It’s no secret that the girls are very attached to Mark. It might be because he is the cook, the baker, and the bedtime story reader, but the “traditional” roles of mother/father are fairly blurred at our house. I don’t think you necessarily plan out these roles when you first become parents. Maybe subconsciously these roles are shaped by our childhoods – certainly, neither Mark nor I grew up with fathers who were so involved; our mothers were our everything – but over the years these roles naturally and organically settled in.
 
So when Mark told the kids that he had to drive upstate to visit grandpa who was sick in the hospital again and that he couldn’t spend Thanksgiving with us, the first thing the kids asked was, “who’s going to cook dinner?”.
 
I found that both hilarious and kind of sad. Truth is, we are never away from our kids. The first time Mark traveled away from the girls was last year, to visit his dad in the hospital the first time. Do you remember this? It was awful, only because I was suffering from a 6 week back to back bronchial infection and I strained or cracked a rib from coughing so hard. I could barely move let only take care of the kids, but we all survived. I’ve only ever been away from my family once, when Mia was 18 months old, to attend the CES trade shows in Vegas for 4 days (incidentally I was miscarrying a baby on that trip, though I didn’t know it for sure at the time). That was it though. Not surprisingly the girls get nervous at the thought of either of us going away. I’m not sure what they’d do if we went away together without them. It hasn’t happened yet.
 
Maybe it might surprise you to know that it’s Mia, and not Claudine who stresses out the most on the rare occasions that we do leave them with a babysitter at night. She gets really nervous, frets and cries during the hours leading up to our departure. She is usually fine a half hour in after we leave, however she gets very stressed the moment she knows of the plans. Sometimes I think the kids need to get over it because they should feel lucky that we spend so much time with them, but really…it’s no fault of theirs…they don’t know anything else.
 
Mark left this morning after dropping them off at school. Surprisingly they took it well, though both teachers told me they talked about it, often. They spent the evening writing notes for him. That is something sweet that they like to do, whenever I go out for the evening, they leave a good night note and place it on my computer.
 
So far so good…till Saturday…happy thanksgiving.

Sometimes you just have to give into your cravings. There is just no other way.
 
Did you have a good weekend? Ours started off well: a long overdue visit with some old friends of ours and the last outdoor Brooklyn Flea Market of the season before it retreats indoors for the winter. Today has been a confusing day though and I’m not sure what the week will bring. It’s Thanksgiving week. A big change of last minute plans. We won’t be together this holiday…still…need to think about the things we are thankful for.

I’m not much of a wedding person and I really haven’t been to that many to be honest, but I will say that my cousin’s wedding a few weekends ago was fun, mainly because we got to hang out with all my cousins. The girls, on the other hand, were excited about the whole thing – from getting to wear their most fanciest dresses, to the cocktail buffet before dinner, and to the dancing. We didn’t stay for cake because it was a really long wedding and after awhile the girls complained that they were really tired. What is it about little girls and weddings? I really don’t recall being so interested in them when I was young. The girls aren’t obsessive about them at all or anything, but all the neighbor kids held a fake wedding the other day on the stoop. They’ve been talking about it forever and they got all dressed up and had a wedding. Who was the bride? Mia.

Families are an ever evolving, often complex set of relationships, aren’t they? I look at my parents and my kids, particularly my dad who my brother and I had an uneasy relationship with growing up at times, and see how easy it is between him and the girls. It’s not something that you could ever know until it happens, much like how you don’t really know what kind of parent you will be until you become one. But this…seems so natural (uncooperative family photo poses and all).

And then there is this:

I can tell you that it took my dad a while to accept the fact that my brother was having a baby 2 years ago, mostly because it was a surprise to all of us. It didn’t happen the way that maybe he envisioned it might happen. There was a time when my dad and my brother did not speak for a few months. At one point my brother resigned to the possibility that his kids might not have the same kind of relationship that my kids have with their grandfather. I think as first generation Asian Americans and kids who grow up identifying mostly with American culture, we expect our immigrant parents to accept our decisions no questions asked. I just told my brother to give him some time.

He is right in one sense. My dad doesn’t have quite the same relationship with my brother’s kids as he does with mine, but this is because of distance and nothing more. My brother and his family live in California and we only see them once or twice a year. They were in town to celebrate my nephew’s 2nd birthday and his new daughter’s traditional 100 day celebration.

