This year's festivities seemed a bit hurried and harried, so it was hard for me to just sit back and enjoy the cuteness. But here are our offerings to the spirits of the afterlife; it's amazing to see how much they've grown.
Isaac the Policeman! He keeps a clean beat, but give him a donut and he'll let you go.
Emi as Alice! Yes, those are heels on the shoes, but don't call her Suri: there's a platform in the front.
Village People, eat your hearts out!
Whew, the Lysol ad I posted earlier this week really sparked some awesome discussions amongst my Facebook friends. Here are some highlights, anonymized:
Amos: is THAT why i saw a lady at the car wash riding through on top of her car?........case solved!
Me: Actually, she was there to get waxed. Ba-dum CHING!!! I'm here all week, folks.
Betsy: this generation's lysol is breast implants and brazilians, yeah?
Me: Totally hit the nail on the head there, Betsy! People of the future will look at Maxim Magazine and scratch their heads over how much we must have hated women to make them go through such extremes to be considered attractive.
Me: That said, I take a Brazilian over Lysol any day.
Amos: i want an answer to this question from an elderly feminist:
how is it that you intelligent, educated, modern ladies still allow the weakling peter pan males of your generation to CONTINUE to manipulate you into thinking that there is something foul and poisonous going on with your girl parts?
y'all
had better damn well not let your own daughters, and especially your
sons to continue this obscenity-----so what are you going to do? i've
GOT to know!
Me: Okay I thought about this for a while. It took me a while because I
don't personally have (many) hang-ups about the squeaky cleanliness of
my ladybits, BUT:
1. even today, girls are really ignorant about
what their own girl bits look like, and what girl bits "should" look
like in general. It doesn't help that you basically have to sit with
your legs splayed in front of a mirror to really get a good look, but
regardless, they probably freak themselves out at their first look
because it doesn't look anything like the line drawings in the sex ed
brochures or Barbie's ladybits.
2. Assuming they're straight
and they want to be with boys...these boys have no idea either. They
just know the very airbrushed, sometimes surgically corrected,
sometimes totally fictional vulvas of Playboy, Japanese animation, and
internet porn. Oh, and that vaginas "smell like fish" which conjures up
some weird mental imagery. So it might freak them out when they finally
come in contact with a real-life vagina with its varied terrain and
water features.
Combine
these two things with females' tendency toward insecurity anyway and
you get the culture as it is now: where basically you have to get your
mons venus waxed, polished, and buffed to a Barbie Doll shine so your
vagina looks like a 10-year-old's so it doesn't differ too much from
Jenna Jameson's. They even sell vagina "water" so you can have your
crotch smell like oranges, geraniums, or lavender, no joke!
That
said, I don't really know how to send the message to my daughter
without getting sued. Right now I kinda lean towards the hippie "your
vagina is a blooming flower" slant. I think I might need Eve Ensler to
guide me.
Oh! And in general, boys tend to blame problems on others while girls take blame on themselves. So if their Peter Pan boyfriend is "ew, your girl parts scare me" I think most females would rather go to the nearest waxing salon before it ever occurring to them that actually, *he* just needs to get clued into the real world. So that is definitely a real, teachable lesson to pass down to the next generation.
Amos: well-said, ms. kang....it really is the boys who have the power to help
girls overcome many of their insecurities...but boys are ignorant,
lazy, and controlling.....
ps. your final comment on this being a "lesson to pass 'down' to the next generation' was the freudian slip of the day!
Betsy: you are right, Julie. Girls don't know what they're supposed to look like, and what is really in the range of normal (as opposed to airbrushed, photoshopped, surgically altered, cartoonized, fetishized.) There is a site which shows pictures of the zillion or so variations of normal breasts at http://www.007b.com/breast_gallery.php ; and there should be one for genitals...but i haven't found it yet.
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Have you ever visited the normal breasts gallery? It really is a breath of fresh air. I've known about the site for a while and have even located a few facsimiles of my own breasts, and words cannot describe the emotions that flowed through me when I saw my own boob doppelgangers staring right back at me. I also loved the fact that they separated out the breasts of women who have been pregnant. There is also a blog called "Shape of a Mother" that displays the breasts and midriffs of real women who have carried children that was equally empowering.
