Our House is Special

We've been in our house for 11 years! The journey of our house was a long five months, we lost a lot of houses I really wanted, but I believe we got the perfect house for us in the end. 

My daughter and I went on a walk after lunch recently on a Tuesday afternoon on one of her home school days. I wrote about why I love the school we go to, and being able to take walks with her in our neighborhood during the week is an example of the extra time she and I have gotten to spend together. On this particular day, we ran into a neighbor one street over.

This neighbor is an artist and she showed us her latest charcoal drawing. She talked to us about the birds in their yard, the flowers she planted, and we had a nice chat together. After saying goodbye, we kept walking. I waved to a neighbor mowing his lawn outside. I don't personally know him, but we frequently see him outside working in his yard.

As we came back around to our street, we walked about halfway home and ran into a neighbor, J, who has shared so many plants with us.  

She dropped this off for us this past Christmas.

As we got to her house, the neighbor across the street had just parked their car.  J called them over to our side of the street and introduced us to each other. After our brief meeting, J explained to me how they got into the neighborhood. Their parents and siblings were down a few streets over in another part. This house was the closest they could find for their other son whom I had just met. 

J and I talked and shared some life moments. I gave her the 5-minute synopsis of my latest and ongoing family stress. She shared with me her mother had just passed. We bonded over an eternal joy and hope which helps us to keep our eyes on the prize.  

As our conversation wrapped up, the neighbor who lives next to us was walking his dog by. I noticed only one dog. I asked if they had to say goodbye to Allie. They did. She was 15. After a brief conversation about plants, we both said goodbye to J and walked down the street to our houses. This neighbor is 79 and turning 80 in June. 

By the time my daughter and I returned home, it was nearly 2:30. Being that I start work in the afternoon and work through evening hours, I have to watch the time on my "fun" to make sure I can get to work on time. Although I wasn't late by any means, it was much later than I had anticipated on making it back home. Our walk lasted nearly an hour and it was getting hot outside. 

Although I returned home physically tired and a bit stressed at having to teach 4 hours of lessons that afternoon and evening, it was joyous. I love getting to walk through my neighborhood and smile at neighbors I know and have conversations with them and share life. I love feeling the comfort my neighbors bring when I see them and being able to enjoy their company. I don't take this for granted because I know not everyone has this or feels this way. I know I didn't grow up with it in either of the houses we lived in when I was a child. 

Our house is very special. 

It Ends With Me

Eating brought a lot of trauma for me as a child. I never thought of it as trauma until I became an adult and started to develop concerns with my own children's eating habits. Growing up, when I didn't finish my school lunch, I was reprimanded for something which was only partially in my control. I didn't have enough time to eat for one. I was a slow eater as a child. And what second-grader wanted to sit inside during recess to finish her lunch in solitude with a teacher? Um, no. It wasn't until 8th grade when I clearly remember being able to eat and finish my entire lunch at school. 

In elementary school, I'd arrive home after school and get grilled on how much of my lunch I finished. I bought school lunch so there wasn't a lunch box full of leftovers to be pored over. I used to draw pictures for my mom to show her how much of my lunch I had eaten, and most of the time, she'd always be disappointed, even when I thought I had eaten a good amount. 

These were the drawings of my childhood.

 
Now, my own child brings a lunch to school and I ask her in the car on the drive home if she finished her lunch. Most days, she tells me she did. Now, we pack her lunch so we're aware not to overload her with giant portions she can't finish in 20 minutes. Most of the time I expect her to finish her lunch because I know it wasn't actually a lot of food. 

Every now and then, she doesn't. One Friday, she told me she didn't finish her lunch because she had a birthday treat to eat. I asked her what it was: ice cream, in her favorite flavor, chocolate. Even without looking back at her (because I was driving) I could hear the joy in her voice as she told me about eating chocolate ice cream at school as a birthday treat. 