So it would come as a bit of a surprise to hear my dad make a speech during the party with our whole extended family. That he would be the one to say that despite the fact that maybe the additions to his family might not have been what he envisioned when he thought about it abstractly years ago before any of this ever happened, when he looks at his children’s spouses and his 4 grandchildren, what he sees is family.

Seems like whenever we leave Washington, our flight is always early morning so we need to wake up many hours before even the first light breaks. The drive is in darkness, so there is nothing to see out the car windows. I always make sure that our last night is filled with sights, like dusk at the waterfront in Olympia, to carry us over to our next visit.

So I’ll bring you back to New York next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Also, we are at the end of September. What?

Going back to Mark’s mom’s house in Olympia, Washington is just about the closest thing to going back home as we can get. Certainly for Mark, as he lived at that house during his high school years, but in some small way for me as well. When we drive to my parents’ house on the weekends, it’s not to the house or neighborhood I grew up in. There are no childhood relics or memories there, so I suppose in one sense going back to this house with the red door, a place that I have also lived in briefly on 2 separate occasions, is the oldest “home” to go back to.

Oh Olympia, you are a sleepy little town, but you have an impressive Farmer’s Market, a nice waterfront, and our favorite coffee roasters. It’s funny how huge the scene felt back then in the early 90s – the birthplace of Riot Grrrls, the indie record labels, the music and the aftermath of Nirvana. I guess you could say that about many of the indie college towns back then. Of course we didn’t really know it at the time, but is stuff like this still happening in college towns? Or am I that out of touch and talking like an old person?

I have so many more photos to post from our trip still, but we’re home now. It’s always disorienting to come home from a long trip. It’s like hitting the un-pause button and everything that was on hold rushes back around you. It’s also never easy saying goodbye to family and friends that you only see once or twice a year. So many goodbyes.

Mark told me something yesterday that really broke my heart. He went by my grandmother’s apartment to catch a ride with my uncle to my mom’s house to pick up our car which has been parked there during our trip. My oldest aunt, the only one who still lives in Korea of my mom’s 4 siblings has been visiting our family in the states for 3 months. She leaves this Wednesday. Mark told me that grandma was sad when my uncle came by to pick her up. It then occurred to me that this is quite possibly their last goodbye. Both are too frail and old to make the long journey to either Seoul or NY. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to your mother or your own daughter with the knowledge that you will never see them again. It’s incomprehensible, really. It shatters my heart every time I think about it. I wish all our family was near.

The girls have been saying that phrase often since we’ve been home. “We’re never going to see Tobi again”. Claudine had a hard time sleeping on our first night home. If you know our kids, then you know how easy bedtime is for the girls, so it’s saying a lot that she kept getting up every hour from 8pm-midnight. She kept saying that something was bothering her, that she missed Tobi. They both woke up in the morning and wanted to draw pictures of him (C’s is on top, Mia’s on the bottom). This isn’t the first time I came home from a long trip to a cat-less house. Unbeknown to me at the time, I lost my first cat to feline leukemia while I was traveling during the summer of 1991. I was so excited to come back and see my cat, a kitten that I rescued in Minnesota just a year before. He traveled to the West Coast with me perched on the top of my backpack during long hikes through the Redwoods and Mt Shasta before heading back East. This was a time without cell phones so I had no idea what was going on, only that I came back to no cat in sight with his things stored neatly in the closet.

I don’t know which is worse. There doesn’t seem to be any closure this way. The girls keep saying that they hear him meowing and I do sometimes feel like at any time I’ll see him sitting at one of his favorite spots around the house. His absence is felt every time I do something that I wouldn’t have normally done because I had to make our place cat proof…leaving the toilet seat up, moving a plant to a windowsill or kitchen counter, making the bed and leaving the good sheets uncovered…

The internet is a funny place. While San Francisco was all about reconnecting with old friends, Seattle is about visiting and staying with newer friends made online. On our first 3 days in Seattle, we housesat our friend’s amazing loft with a view in Pioneer Square while they were out of town. We have never met them in person though. Now that we are a family of four, staying with Mark’s mom or sister gets a bit complicated since neither have the space to accommodate us. I am completely amazed by the generosity and trust of each of these 3 families who have invited us into their homes on our Washington leg of our trip (even for a second year) without having initially met us in person first. Luckily, we all get along.

And thank you, internet friends, for your thoughtful comments about Tobi. The girls keep asking whether he is still alive and we keep saying that he is not. