The Po Show

Happy Birthday, Bunny Girl

My baby girl is six years old today. I did the big hoopla post last year on her fifth birthday, featuring her birth story. This year I'm feeling more low-key, though I am putting together a picture progression of her life, up to now.

She is brilliant, hilarious, melodramatic. I get mental whiplash several times a day over the insightful, surprising, ridiculously precocious non sequiturs she spouts.

I'm fried after a day at Chuck E. Cheese, so I'm not feeling very eloquent right now. But nothing could be more eloquent than a sidelong look of her huge, long-lashed hazel eyes. She is so beautiful, she takes my breath away.

I still can't believe, six years later, that she's mine.

Are You Ready for the Summer?

Yes, I have that theme song from "Meatballs" in my head. It's sad.

So I'm looking at the next two and a half months. Fun in CA, hanging with my family and friends, having lots of time with the kids. All good stuff.

Then I'm looking at listening to Matthew's endless discourse on Pokemon minutiae, and listening to Tessa complain incessantly, for 13 or so hours a day. Trying to come up with stuff to keep them occupied, so they don't sit in front of screens for 10 or more of those hours.

I'm tired already.

This came home yesterday in Matthew's writing packet from school:

Inside My heart lives...
by: Matthew S.

Inside My heart lives

The feeling of sadness when
I was sick and I almost fell
out of bed.

The time I ran all over the
house and crashed into a wall.

The time I wanted to jump
rope and I got all tangled up in
the rope.

The day my little sister got
scared over the computer
chair.

Baby Lust

I'm dizzy.

That is not a commentary on my general ditziness. I've had vertigo on and off since Saturday. And yesterday I got so nauseous at the grocery store I felt like I was going to throw up. But it was that yucky feeling when you feel like you're going to throw up, but you KNOW you're not really going to throw up, that you couldn't throw up even if you tried (because then you might actually feel better after you threw up, but you know you are in for no such luck).

It was horrible. And I recognized the feeling. It felt EXACTLY like how I felt when I was pregnancy sick, which I was for roughly 11 weeks (from week 7 to 18) with Tessa.

There is really no way I'm pregnant, and that's a good thing. I thought I had accepted it finally, awhile back, that I was never going to have another baby, and that it had been a GOOD thing (given all the difficulties we've had with Matthew over the years, and Tessa's health issues) that we never had a third.

But that whispery voice in the back of my head keeps saying now "Vasectomies do reverse" and I find myself counting the days and figuring out where I am in my cycle. Just past mid-cycle, so there's NO WAY I'd be feeling sick already. It's just more sucky, annoying perimenopause hormonal crap. I am NOT pregnant.

But I'd be so happy if I was.

Fathers

Happy Father's Day to all fathers, those still with us and those who live on in our memories.

Ross received a watch and the silicone mitts that he wanted for barbequing. Tessa made a card with a hilarious picture of him barbequing a hot dog for her, and the card from both kids was inscribed "Happy Father's Day to the King of the Grill," so there was a definite theme going. We got out early (no special breakfast for Dad, but that was the way he wanted it) and headed to the Empire State Building. Ross decided that it was another iconic New York sight that the kids should see (we did the Statue of Liberty a couple of weeks ago), just in case we end up leaving NY. We got there early enough that there were NO lines, and we got up to the observatory deck in quick time. We walked around, looked out at the city, then headed back down. I said it was the perfect Father's Day for him, getting out with the kids with no waiting or whining, nothing untoward happened, so everyone was happy. It's great when your diminished expectations of the perfect day are fulfilled.

I've been thinking a lot about fathers lately, partly due to watching The Tudors on Showtime. Good old Henry the VIII, who literally turned the world upside down, all because he wanted a legitimate male heir.

My own family's take on that is a strange one. I alluded to it a bit when I recounted my father's life story on his birthday. It involves my father, his father, and my mother's father. It's a story of names, and pride, and fathers and children.

When my maternal grandfather came to the US in 1918, laws were firmly in place prohibiting all people from Asia from immigrating to the country. There were loopholes, however, like men could send for their wives (thus spawning the whole bizarre picture bride phenomenon). They could also bring over their children, so my grandfather's uncle legally adopted him, which changed his name from "I" to "N" (I don't know why I'm being paranoid and not spelling them out, other than it is just standard netiquette). In 1941, when he and my grandmother, along with my mom and my aunt, returned to Japan, he changed his name back to "I," since that was how he had been known when he lived there previously. So my mother got a new last name. Then she married my father, and took his name, the name he had been born with.