On a related topic, one of my favorite newer websites is "Make Love Not Porn," where a lot of porn world norms like no pubic hair, women just gagging for anal sex all the time, women coming a million times while men do nothing to stimulate their clitorises (clitori?), etc. get corrected in a no-judgment, laid-back way.
So, do we also need a normal vulva gallery? I definitely think so! Even with the few face-to-face encounters with other women's ladybits I've had in my time, I know there is a huge amount of variation out there, and they were all healthy and normal and nothing to be afraid of. Let's all say NO to 10-year-old vaginas!
Tim is in the East Coast, blissfully hanging out with some college buddies for a week. As he sips champagne on some dude's yacht in Narragansett Bay, I'm holding down the fort like Davy Crockett. As in, this is my Alamo and I'm going to fucking die!!!
He took the red-eye on Tuesday and left the house while I was trying to put Emily down. Isaac peeked at his daddy load his bags into a taxi and drive off through his bedroom curtains. When I got to him, he was sobbing.
Isaac shuddered in my arms and said how lonely, sad, scared, and small he felt as he saw the taxi disappear into the horizon. He fell asleep in my lap, and as I tucked him in, the look on his face transported me back to when he was 18 months old. He was chubbier then, but already so adamantly stoic and strong, my independent little boy. But clearly he was still fragile in some ways, so I vowed to pay extra attention to him and his little boy worries this week.
The next day as I picked Isaac up from school, he asked me "Mom, what's the best way to kill yourself?" I clutched the steering wheel really hard and tried not to veer into the sidewalk,
"W-w-w-w-hat do you mean?"
"How's the best way to die?"
"Uh, with, um, honor?"
"Nooooooooooo...I think it would be better with those light sabre things."
Turns out that was just his way of asking for a light sabre for his birthday.
Boys, I swear!
Dear Isaac and Emily,
First off, thank you for letting Mama go on a trip all by herself and entrusting Daddy with your lives for 5 days! Great teamwork! I thought I'd share a few pictures and show you the cool stuff I did, and hopefully also explain why I had to leave you guys in SoCal.
When I landed, I drove across the Bay Bridge to see Uncles Jim & Chris. We had lunch at a cute little cafe called StarBelly:
Do you guys see the decor? The only seats were these really high backless stools, and the glasses were so delicate and probably vintage, I just knew if you guys came we would have had a disaster on our hands: unfinished wood and concrete is not very forgiving of little skulls and barware that may be hurled upon them. Plus, you would have found the food really unappetizing: the eggs were poached and extra runny, the bacon was house-cured and would have tasted strange to you, and even the orange juice had alcoholic bubbles in it. You also would have found the conversation boring. When Mama ordered a tuna arugula salad for breakfast and offered some to Jim and Chris with a "What, you guys don't like fish first thing in the morning?" and when they demurely said, "Um, not really fish fans, thanks," Mama thought that was the funniest thing ever. Weird, right?
Mama spent the next couple days watching TV shows and drinking wine from a box. She made a pit stop in Oakland to visit some Bay Area Kimchi Mamas and although no alcohol was involved, a bunch of moms went to sing karaoke and Mama may or may not have actually sung a few songs. And George Michael's "Careless Whispers" may or may not have been on the set list. Oh, you guys would have died from embarrassment. Again, you are very welcome that I saved you from that.
After that, there was just a bunch of shopping and then the work week started. Nothing much to report there, although we could have used your help at dim sum. There were some leftover dumplings that Isaac easily could have polished off. But again, it was in the middle of Chinatown, we would have lost you two in the sea of Asian people in a nanosecond. And you guys would have been picked up by some Chinese family and fed dim sum everyday for the rest of your lives! How horrible would that be?
Okay, fine. You guys might have had fun if you came. I hope you weren't too mad that I left, although it seemed like you guys had some adventures of your own:
To be honest, I gotta give you guys props for this one. Great job on getting Daddy confused about the location of your swim lesson, AND you guilt-tripped him into taking you to the BEACH??? You guys are absolute pros, I can't believe I worried about you guys even for a second.
Anyways, now that we're back in the swing of things, I just wanted to tell you that I am very proud of you two for holding up the fort while I was away. And please tell Daddy that he's a trooper, and of course I realize that the text messages quoted above were the only bad news in a sea of good news. It's just that bad news is always the funniest (and therefore the most quotable) news. :)
Love,
Mama
All of us were so excited for this day. Uniforms were cleaned and hung up, snacks were packed, backpack placed next to the door.
