It's Been A Long Day

My lab went overtime tonight. It's been a long day.

I forgot that today is one of my used-to-be-close-friend's birthday. I just fired off a message and, scrolling up, found that the last time we'd spoken had been on July 14, 2013. Hers was the only phone number I had memorized in elementary school besides my own. She was the keeper to my striker and the reason the only shots I ever netted were chips. She and I understood everything, from skimming, lethal handball slices to the never-ending volleys against The Cage to Aragorn, son of Arathorn, to Master Chief and back.

We fired spit balls at our fifth grade teacher from the back row. We wreaked havoc during kickball games. We devoured Brian Jacques together and cried Eulalia at the faintest sign of battle. We kept our hair tied, our jeans loose, our shoes double-laced and ready to go.

Seven years later, and we've now spent more years apart than together. I guess the friendships that seemed so important when we were young really couldn't last because we just didn't understand enough to work beyond just friendship to develop a respect I still can't quite grasp. 

I still wish her a happy birthday, though. When I happen to remember.

Family Ties

I got an email about two weeks ago from my parents. Once I saw the subject line, I knew that it had happened.

I've been lucky enough to grow up with two sets of healthy grandparents. My dad's parents live about three miles away-they were a big help in keeping my brother and me out of afterschool day cares back when my mom used to work. My mom's parents are back in Taiwan and used to fly over to spend summer vacation with us. All were key parts of my childhood, their lives full of stories and histories that will never be understood outside the family.

As I grew older, I began pushing them away. It began unconsciously, of course-I was just copying my brother, who, at four-and-a-half years my senior, was an idol. Then, when I finally realized the rift that had grown between us, I was too scared, too surprised to make an effort to bridge it. Language became a huge barrier. Chinese had been both my brother's and my first language because we'd grown up around our grandparents, but after that first year in school, the home videos no longer prompt internal subtitles. Chinese was awkward and heavy on my sharp tongue, and I resented the way it made me feel like someone who didn't belong.

So we drifted, drawing no further apart yet with an ocean between us. My mother's parents were pushing ninety and found the thirteen-hour trip to the States too draining. Soon all the communication I had with them were obligatory ni hao's and zai jian's on the telephone once a week. To be honest, I didn't miss them. They were tied to a childhood filled with tightly braided hair and plastic beads strung on cheap, fraying twine. I was grown up. Growing up. I didn't need that anymore. Sometimes, though, I'd come across an old Wal-Mart-developed photo from my grandfather's camera, and I'd see him crouching unashamedly in the middle of the sidewalk, holding up traffic in both directions as he took picture after picture of our uncomfortable smiles, freezing us in time. 

We used to visit my dad's parents every other Saturday night. They'd come see us every other Saturday morning. My brother and I would loll around on the carpet, tossing happy-face-imprinted stress balls into the little plastic basketball hoop we had hanging off the bookshelf if we were at home, indulging in a game of handball-against-the-kitchen-counter if we were at the grandparents'. We'd get together for meals on the holidays and birthdays-usually at the same two or three Chinese restaurants around town. My grandfather's been hard of hearing for as long as I can remember, and our Asian-level shouting in his presence (and his blissful ignorance) has been a long-running Chen family joke:

Scene: Outside the Chen family home

Father (to Grandfather): Thanks for coming! Drive safely!

Gandfather (to Grandmother): Why is the mail here so early?

When my brother went off to college, I became the only child, and these visits were quieter and more uncomfortable without my brother's brash presence distracting the adults from my hopeless social inadequacy. When my brother finished college and came back home, I thought the magic would return. We had both changed too much, though, and these visits were a chore, distracting me from my writing, him from his friends. My grandparents started coming over every Saturday morning when I moved out, a fact that disturbed me for some strange reason when I went back home the first few times. Something was wrong, and I tapped furiously at my laptop as the adults conversed over my head.

My mom's been going back to Taiwan a lot more recently, partly because she doesn't need to shuttle any more children to and from school, but mostly because her parents are getting old and still live in the apartment my grandfather built when my mom was four. My grandmother, who once sprinted out the front door into the pouring rain to hand my much-detested piano teacher an umbrella, has a bad back and is slowly going blind. There's a reason our entire family wears glasses. My grandfather's well over ninety now, and he had surgery after a bad fall earlier this year. What's the worst, though, is that his mind's going. Nothing hurts my mom more than that. I'm too old now to pretend that I don't understand, that I don't worry, that I'm not calling my mom twice a week to make sure everything's going as okay as things can go. But I try.

It only seemed like a matter of time before things tipped one way or the other and everyone suddenly dies and I realize what a terrible granddaughter I've been.

All this flashed through my mind when I opened the email.

My great-aunt had always scared the hell out of me. She wore enough perfume to stun a rhinoceros, and I believed that the gold and jade bangles on her arms dated back to the Second World War (or maybe the Paleozoic Era-who knows). She was the oldest of three sisters on my dad's side, and as such, demanded great respect by her very presence. She collected large, porcelain dolls and arranged them around her flower vases. I know this because she took pictures of these arrangements and sent them to her youngest sister, my dad's mother, who then passed them on to us with no little laughter at the perplexed looks on our faces. 