After the war, when inflation skyrocketed in Japan, my maternal grandparents decided to go back to the US to live (where they changed their name back to "N"). They had some land, and they wanted to give it to my parents. However, for it to be in my father's name, he had to be legally adopted by them. This happens all the time in Japan, even today. A family with no sons will adopt the husband of one of their daughters, who becomes the family heir and takes on the family name. So my parents' last name was now "I" (thus, my mother again had the last name she had had when she was single). My father's father was OUTRAGED and incensed, that my father had changed his name and was planning on moving to the US. My grandfather's two oldest sons were dead, and my father was turning his back on the family name. The next oldest son in the family had already been adopted by his wife's family and was that family's heir. All that was left was the youngest son in the family (boy, was he lucky he'd had five sons).

My grandfather refused to speak to my father. He refused to say goodbye. He refused to answer letters from America. He died a couple of years later, and my father didn't find out (due to a telegram delay; at that point in the early '60s people in rural Japan didn't have international telephone capability) till after the funeral. He never got over that, that he missed his father's funeral. All this over a NAME. All this anger and regret over a name.

My sister had two daughters, my father's first grandchildren. Then she had a boy, and bought her a diamond watch.

When my brother had his first son, my father was ecstatic. He said, "This means the "I" name will be strong!" The whole carrrying on the family name thing continued on to the next generation.

What really struck me at the time was that my father hadn't been BORN with the name "I." But he wanted it to continue. He had always valued boys over girls; this was broadly apparent to me while I was growing up. I heard the story many times that when my mother had been pregnant with me, he had promised her that he'd buy her the pearl ring she'd fancied if I was a boy. I was a girl, so she didn't get the ring. When he went in to see my mother for the first time after I was born, she said she was thinking of naming me Paula or Lori. "Whatever you want," he told her gruffly.

All this fuss over having boys, and heirs, to continue the family name. And it hadn't even been his name to begin with.

And then, when I was in my 20s, I found out that the name my father had been born with, the one that HIS father had been so enraged that he had changed? **That had not been my grandfather's original last name.** He had been born with a different last name, but he had been adopted by a family member and took on that family name.

I'm relieved that it stops now, this bizarre obsession with fathers and their heirs and their changable names. My husband has a son, who will carry on his name, but he really wouldn't have cared if that had not been the case. His son is his child, to be loved and cared for, as is his daughter, not some symbol of immortality. He brings new, and inspired, meaning to "father," things that my father and his father never were.

I'm thankful every single day that my children have such a wonderful dad.

Retail Therapy

It's pretty sad when the only thing that can REALLY cheer me up is spending $450 at Gymboree, which is what I did today. But hey, I had a 50% coupon, so it was really $900 worth of stuff!!

Since I stopped selling on ebay (even though I really haven't stopped, but I've stopped buying to resell), I've been buying so little there. I kept telling the saleswomen there, who were finding it very odd that I wasn't spending money left and right anymore (even though I was coming by to visit, and check out the new lines), that I was waiting for a better sale, and that was true.

So when I got my Gymboree Visa bill the other day, it was $54.40. I routinely run up a grand or two a month, so this was laughable. I showed the bill to Ross and he said, "I'd expect them to send ME a card, extending their condolences on the loss of my wife."

Ah, it felt good to be buying stuff again, even if it's gifts or for Tessa. Using children's clothing as a euphoric may not be the healthiest thing to do, but as I used to say about my selling on ebay, as an addiction, it beats the hell out of crack.

Cupcakes

Today I brought in cupcakes to celebrate Tessa's birthday at school. Her "real" birthday isn't until the 27th, but that is after school ends, so we celebrated a little early. She's fortunate to have a summer birthday only slightly into summer.

There were goody bags for all her friends, and Tinkerbell and Transformer plates and napkins. There was fruit punch, and a pink crayon-shaped candle for her cupcake. There were two dozen cupcakes, half of them chocolate brownie, half vanilla cake, all with chocolate frosting.

We made these cupcakes yesterday, after coming home from Matthew's social skills group at the hospital. After he had had the worst meltdown I have ever witnessed, and I've seen plenty of meltdowns in my time. It was horrible, truly horrible, as in I was filled with absolute horror. It was like watching my child possessed by demons. You know how during the Middle Ages, they burned people at the stake because they thought they were possessed by the devil? My poor baby would have been toast.