It was a sunny morning as we walked the .4 miles to school. We had to hustle a bit, but we got there on time.
Everyone assembled in the kindergarten playground and lined up when the bell rang. Isaac gave me a quick thumbs-up before heading into the classroom.
We then got to witness the first 10 minutes of school, where the kids sat on the rug as Mrs. K led the class in singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider": 10 perfect little boys and 10 perfect little girls, eyes shining as they sang and made their finger-spiders crawl in the air. My eyes glistened but I didn't cry; it was everyone's turn to grow up a little bit.
And 3 short hours later, I waited by the exit and found this creature running towards me:
I think it's safe to say that our first day was a success!
BANG! This is Julie Kang, reporting live from Long Beach, where BANG! a plumber is BANGBANGing at her washer. His name is Bruce, and BANG! he is this adorable roly-poly ginger-haired Russian man who looks BANG! just like Harold Zidler from Moulin Rouge.
This guy right here in the middle
Anyway, BANG! Although he's here to replace the circuit board, he just asked me for a hammer because BANG! BANGBANG! he apparently broke his on the washer. How one breaks a hammer I cannot say, but BANG! it is definitely not gracefully.
Also occasionally he will BANG! let loose in what sounds like cussing in Russian. Oh, if only I was a BANG! Russian fly on the wall, then BANG! I'd know what he's saying.
However, BANG! For some reason, the banging has cured BANG! my headache. So I thank you, Bruce, and hopefully BANG! we'll get through this BANG! together with both our dignities intact. And BANG! hopefully you don't break another hammer or my washer BANGBANGBANG in the process.
On another note, we got a postcard in the mail from Isaac's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. K. It totally made my day:
San Francisco is full of crappy places to call home, but Tim and I were lucky enough to live in the worst. It wasn't a crack den or in the projects, but if I can do it any justice with my feeble writing skills, by the end of my tale you will see that it was much, much worse than a crack den. It was such a dark, depressing time of our life, we didn't even take any pictures.
I was working in downtown San Francisco at the time, and Tim was about to start a job in Palo Alto. We decided to move from Oakland to SF so Tim wouldn't have a bridge commute. We also thought we were were financially comfortable enough to rent a house, and found a Craigslist ad for one in the Portola District, a 10 minute bus ride away from the Glen Park BART station. The street name was Bacon, which we took to be a good sign.
It turned out that the house was the first 2 stories of a 3-level building similar to the ones pictured above, with space in the garage for 1 car and half of the backyard. The interior was beautifully decorated and obviously remodeled with love. It was way too much space for us (this place was 2600 s.f. and we were moving from an 1100 s.f. apartment), but we figured we could use the entire bottom floor as a play area for Isaac (who was 2 at the time) and Riley.
The owner of the house was a young and hip Chinese chick who made a ton of money as a salesperson for some huge telecom company, and she claimed although she loved the house and had a good relationship with her upstairs neighbors, she wanted to live in a hipper neighborhood and had the money to keep this one while she lived it up in some loft somewhere. She seemed really laid-back and flexible, so we decided to rent the place right then and there.
We soon learned the real situation. The upstairs neighbors, a strange Filipino couple named Luz and Allen, were an obvious marriage of convenience (they were of much different ages and openly despised each other). Plus, they were absolutely nuts. Our landlord warned them that we had a young son and a big dog and they claimed they were okay with that. We also made sure that Riley was able to poop and pee on the wood chips in our part of the backyard, and they were okay with that, too. But once we moved in, almost every time we walked Riley back there (on leash of course, out of respect), Luz or Allen would be there, keeping an eye on things, making sure we didn't enter their part of the yard, that we picked up after ourselves appropriately, and even would replace the 2 pieces of wood chip that got picked up along with some poop (keep in mind that even though they were adamant that we not touch anything of theirs, they had no problem doing things like this on our stuff). Allen was retired, so he had nothing but time to stalk us like this. Every time we would open the door to go down the shared stairwell, he would open his door to make sure we turned off the hallway light. We forgot once and Luz taped an extremely angry letter to our door saying "You AGREED to turn of the lights EVERY TIME. You are WASTING MONEY!!!!!!!" We responded by re-attaching the letter to their door with a $20 bill taped to it. They responded back by re-attaching the letter to our door, but kept the money.