I actually felt it inside me, disappointment, as a parent, because she didn't finish her lunch. But hearing her talk about her ice cream was so special. I couldn't quash this moment for her. I didn't want to mar it with disappointment and sadness. So I didn't say anything. But I felt the pang of emotion - the emotion of wishing my mother had spared me from this trauma that lingers even decades later and knowing that holding myself back and not saying anything is against every fiber of my being. I can't change the way I feel about things like this, but I can change how my children will feel about these things years down the road.

Vintage Memories

For the Christmas of 2002, I received two Barbie dress sets. I had actually picked them out myself prior to Christmas. They were wrapped up and I opened them as my Christmas presents to partake in the joy of opening gifts on Christmas. 

Christmas 2002

 

I never actually liked Barbie dolls. I just wanted the accessories. For many childhood birthdays growing up, I picked Barbie play sets as my gifts. Instead of dolls, I used my stuffed animals to play in the play sets. The one aspect my stuffed animals couldn't truly experience was the Barbie clothes. Built for a slender-figured lady and not a round bear full of stuffing, I couldn't actually put my Barbie clothes on anything. Nevertheless, I still wanted some beautiful sets of Barbie clothes. I have the Barbie rotating closet, the one which came out in 1998. I have many articles of Barbie clothes stored in there as well as some accessories. However, there were three Barbie gowns/dresses which wouldn't fit into the closet because they were too long. 

 

My mother and I sat down one day and made our own mannequins for them out of clay. We used the plastic mold that came with the original packaging to mold three busts for the dresses. A chopstick was inserted into the bottom of the bust and attached to another mound of clay for the base. Inside the base, we added a coin for some weight to make sure the mannequin would stand up properly.  

 

 

 

Considering our net cost was basically zero (maybe cents if you count in the money used for weight...) since we already had all the materials, this was a fun solution for my childhood. However, nearly 25 years later, these Barbie dresses are now vintage. I wanted a more permanent and protective solution to display them. 

Even bringing these mannequins back to my own house, they would have been 
displayed out in the open which doesn't protect them enough for how old they are.
 

I asked my friends who have a 3d printer if they could print me 3 custom hangers for these dresses.  I was so excited when they arrived because they were so cute. I was also ecstatic because they fit. I had drawn up a sketch and provided measurements by using one of my children's fidget toys as a guide. The fact that they fit perfectly with my less than perfect geometry angles and measuring skills was a great surprise. (Maybe my math skills haven't rusted as much as I thought...)

 

Hangers!

 

Before I put everything together in the final display I was going for, I had to do some minor repairs. I had an old Barbie pearl necklace which probably doesn't actually go with any of these sets. However, I've included it with this dress because I don't have any other set it would pair well with. The elastic on this necklace was completely stretched out and ineffective. 

You can see how much extra elastic there was from where I cut it. 
It basically turned into a basic string.

 

I had so much extra beading string and wire from my daughter's hobbies so I took some clear cord and restrung these plastic pearls back.  

 

Good as new. Don't mind my leftover knot cord. 
I'm just happy it's secure and not overly loose. 

 

 

I purchased a shadow box frame to display all of these dresses in. This way, I had space not only to hang and display the dress, but I could also add the accessories to the side and keep the sets complete. Displaying the shoes was a little tricky. My first thought was to use the pins and hang the shoes off of them. While this worked for two pairs because of the straps on the shoes, It wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing.  

 

Our final solution was to use clear thumbtacks and clear museum gel to secure the shoes to the thumbtacks. After letting the gel cure properly and readjusting the shoes a few times during the curing process, they stayed upright!

 

 

Left: 2001 Barbie Fantasy Princess Gown 47605

Middle: 2002 Barbie Bridal Collection 68065

Right: 1999 Barbie Fashion Avenue 25755

This project turned out exactly how I thought it would. I'm so glad to be able to display these three complete sets and keep them protected for years to come. As I was going through this process and thinking how I wanted to update the displays for these dresses, it occurred to me that my mother isn't physically a part of any of the new display anymore. By removing the mannequins we made, it would be removing the final aspect linked to these dresses that she physically had a hand in. 