He pulled his hair as hard as he could. He gouged at his eyes with his fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered and SCREAMED louder than I would ever have imagined possible. I suppose it was fortunate that this happened at a psychiatric outpatient center of a hospital, in front of people who are more or less used to it. His therapist tried to talk him down, but it was far too late, so we worked on getting him to leave. He was in full oppositional mode, though, and wouldn't move. She warned him a few times that she would have to call the security guards to come help us, actually had the phone in her hand to call, when he regained a moment of clarity and said "Okay" and walked out of the building.

Then he spent the next 20 minutes on the stairs down to the parking lot, still in full on freak out. At one point Tessa got close to him and he motioned like he was going to push her down the stairs. I jumped in and told him that that was the ONE thing I could not allow him to do, that he could NOT hurt anyone. "Then I'll hurt myself!," he shouted. Tears leaked out of my eyes (I'd been doing REALLY well up till then, keeping outwardly calm though I was dying inside). I asked him what he thought that would accomplish. He wilted and said, "I don't know" and then cried and cried.

Finally I got him to the car, still kicking and screeching. We got home and he headed straight to the computer. I left him there, thinking that I should do something, say something to him, but he needed space.

And I needed to make cupcakes. I'd promised Tessa we'd make them when Matthew was done with his group. I felt like my heart had been ripped out, but I stood in the kitchen with my little girl and cracked eggs and melted butter and mixed batter. We filled the paper cups and watched them bake. She was so thrilled with her birthday cupcakes, and I was glad to be able to give this to her, some piece of happiness to make up for having to watch, terrified, as her big brother utterly lost all control.

A Day at the Museum

I went on Matthew's field trip to the American Museum of Natural History (yes, the setting for "A Night at the Museum," which I haven't seen). It's the first "big" field trip I've been on. I always had Tessa, when Matthew went on field trips, and the ones I went on for her nursery school last year were all local. This was my first get on a school bus and ride a long way into the city (should be hyphens between all those words but I don't feel like it) field trip.

I am sure that everyone was really relieved that I was coming along. Matthew had a bad afternoon yesterday and I had to go pick him up from the nurse's office, where he was in the midst of a meltdown. So it was good that I was there for him, in a huge museum filled to the absolute gills with noisy school kids. We've never been there on a weekday and now I know why that was a good thing.

I was a little apprehensive about going as a chaperone, after having seen frantic chaperones at the Ben Franklin Institute a couple of weeks ago, yelling at their groups, "We have to get on the bus RIGHT NOW! WHERE'S so and so?????" I don't do well being responsible for other people's children. But luckily, there were 10 parents from Matthew's class going today, which came to 2 kids per parent, plus the teacher, so after all the pairings were announced, the only kid I was responsible for was Matthew. His teacher quickly told me that of course we could go along with any other group we'd like. Or just go off on our own, was the implication. I said that was perfect, which it was.

We've been members of the museum for a year, so we've been there a dozen times. Matthew absolutely loves it. It was so chaotic in the Rose Space Center, where we entered, that as soon as I had my ticket we headed upstairs by ourselves. We never did end up running into other groups from his class, and that was fine. I felt momentarily guilty, feeling like we were squandering an opportunity for Matthew to engage in some social skill building, navigating through the museum with other kids, but in the end it really was for the best for him to get to decide where and when he wanted to go.

And it was wonderful, just the two of us. Matthew and I never, ever get one on one time. Tessa demands a lot of one on one attention from me, but he doesn't, and thus it just doesn't happen. But we were both thrilled today, to just hang out, Mommy and Matthew. He's so smart, grasps so many concepts so quickly. We had a great time looking through exhibits on evolution, DNA, adaptation, black holes, the Big Bang, carefully and in depth. Tessa usually gets antsy and we rush through the exhibits. Today we lingered, and read, and discusssed.

It was a great day.

Freaking Hormones

I'm not liking this perimenopause deal one little bit. The thought that this is going to be my state of being for the next 10 years or so is pretty depressing.

I've never been comfortable with the view of humans as these bags of hormones and neurotransmitters, but I swear that's how it feels sometimes. I'd never had PMS till I was in infertility treatment, and it was a real eye-opener. Feeling like I was going to rip the arm off the next person who talked to me, then beat him to death with it, made me go, "Oh wow, so THIS is what everyone has been talking about all this time!"

