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.