Although it is bittersweet to think about this project from that perspective, I think prioritizing longevity and protection of these dresses needs to take precedent over keeping the exact materials we used over two decades ago. Simply taking the mannequin stands and throwing them into a display box would not have done the sets justice in my opinion. This is why passing on the stories of the items we choose to keep and preserve and pass down are so important as well. When I see this display box with the three Barbie dresses, I see my mother. I remember the mannequins we made. And I remember how special she was and still is to me. Nobody else in the world can value these the way I do, but I can share the story to make this more than just a display. It's a memory.

Twice

My maternal grandmother died twice in my life. Let me explain.

During the year I lived overseas, my dad had called me one evening and told me my grandmother had died. I froze and said, "No, this can't be right." I freaked out and started emailing, calling, and texting various family members (besides my dad) from the internet. It took two hours, but I confirmed my grandmother was in fact still alive. I even managed to call my grandmother and talk to her. What actually happened was that my sister-in-law's grandmother had died. My brother informed my dad he was going to New York for the funeral, and my dad misunderstood it as our maternal grandmother as she lived in that same area. 

But in my heart, I felt it. For approximately two hours, I was living the grief of what I would feel when she died. This was the first time. 

The second time, she actually died. 

I was getting ready for bed that evening and I went to close my computer. In the corner of my email, I saw a chat message pop up. It was from my aunt. She told me my grandmother had died. It was May 1, 2014, ten years from the day my mother had died. 

When my grandfather died, I missed his funeral. I had told myself I would do whatever I could to make it to my grandmother's funeral. I missed her funeral, too.

It was a decision I made on my own, and sometimes, I wonder if it's something I truly regret. At the time, I was working as a special needs assistant to a kindergarten-aged girl. I was hired privately by her mother. Her mother was a preschool assistant at another school. If I took any days off, her mother would need to take days off to take my place with her daughter for the day. 

This put me in a hard place when my grandmother died because if I had taken the days off to go to her funeral, the mother would have had to take the same number of days away from her work to assist her daughter in my place. I had already taken one day off, the day after I found out about my grandmother's passing, because I had stayed up most of the night crying. I would have been very ineffective had I gone in to work.  

In lieu of going to her funeral, I made a video sharing my words which was played at the funeral. I rerecorded it so many times because I couldn't stop crying to say anything. 

Over a decade later, I still think back to these decisions I made. Sometimes, I wish I had done things differently. Sometimes, I think about how things could have been different but don't trust myself to have been able to make a different decision.  Would you view the decision in this situation as selfishness for choosing your own desires over the desires of someone else? Or would you view it as commitment to family, dedication, and love over commitments to job obligations?

I wrote down the last conversation I ever had with my grandmother face to face. It was about 10 months before she died. I'm not sure what caused me to write it down. I think a part of me knew deep down it could have been the last time I would see or talk to her in person. 

*Translated* 

 Grandma: I heard you're leaving soon.

Me: Yeah.

G: Where are you going?   

Me: Back to Dallas.

G: To start school?

Me:  No, just going home. 

G: Where?

Me: Dallas.

G: I wish I could help you.

Me: You don't need to help me. I help you. 

G: Yes. You always help me. 

March 2010

What I don't regret is the time I spent with my grandmother. My freshman year of college, I spent spring break visiting her. She had just had her stroke. The summer after my freshman year, I spent two months living with her.  The summer after that, I went back and visited for about two weeks. I didn't go the summer I graduated because I was getting ready to move overseas. This was an intentional choice I made, and I'll never forget the blessing of getting to see her the year after for another two weeks.

For my grandmother, spending the time I did with her when I could was important. And I did. For the special needs girl and her mother, showing up to work as her assistant was important. I think in this light, I was able to do what was important for both sides when I needed to.  