I had some pregnancy hormonal surges, but nothing out of the ordinary. But it's been the progressively worsening PMS I've had the last couple of years (how unfair is it to hit perimenopause at 38, knowing that I probably wasn't actually, based on when my mother and sisters went through it, going to complete menopause till I was over 50?) that has really rocked my boat. There are few things more unsettling than being unreasonably upset, and KNOWING full well that it is unreasonable, and not being able to do anything about it.

I cried, literally wept, during a documentary about John Denver on PBS last night. It wasn't even because of his tragic death or anything. It was listening to the lyrics to "Rocky Mountain High." Sheesh. Then I cried harder because I was crying about the lyrics to "Rocky Mountain High" and I KNEW how freaking ridiculous that was, but I couldn't help it. I was caught in this absurd loop of tears and self-loathing.

It's been a bit better since I started taking a bunch of supplements everyday, with extra 5-HTP the week before my period is due. Prior to starting the supplements, I cried on and off for three days about the scene in the movie "Crash" where the little girl jumps into her father's arms and gets shot. I was a mess for a full 2 weeks before my period every month. There being only about 4 weeks in a month, this was a lot of time to be messed up. Now I'm down to only one or two really bad days, though I'm moderately on edge for a week. I got tears in my eyes on Sunday when we happened upon the Walk for Autism in Battery Park. I looked at all the people there in their shirts dedicated to the autistic children they love, and I had my own Aspie there (in the middle of a major anger episode), and I was spun by a wave of emotions.

For all our progress, for all our achievements as a species, why can't we get a better grip on this crap? I'm already past tired of it, and there's a long road ahead.

Happy Belated Asian American Heritage Month!!

Yes, May has come and gone, and it was Asian American Heritage Month, just as it is every May. Bet you didn't realize that, but then why should you have? It gets no "press." Activities do take place in the AA community (at least, they did when I lived in L.A.), but for the most part I am not even sure why it exists. It's on the level of National Baked Beans Month, or something like that.

I grapple with my identity as Asian American, as I have my whole life. I still can't figure out how significant it is to me. It was made an issue for me when I was a child. People constantly asked me if I was Chinese or Japanese (those being the only Asian nationalities people were aware of back then, in my part of the world). Kids would occasionally make slanty eyes at me and taunt me with "ching chong" type chants. "American" meant white. People would see pictures of my sister and her caucasian husband and say "Oh, your sister married an American." Ummm, that just confused the hell out of me.

Oh, and we weren't Asian back then, in the '70s. We were Oriental, like rugs. Oriental kids were supposed to be smart, and I was, so that was somehow self-fulfilling. I wonder now how it would have been to NOT be smart. People used to tease a kid I knew in high school, that he was the only dumb Japanese kid in town.

But it was my mother who really made an issue of it. She would tell me not to antagonize people, because they might have prejudices against Japanese. When I was learning to drive, she told me that if I ever got pulled over by a policeman, not to talk back to him because he might have been in WWII.

We were the Model Minority, no trouble, hard-working, quiet. But I wasn't. I had a big mouth, I talked. I wanted to be an actress, but where were the parts? Other than the nurses on M*A*S*H or Mrs. Livingston on the Courtship of Eddie's Father, where were my role models? There weren't any, and that pissed me off. I played Liat in South Pacific not once, but twice. She had virtually no lines.

In college, I got used to often being the only Asian in a group, and I did not fit the stereotypes. I was not an engineering or math major; I was a political science major. Once Ross was playing hacky sack outside one of the "liberal arts" buildings on campus, and he mentioned to one of the guys that he was waiting for his girlfriend to get out of class. The guy asked what I looked like and Ross said I was little and Asian. The guy told him, "You're on the wrong side of campus!"

Then I moved to Japan, and things really got topsy-turvy. Then I REALLY couldn't possibly be American, because Americans have blond hair and blue eyes (basically, they look like Ross), but I didn't speak Japanese, so no one knew what the hell to think of me, what category to place me in. It was kind of awful, actually, to be so casually stripped of my identity.