I last saw her two summers ago in Taiwan when we went out for a long, fairly painful lunch together. I understood about half of the conversation that took place and wished for a quick end to our time together. 

She'd been sick for about a year, drifting in and out of the hospital, defiantly living on her own and denying dementia, stubbornly holding onto her independence and large, creepy porcelain dolls. Everything went downhill quite quickly in the past few months, though I only received sporadic updates when I happened to be home. About a month ago, there was talk about heart surgery. 

Then I went back to school and heard nothing more until this email, which said nothing but that she'd died. 

I knew it. I knew it was coming. Like a train barrelling around the corner, there was no avoiding it. I knew it was coming. I knew it. I knew it. Still, my stomach dropped. God only knew how my grandmother was dealing with this, gentle soul that she is. My mother, staunchly holding everything together and waiting for news of a funeral she hopes won't hit a little closer to home. 

I was a litle sad, yes, to hear that she'd died, but I was more scared than sad. What did this mean for everyone else? I know they're all going to die, that it will most likely be soon, and that it'll tear apart the meticulously manufactured perfection of the Chen family, but I'd always held onto some distant hope that I could isolate myself from it, run away and hide at school, let relationships shrivel up and die so that I wouldn't feel anything when the actual end came. 

But my creepy, somewhat neurotic great-aunt died and I realized that forgetting just wasn't possible. 

I waited two weeks to write about this so I could go about it with a level head and not turn it into a piece of sentimental Good-Lord-I'll-Miss-Her-So-Much-We-Were-So-Close-She-Was-The-Best-Great-Aunt-Ever gobbledygook because that just wouldn't be true. Yeah, she was my great-aunt. Yeah, we got on alright. Yeah, she gave me lots of strange, sometimes interesting jewelry whenever I saw her, but we were never close, so I won't pretend that she meant as much to me as I would have liked. Whose fault is that? Mine and mine alone.

Death is coming at a million miles an hour, and every day I wait for a call, an email, a text from back home telling me that someone else is soon going to be pushing daisies. Mending fences is a little hard when you refuse to acknowledge that the fences even exist. Adages are easy to spit out but hard to swallow. 

I just needed a sense of reassurance, some sense that my great-aunt didn't regret not knowing me as much as I regret not knowing her. I'm pretty sure that was the case. In fact, I'm pretty sure she didn't remember me at all. 

That, oddly enough, is a comfort.

Random Word Generator #1

Random Word Generator: Six words, 20 minutes

frozen, cola, alien, improper, sparkle, lock

The glass was frozen. In space, but not time. It hung suspended in the air, the drops of cola with it, casting glittering light across the hard-angled shadows on the wood floor. The man stared at it as if he, too, had been caught in the moment, captured, a breathing photograph. He reached out a tentative hand, reaching through space, through time, fingers trembling as he brushed the frosted edge of the glass. Something resonated deep within him, a note, low and strong, and an alien sense of power surged through his very being, leaving him swirling along in its invisible eddies.

He reached out again, seizing the glass with one decisive swipe of his hand, and the spell was broken. The cola splashed wetly back into the shadows, and the glass was again no more than a glass in his hand, ordinary, unassuming. The improper laws of physics resumed, heedless of the new gravity of truth. 

He set the glass down on the floor almost reverently, admiring the way the frosted edges caught the sun and harnessed the sparkle of intangible life. An immense satisfaction filled him, and he sank to the ground beside the glass, leaning back on his haunches to survey his prize again. He flicked a stray lock of hair out of his narrowed eyes. The symmetry. The perfect symmetry. That must have been it. He pressed his cheek to the cool wooden panels, devouring the sight as his eyes slipped closed. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Time and Age and Distance

There's never enough time. 

Or maybe there's just too much of it, Cal thought, legs drawn to his chest, bare feet curling in the carpet. He fixed his eyes on the television, but his ears strained to listen in on the conversation behind him, the distant words crackling through the speaker, the low rumble of his father's reply. He picked absently at a rough strand of carpet fluff, twirling it between his fingers. Cal belatedly realized that the man on screen was frozen and had been so for some time.

Guiltily, he whirled around to look up at his father, who held the telephone loosely in one hand, the other setting the television remote down beside him.

Cal had come to appreciate these nightly telephone calls, the only connection he had across fifteen time zones to a dim memory of heritage. The words coming through the speaker were not reassuring, though. There were sad words and quiet words. Regretful words. Hospital words.

Cal tried not to remember hearing his mother screaming.

He turned back to the television and the sleeping dog that lay curled up in front of the subwoofer. The carpet fluff continued to unravel in his hand.

The words finally reached a lull, and Cal turned around again, unconsciously rising into a crouch. He reached out and took the phone from his father, pitching some happiness into his voice as the distance briefly disappeared, and he pretended he was still a child clutching his mother's hand on the subway before time and age and distance had come to take it all away.

He forced himself to laugh, high and breathy. He told stories about school and cooking and accidentally setting things on fire. And when he handed the phone back to his father, he meant it when he said, "I love you."

It had taken nineteen years.

The carpet fibers slipped through his fingers and fell, shapeless, back to the earth.

The World is a Better Place than It was 2500 Years Ago

About 2500 years ago, there was this family. The House of Atreus.

I could insert a picture of the family tree here, but it all just gets too complicated and doesn't really convey the truly astonishing number of affairs and murders that occurred within the family itself. So you can go Google it yourself if you really need it.

Anyways. The whole shebang kind of started when these two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, murdered their half brother and were exiled. And then Atreus' wife Aeropes had an affair with Thyestes, so Atreus killed Thyestes' kids and tricked him into eating his own kids. And so Thystes was banished (for cannibalism) and Atreus became king.

But that's not all.

Thyestes was pretty pissed about this, so he asked some trusty old oracle what to do and came away with the idea that he needed to have a kid by his own daughter, Pelopia. And so Aegisthus was born. Unfortunately, Pelopia was so ashamed of this that she gave Aegisthus away to some shepherd, who gave the baby to Atreus (Oedipus, anyone?). When Aegisthus found out about all this, he responded in the logical fashion by killing Atreus.

Atreus had two sons before he died, Menelaus (who married Helen, aka Helen of Troy) and Agamemnon, who married Clytemnestra, Helen's sister. Then Helen was "kidnapped" and the Trojan War happened, but there was no wind for Agamemnon to set sail for Troy, and some old dude told him that he'd pissed off Artemis and would have to sacrifice what he considered his most precious belonging to appease her. And so Agamemnon killed his oldest daughter, Iphigenia, which really pissed off his wife (understandably).

While Agamemnon was away at war, Clytemnestra hopped into bed with Aegisthus and decided to kill Agamemnon when he returned. And so they did.

But then Agamemnon's exiled son Orestes returned and killed both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, his own mother. Orestes was cleared of the murder charge by a split vote among the Athenian elders in a court presided by Athena herself. And this was the origin of "innocent until proven guilty." Or something like that.

You see, the world is kind of becoming a better place. It's actually a pretty wonderful place if you take the story of the house of Atreus at face value. We're not chopping up people's kids and eating them. Or murdering our mothers. And we don't run to oracles for sage advice. Not really, at least.

There is hope.

Whose Eyes?

This evening, I was finalizing my chair application for BruinMUN next year when I decided to skim through my MUN Monday posts again to see if I'd forgotten anything.

I've forgotten a lot.

Man, why can't things be the way they used to be? Hotel rooms and airplane rides with a massive group people we called family. Now, I sit here, wracked with uncertainty and disappointment about what the future holds. I didn't understand reality then, and I'm sure that, when I look back on this in a few years, I'll wish I could afford to be so uncertain about little things like summer plans and internship applications. The world just keeps getting bigger, and I'm scared that it's all just going to pop one day and collapse like a punctured hot air balloon.

At that moment, then, I'll wonder what it is that I've actually done with my life. Stuff that wouldn't fit on a resume, stuff that doesn't go in the "Would you like to add anything else?" box at the end of online applications. Stuff that means something.

It's vague, uncertain, sure. In anyone's eyes but mine, these things mean nothing. But I am I and I am.

So I have this box. It's a sort of white-ish, green-ish color. Small-ish. Shiny. Ish. It was a gift from the mother of perhaps my oldest friend. It's got a lock on it, which made up for the swirly little butterflies engraved across the surface. I started putting stuff in there when I started middle school. Deflated balloons from a birthday. old movie tickets. A shotgun shell. Gradually, stuff began to pile up in the little box. A foam chili pepper. A tiny FM radio. A dried out strip of leather. A letter stained blue from riding around in the back pocket of my jeans. It was a mess, really. It is a mess. It's a terribly cluttered analogy for everything I've done, gaudy on the outside, but locked tight, jumbled on the inside.

This box is shoved deep into the bowels of my old desk at home, the one with the metal drawers that screech and groan. I still carry the key with me even though I once picked the lock with a bobby pin. Keys mean something, just as boxes do. Something. Some stuff.

Some time.

Send Me A Tree

I miserably, miserably, miserably failed my math final today.

I sat there in the lecture hall, flipped through all ten questions, and came up dry. My BS meter just about busted the roof. By the end of those three hours, it'd pretty much reached the stratosphere. I took a long walk afterwards to clear my head, eventually wandering all the way down to the botanical gardens.

I tripped down the dirt paths, wobbling in my oxfords across a stream and through several stands of bamboo. It was blessedly cool down there under the shade of the large trees, the overgrown bushes. I meandered around, not entirely certain what I was doing mucking about in my imaginary Sherwood Forest, just knowing that I was looking for something I couldn't quite understand.

And then I turned a corner and saw this.

It was like something out of a Hallmark movie. Sun shining through the cherry blossoms, a gentle breeze. I almost forgot about the cars whizzing by on the other side of the gate. And the nagging grind of construction. Almost.

I kind of stood a bit. Stared. Just to make sure this was a real cherry tree and not some creation of my fried brain. I looked some more. It was real.

I turned around and hiked back up, sunshine warming my back.