My dad didn't make an attempt to go to either of my maternal grandparents' funerals. He did however attend my cousin's wedding. I have lots of thoughts in this regard, but not now.

 ***

Wang Fu Yu, aged 97, passed away peacefully on May 1, 2014.

Fu was a high school teacher prior immigrating to the United States in 1968. She taught Chinese and History in Taipei, Taiwan. After moving to the US, she devoted her time to her family. She enjoyed traveling the world with her late husband and cooking exotic food for her family and friends.

She was preceded  in death by her husband, Chih Chiai Yu in 2005, and her daughter Donna Yu in 2004.

Money Can Buy Time

It comes up every now and then in conversations, but other moms will ask me why I chose the school my children are at. The simple answer? Time. My kids go to school three days a week, it's a private school, and I pay for it. The school has other fundamentally good things about it, but my answer has remained the same for years - I relish the extra time I get with my kids, even if I'm paying for it.

I can't call it a regret because it wasn't my decision to make, but I still get worked up when I think about all the years my mother had to go to treatment in Houston and didn't take us with her because we had to go to school. Perhaps it was the "must follow directions" cultural training from her upbringing. I always resent the fact that they didn't try harder to make accommodations or do something differently. It was just a straightforward, "You've got to go to school and do your homework. We can't take you."

4th grade was the worst. They went so many times that year. I so badly wanted time with my mother, even if it meant waiting in a hospital hallway because I was too young to go inside the treatment room. Each night before they left, I'd practically beg them to wake me up the next morning and take me with them. They lied to me and said they would. I went to sleep. The next morning, I'd wake up at 7 am to a dark, empty house. I'm still traumatized thinking about it. 

This shaped the way I viewed my kids' educations. When my oldest was preparing for kindergarten, public school was basically eliminated because they didn't offer anything less than a full day. I had known this was coming. The first year of the district's full-day kindergarten was the 2008-2009 school year.  I always told myself, if my kids ended up in public school, they would be allowed to miss school whenever they felt like it and I'd be completely supportive. Now, don't get me wrong, this is with the assumption that they are exceeding grade level standards and completing their homework responsibly. I'm not condoning this for someone with a student who isn't meeting standards. And, knowingly, this would end once they reached the middle school and high school years. 

The old adage is: money can't buy time. I'm here to tell you it can, and we do it all the time without thinking about it. I'm buying time by paying for my kids' educations to have two home school days per week. This is two more days they would have with me than if they went to public school. We buy time when we pick up fast food because our children are hangry instead of waiting to drive home and grabbing something from the freezer or refrigerator at home to heat up or cook. We buy time when we purchase pre-peeled garlic instead of buying the heads because we don't have to stand there and peel the cloves one at a time. We buy time when we pay for a housekeeper or lawn maintenance so we can do other things with our time in lieu of cleaning or mowing. We buy time when we pay the premium at Disney for Lightning Lane passes instead of waiting in the "regular" line. 

Now, bottomline, nobody is adding extra hours or days to their life by spending any money. If we could, we would all go broke. Probably every single person alive would be going broke buying more time for themselves or for someone they loved. But, we buy time in our own ways. We buy time every single day, most likely, without even realizing. It's been labeled as convenience. 

I can't say how long we will stay at our current school. Things may change years from now and we may switch back to public school or a different school. But for the next couple of years, this is what I need. This is what I want. And I will savor the time I've "bought."

Last Hurrah: Berries!

I found out about a pick-your-own strawberry farm near us many years ago. They only open three days a week - Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Because of their popularity, I never made the nearly 1.5 hour drive over because everything was posted on social media. I was not going to risk waking up early, driving over, only to be turned away because they had to close due to capacity. Over the years, my kids grew, each strawberry season came and went, and we never visited this farm.

This year, my daughter's school is already 25-30 minutes away from our home. The school is somewhat on the way to the strawberry farm. One week, I saw posts from this strawberry farm about which days were going to be great picks. I had almost decided to take my son strawberry picking when I realized I wasn't sure if there would be a bathroom available at the farm. It's true, I could have driven to somewhere nearby to use the restroom if needed before and after going to the farm, but that would be more work and an extra stop on the way. In the end, I decided not to.