In grad school in Hawaii, I set out on a quest to figure this stuff out. I was an American Studies major (and again, people would chuckle when they heard that Ross was an Asian Studies major and I was an American Studies major, like that was so cute and ironic, because, like, he's American and I'm Asian??) and I did a lot of research on ethnic identity and Asian American history. I learned a lot, but mostly from the undergrads I met while working as a teaching assistant. These were kids *who had never been a minority*. They didn't have a clue as to what it was like to be the only Asian in a room. I envied them so much, because they'd never had to worry about being Asian American.

That's another problem, the moniker. Asian AMERICAN is just so clunky; it takes too long to say. Much like African American just doesn't get used as commonly in conversation as black, because it just takes too damn long to say. So we just say Asian, and again, where is the American? It's implied, but is it REALLY there?

These are issues that come up for me again now that I have bi-racial children. Matthew gets incredibly pissed when kids call him Chinese at school, and I don't blame him. It's not only inaccurate, it somehow takes away his membership in the group ethos. When he was little, Matthew used to think we were all white (since we weren't black or Hispanic, I guess). He still is figuring out what Asian is, though that got much clearer this year when his class studied Japan in social studies.

Tessa still sees people in terms of having pink skin or brown skin, but things are becoming more complicated for her as well. Earlier this year she asked me, hesitantly, "Where am I from?," and I knew she meant nationality-wise. I thought, "Oh man, some kid at school must have called her Chinese!" I told her, "You're American, and you can tell people that!"

So then I found out that her class was preparing for UN Day at school, and as part of a parade, all the kids were going to make flags of the country of their origin! I felt like such a dipshit, that I automatically expected this to be about prejudice, and wrongheadedness, instead of celebration. I didn't find out in time to remind Tessa that her people came from Japan, and from the Netherlands (also known as Holland; that's always complicated when I try to explain it!). She made, and waved, an American flag.

Club Tessa

One of the funny things about being a parent is constantly being surprised by how different your child is from yourself. This has come up so many times for me with Tessa (Matthew being my mini-me in so many ways).

She somehow got it into her head that she was going to have a club for the kids in her class, called Club Tessa. It was going to be on Thursdays, and they were going to have a slew of activities. She made signs for the various rooms in our house: TV room (the livingroom), Boy's Toy Room (Matthew's room), Girl's Toy Room (her room), Sleep Room (my and Ross' bedroom; she originally was going to call it the Rest Room, but I explained what that means), Nature Table (the diningroom), and Outside (back steps). Oh, and there was one for the bathroom. These all had charming little drawings on them.

Now, Tessa does a lot of pretend play, so I figured that this was another one of her little games with herself. But on Wednesday night, it became clear that she fully expected all these kids to show up after school the next day, because she had planned it that way. I tried to explain that we hadn't made any plans, hadn't contacted any of their parents, so it really couldn't work out. She was absolutely AGHAST that I could even suggest that, because she had planned everything! Those kids HAD to come!

She went to school on Thursday, determined to tell the kids to ask their parents if they could come over. I told her that that's not the way playdates work, that the parents have to ask, and it was really too late for me to call all the parents and ask them to bring their kids over that very day (not that I wanted to anyway!), so it really probably wasn't going to work out. She was still determined, however.

After school, she said she was going to play outside, so that when the kids came over, they would see her and know that this was her house. She made a flag out of a leaf and a stick, that said Club Tessa on it. It was really hot yesterday, so she kept coming back in to cool off, but then kept going outside again. Finally she said that she would wait inside, because they could see her flag and know this was the right house.

I just didn't know what to do. She kept saying, "I wonder what's taking them so long!" I kept gently trying to suggest that their parents probably couldn't let them come, since there had been so little notice and they might have had other plans. She was adamant, that it was Thursday, and that was the day for her club, so of course they had to come.

Finally it was dinner time and she sort of accepted that no one was coming. To my surprise, she didn't lose it and get really upset. She just said, "I'll have to ask them where they all were, tomorrow at school." I tried to tell her that I would happily set up a playdate with anyone she'd like, but I didn't think it would work out to have a whole bunch of kids over, but she said that was unacceptable. Everyone had to come, because it was her club, and her club couldn't just have one member.

This is what is so foreign to me, this incredible, steely resolve this child has. The organizational stuff is funny to me, but what really gets me is her determination to MAKE something happen, once she has decided she wants it to happen. In a way it frightens me, because I'm afraid that when she learns that the world doesn't always work this way, it's going to be a hard lesson, but on the other hand, I think, this is a girl who can move mountains.

Watch out, world, it's Club Tessa.