goddess, who will be honored to have them planted as she welcomes June back to her heart for eternity.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
If I wrote holiday greetings
Here is what happened this year:
Seng Lim left, and came back, and left again, and came back again. Nga left, and came back, and left again, and came back again. I don't think they're done.Seng Lim's off again in March, and Nga for the summer.
Nga discovered that she's smart. Our fault I suppose--parents tell their daughters one of two things: that they are pretty or that they are smart. Then the pretty ones think they aren't smart, and the smart ones think they aren't pretty. We told Nga she was pretty; I guess we assumed she knew she was smart. It's best anyway, to learn yourself that you can be both.
Seng Lim discovered that he's good-looking. Apparently women check him out when his hair is short. (He was the smart one. Sigh.)
We continue to make an oddly comfortable living despite our somewhat unconventional job situations. The count in April for our income taxes was seven W2 forms and nine 1099s. Are there really households that have only two? We seem to be managing to pay cash for Nora's freshman and sophomore years at the city college and have enough left to help her with housing. I am completely enamored with writing $1,400 checks instead of $14,000 checks, like we did for Seng. Hooray for community college.
My life changed (it was due-- if you care to check, you will see me reinventing myself about every 5 years). With yet another hours/pay cut from Light Opera Works (where I have made less each year that I have worked there-I think they are doing it wrong) they took themselves down to a level where I now work fewer hours and make a lower hourly wage there than at any of my other numerous gigs. So they got relegated to their relative status and I went looking for new things to do. I found clients for my mythical "Juno Consulting" business, discovered Chicago's sustainability community, and decided to go for my Master Gardener certification. Classes start in January 2011. I've made dozens of new friends who have re-energized me and reminded me that there's life beyond not-for-profit arts.
Yes, I invited people I met on line into my home. And lived to tell the tale.
Contemporary Art Workshop closed, leaving a huge gap in my life.
Wei signed on to sing in the Chicago Symphony for one more 3-year stint, possibly his last. In two years, it will be 40 since he first sang with the Symphony back in high school. Even though it wasn't a continual gig, that has to be some kind of record. He continues to be a star in Oak Park, with his church, concert series and children's choir. This last gig has major benefits, such as getting to meet Rick Bayless at an Oak Park cocktail party (and to eat the guacamole and ceviche that he made).
The recession cost Wei the regular monthly choir gig directing at Anshe Emet, but he continues to direct the High Holidays choir. Our dear friend and Wei's mentor Richard Proulx died, which I suppose in some sense moves Wei into line for the Chicago choral scene's eminence grise. How strange.
And so it goes.
Blessed be in 2011.
Seng Lim left, and came back, and left again, and came back again. Nga left, and came back, and left again, and came back again. I don't think they're done.Seng Lim's off again in March, and Nga for the summer.
Nga discovered that she's smart. Our fault I suppose--parents tell their daughters one of two things: that they are pretty or that they are smart. Then the pretty ones think they aren't smart, and the smart ones think they aren't pretty. We told Nga she was pretty; I guess we assumed she knew she was smart. It's best anyway, to learn yourself that you can be both.
Seng Lim discovered that he's good-looking. Apparently women check him out when his hair is short. (He was the smart one. Sigh.)
We continue to make an oddly comfortable living despite our somewhat unconventional job situations. The count in April for our income taxes was seven W2 forms and nine 1099s. Are there really households that have only two? We seem to be managing to pay cash for Nora's freshman and sophomore years at the city college and have enough left to help her with housing. I am completely enamored with writing $1,400 checks instead of $14,000 checks, like we did for Seng. Hooray for community college.
My life changed (it was due-- if you care to check, you will see me reinventing myself about every 5 years). With yet another hours/pay cut from Light Opera Works (where I have made less each year that I have worked there-I think they are doing it wrong) they took themselves down to a level where I now work fewer hours and make a lower hourly wage there than at any of my other numerous gigs. So they got relegated to their relative status and I went looking for new things to do. I found clients for my mythical "Juno Consulting" business, discovered Chicago's sustainability community, and decided to go for my Master Gardener certification. Classes start in January 2011. I've made dozens of new friends who have re-energized me and reminded me that there's life beyond not-for-profit arts.
Yes, I invited people I met on line into my home. And lived to tell the tale.
Contemporary Art Workshop closed, leaving a huge gap in my life.
Wei signed on to sing in the Chicago Symphony for one more 3-year stint, possibly his last. In two years, it will be 40 since he first sang with the Symphony back in high school. Even though it wasn't a continual gig, that has to be some kind of record. He continues to be a star in Oak Park, with his church, concert series and children's choir. This last gig has major benefits, such as getting to meet Rick Bayless at an Oak Park cocktail party (and to eat the guacamole and ceviche that he made).
The recession cost Wei the regular monthly choir gig directing at Anshe Emet, but he continues to direct the High Holidays choir. Our dear friend and Wei's mentor Richard Proulx died, which I suppose in some sense moves Wei into line for the Chicago choral scene's eminence grise. How strange.
And so it goes.
Blessed be in 2011.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