The following week on Tuesday, I saw the social media posts again saying it would be a great pick with many ripe berries in the fields the next day. I was contemplating taking my son again, but this time, I decided to reach out to the farm and ask if they had a bathroom or portapotty on the premises. The next morning, I got the reply from the farm - they did! 

I made a somewhat last-minute decision to take my son to pick strawberries after dropping off my daughter at school. I packed up his homework, we put on our rain boots, and we set off for school.

After I dropped of my daughter off, we drove the remaining 50 minutes to the strawberry farm from the school. We arrived at 9:30 am. The parking lot was open but the farm itself didn't open until 10 am. This was fine because my son had homework to finish in the car before I'd let him go pick strawberries. He finished around 9:50 and then we got our stuff and went in. I asked if we could use the restrooms first even though the field wasn't opened yet and she said we could. They were clean! Yay! The last time I encountered one this clean was when we were at a park in Maine. 

My little guy and I bought a basket and then proceeded to walk about halfway back into the field to start picking strawberries. They say the best strawberries are located next to the mud. They're not kidding. Rain boots were an absolute must because we got muddy. 

Muddy fields. Yay. 

He and I proceeded to pick almost 5 pounds of strawberries. I have no doubt they'll be gone within a week. 

 

We had so much fun. At least, I had so much fun. On the 75 minute drive home, I did a lot of thinking. I felt really happy having taken my son out to pick strawberries. And I was so excited to be bringing back a whole bucket of red berries. Did it take forever to drive there? Yea, kind of. Were these the most expensive strawberries I've ever purchased in my life? Yup. But life is about going on adventures and making memories. As great as free activities are (don't get me wrong, there's plenty of free activites out there!), sometimes, it's worth paying some money, sometimes even a premium, to be able to do something you normally wouldn't do. 

At dinner, my daughter enjoyed the strawberries so much she wanted to keep eating. My husband had to tell her to stop so that she could save some for her brother...hehe. I asked him later why he didn't just wash some more strawberries for the kids to eat. 😂 After all I did buy nearly 5 pounds... 

I've homeschooled my son for the last two years. Next year, I'm sending him off to first grade. How is my youngest going to first grade? How is my Covid baby six years old? I have no idea. I've loved being able to keep him with me these last two years and have a buddy to go run errands and eat lunch with at home. He's super excited to go to school next year, and honestly, I'm excited for him. 

I made the drive out for this adventure with him as a way to round out our last year together at home full-time. I can't wait for him to go to school and make new friends and have recess. But I'll miss my little buddy. 🩷 

1,288 Words

My dad and I have probably the best relationship with each other now than we've ever had in my life since adolescence. I'm excluding childhood because I honestly don't remember what my relationship with him was like, although there are photos of him holding me and I look genuinely joyful. If you knew me well in my teenage and early adult years, you would have known that my dad and I were basically roommates living under the same roof. He worked to earn money, cooked our food, and paid the bills so we had somewhere safe to live and chauffeured us to places we needed to me. When I got my driver's license at 16, his chauffeuring duties ended, but the other roles remained. During my years in college, his cooking services were less necessary because I ate in the dining halls or cooked for myself during the year I lived in an apartment. After I graduated, I moved overseas for a year, and it was the first time I paid for everything by myself or had it arranged for me through my company - housing, food, and transportation.

After moving back home one year later, I lived at home for a year before getting married and moving out of my dad's house again - this time, permanently. During all these years, we didn't talk to each other. Our personalities really clash with each other. My dad doesn't really understand implications, and if he does, he doesn't show it. He takes a lot of things at face value, probably a large reason why he was so good at math and science. You can't assume in these fields. You prove it, or you see it. Compounded on top of adolescence and a growing desire for independence, not to mention the lack of a true foundational relationship during childhood, I was left with a very shaky pile of rocks called the "foundation" of our relationship. I've written about the epitome, arguably what was the catalyst to the breaking point of our relationship. 