Luz and Allen were also anal about the garage. They would hang a futon pad on the outside of their car doors to keep away any dings we may give them. They would hire this poor contractor every couple weeks to repaint their cabinet doors white, standing right behind him while he worked to make sure he didn't cut any corners. Then they would inevitably find something wrong and refuse to pay him, telling him to fix his "mistakes" in a couple weeks.
When we asked a few friends over to have dinner to celebrate our new home, the get-together would be punctuated by occasional bangs on the floor. We were seriously just having dinner, no music was playing, just conversation amongst 8 people, including children. But the banging would keep coming, and our puzzled guests left with uncomfortable looks of sympathy on their faces at around 9 pm. Meanwhile, there was a huge party going on across the street, complete with drunken fistfights and house music blaring like a nightclub. So when the police knocked on our door around midnight with a noise complaint, we figured it was because of that party.
"Ma'am, we got a disturbance of the peace call."
I was in my pajamas. "Oh, you must be talking about the party across the street? It wasn't that bad actually."
"Um, actually, the caller gave us this address specifically, unit #1."
"Really??? We just had a few friends over for dinner, and they've been gone for a while. Our upstairs neighbors probably called, they didn't like the noise and were banging on our ceiling until our guests left."
The SF policewoman looked really, really annoyed and asked if she could enter so she can tell off Luz and Allen herself. Allen excitedly opened his door when the policewoman knocked, and started railing about how loud we were. But the cop sternly told him that he was completely in the wrong, he just wasted everyone's time, and she had her eye on him, and if she received any more frivolous calls she would take action against him. Oh, it was awesome.
Another day, we had a friend stay over from Vancouver with her 2-year-old daughter. The sound of 2 kids running around laughing during the middle of the day on a Saturday was enough for Luz and Allen to slam what sounded like 50-pound weights down on their floor, over and over again until our friend's little girl started crying, then they pounded on the floor to express their displeasure at the crying. Needless to say, our friends looked for other lodging.
Over the course of a few weeks, Riley started acting strangely. He no longer wanted to go out back to pee and would instead have accidents for the first time in his life downstairs. Things got so bad that we eventually laid down several layers of industrial-strength vinyl under some newspaper so he could go potty that way because he would just cower at the door frame and shake. We wondered what was going on while we were at work, but couldn't do much about it. Then one day I had to call in sick and saw Allen climb down the emergency ladder into our patio. He started screaming at Riley and shaking this noisemaker device. Riley cowered in the corner furthest away from the patio door. As I approached him, Allen turned pale and scurried back up the ladder yelling "Keep that damn dog away from me!"
Things deteriorated quickly after that. They called our landlord repeatedly complaining about the dog smell and the mess we were making in the backyard. She would then come over and look around and see that none of their claims were true, apologizing each time, saying that Luz and Allen were annoying but ultimately harmless.
Then came the harm. I was dragging Riley into the backyard before leaving for work when suddenly I heard from the upstairs deck, "Goddamn motherfucker!!!" I looked up to see Allen, and then he sprayed me with his garden hose. Riley cowered and immediately ran back into the house, and I knew this wasn't the first time Allen terrorized him with the hose. I ran back inside as well, dripping wet, and told Tim what happened. Tim was enraged, and opened the front door to see Allen sheepishly scurrying down the stairwell to escape. Then a shouting match occurred, where Allen claimed he did nothing, that I was a liar, he didn't know what I was talking about, and that actually he was aiming for the dog. Idiot.
We called our landlord and told her we were moving out and she let us go without any argument. We were out of there within a week to some ghetto house in south Hayward. A few days after we moved, we got a letter of apology and our original deposit check back. A few days after that, we got an email from her that she found another renter: a good friend of hers, in fact. And with a smirky emoticon, she oh-so-casually mentioned that he was a single dad...with a very large German Shepherd...and was black. And Luz and Allen haven't made a peep. Apparently he scared them into silence. What a punchline!
Actually, the even funnier punchline was that we paid $2500 a month for the privilege of living with these lunatics. Looking back, I can't believe we survived it.
Isaac will be starting kindergarten on September 9. We have less than a month before the roller coaster of the academic schedule picks us up and hurls us toward his 18th birthday. I've heard once the kids start school, time really starts flying.