For a long time, I didn't really want a relationship with my dad. I wanted not to need him because needing him felt harder than not needing him. I could take care of myself and be self-sufficient. Honestly, that was easy. Needing him? That felt like dead weight. So I forced myself not to. I found a way to do everything I could by myself. 

I get sad writing about this.  It's probably because I have my own children now. It's probably because I'm getting older and I'm not that young and fearless twenty-one-year-old anymore freshly out of college.  The older I get the more valuable time becomes. I say it like I'm dying, and to my knowledge I'm not, but it's true. Our time is shorter as we get older. And because of that, its value increases. I already know how valuable time is because I've experienced how short it can be with the time I had my mother. My daughter is one year away from being the age I was when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I can still picture myself in her hospital room when she was first diagnosed being oblivious to what was going on and enamored by the beef broth powder I could add to hot water and sip on. And now, I'm the mother who could at any time be the one given a diagnosis with a definite time to live. I digress.

Things with my dad got better after I had kids. Better in the sense that we visited a little more so he could see the kids. I don't think we truly started having a relationship with each other until the last 1-2 years. It's weird thinking about it that way, like the daughter he once had suddenly went from being a little girl to someone in her mid thirties. And the father I once had suddenly went from being the invincible male figure who (I thought) could type at lightning fast speeds (he doesn't) to the gray-haired, balding, fragile person who has slowed his pace when he walks.  

He and I got into a big fight a few years back. I don't approve of his life choices and certain decisions he makes. I realize they are out of my control because he is the one making his decisions, but his decision-making capabilities are diminishing and I am trying to intercede for him to assist. You won't believe what our fight was about: plastic bags. I kid you not there are probably hundreds if not thousands of plastic bags (plastic shopping t-shirt bags) in his house bagged inside of each other and thrown in various closets, strewn in hallways, shoved on shelves. I told him he needed to get rid of them to keep things tidier and not have everything in such a mess because it's a tripping hazard for him and it reduces the space for him to walk and get around his own house. He didn't listen. He actually got angry at me and yelled, "You don't know how I grew up."

He's right, I don't know how he grew up. And honestly, I have no idea what he meant by that statement. Maybe he grew up with clutter and he doesn't mind. Maybe he's used to it after so long and doesn't care. 

I was angry. I was very, very angry. And I yelled back at him.

"You don't know what it's like not to have a mother."

My grandmother was alive when my dad and I had this argument. My dad, a man in his seventies, still had a living mother, whereas I was without one at 13 and had spent over 20 years grieving already. I don't know if my dad understood the full implication of my statement. No, my dad did not know what it was like to lose a mother yet. But he also did not understand what it was like to watch someone else take over the house my mother spent her last days in. To trash the things she didn't want regardless of what it was. To leave the house in such disarray and mess. To buy things endlessly and stash them all over the place, never to be used. To shamelessly throw away my mother's photograph and expect no consequence or fault. 

Since this argument with my dad, things got better - my relationship with him, that is, not the condition of his living space. When I say we have the best relationship we've ever had, the bar is still very low. This means we have conversations with each other about everyday things. I tell him about the new grocery store I went to. I tell him about the piano competition my student placed in. I tell him about which days my kids get off from school. We have lunch together and I bring food I cooked. He tells me about his doctor appointments for his health ailments. He tells me about a restaurant he ate at. It's mundane. But it's the best we've ever had. 

My grandmother, my last living grandparent, died this week. We've always lived halfway across the world from each other so I never really knew her as a person. My entire family went to go see her last year, and that would be the last time we would see her. She lived almost twice the years my mother had on this earth. We are going back again this year, but my grandmother won't be there. I know this visit will feel different. I know it will be different. 

My dad can now begin to glimpse what I've already known. I am sad for him.