These past 5.5 years have been a whirlwind of activity already. In his little life, Isaac has already lived in 9 different houses, traveled to 3 different countries and 4 different states, attended 7 different schools and daycares, and experienced the loss of one furry friend and the addition of one loud-ass sister. His life has always been defined by transition, as our young family tried various lives on for size to find one that fit. Lucky for us, he is an unbelievably flexible soul, with a taste for adventure and a huge bladder, perfect for traveling.
Because of all the moves and changes in his life, Isaac is very zen about creature comforts. He never shed a tear over leaving a place he called home, losing a toy in a move or to Riley's jaws, to attending one daycare one day and another the next. As long as there was a soft blanket and food nearby, he was happy. Even when Riley died, Isaac cried for a few minutes, asked if Riley was really, really gone or if he'll come back one day, and when I said no, he won't come back, Isaac looked at me and said, "Well, if we want to see him again, we can always look at pictures."
Still, as his mother, I wonder if all this moving around caused him to miss out on more than he got to experience. He's never had a "real" birthday party, for example, because there never seemed anyone to invite. And we hardly got invited to any: we have attended 3 birthday parties to date, in fact. I just find that fact to be so sad and symbolic of our lack of human connection. Also, he is a staunch protector of his own independence. All this structure-less living has already made him somewhat of a rebel and "team player" is definitely not a phrase I would use to describe him. That may come in handy one day, but probably not in elementary school.
Now, well into our second year in southern California, where he gets to see one set of grandparents regularly, where the climate invites him outside to play everyday, where seeds shoved into the soil by stubby fingers magically turn into snacks all year, he has laid down some roots. He now cares to remember people by name, dares to talk about future plans like what he will dress up as on Halloween, birthday party themes and who he's going to invite, what he would like for Christmas. But his oddball ways and the determination to live and act on his own terms make me nervous for what's to come.
In three weeks, our very odd, barely-rooted boy will be starting his school years, and I am scared. Will he make friends? Will he be a social pariah, and if so, will the judgment start immediately or later? Can he handle the structure and discipline present in a real classroom? How will he react when he can't just up and go to the restroom without asking permission, or has to stop playing right when the bell rings?
And when, if ever, will I ever stop worrying about my son's social life?
My dream life is generally pretty boring and unimaginative, with lots of reruns. Last night, however, I had a unique, interesting dream, and I really wonder what it all meant.
I am walking alone at night through some kind of downtown arts district. I enter a coffee house and sit in a cozy velvet armchair with a bowl full of latte in my lap. A young man who kinda looks like Draco Malfoy from the "Harry Potter" movies approaches, sits on the arm of my chair, kisses the top of my hand, strikes up a conversation. It becomes obvious that he has romantic intent and asks to take me on a walk, and I rise to take his arm. I am vaguely aware that this is a betrayal to Tim, but I don't feel guilty; rather I feel a bit giddy and dream-like as we walk into the night.
When we are outside, it becomes clear that we are not in current time, rather a period in the future that is goth/steampunk Edwardian in style, so it is not strange that I would be walking on the arm of a man much younger than I, that is just the way people walk. I hear myself tell my companion that the kids had vanished years before, and although Tim and I are still married, he had set off overseas to seek his fortunes. Draco Lookalike nods in sympathy and offers his shoulder so I can rest my head on it and I accept.
We walk some more, and we see a line of kids walking behind their teacher, and I pause to admire their cuteness. Then I notice one particularly sulky boy at the end of the line, not really following his classmates that well, pausing often to look around. I recognize him as Isaac and I shout his name, running towards him. He looks at me, but does not recognize me. I start screaming at his teacher to give me back my son, and she shrugs and says that boy's parents never claimed him. I learn that when we dropped the kids off at their daycare way back when, the daycare actually just dropped them off with this lady, and one day they didn't pick them up. She had already sold Emily long ago to a rich childless couple, and she's been taking care of Isaac ever since.
I reach over to take Isaac's hand but he is acting like he can't even see me. He wanders around, talking to himself, into the busy street. I am really screaming now for him to pay attention, to get out of the street, but he doesn't hear.
I am then awoken by Emi who is tapping my cheeks saying "Mama? Mama?" Maybe I was talking in my sleep? I went back to sleep quickly, but the dream has bothered me since the morning, as if my head was trying to tell me something and I haven't gotten the message yet.
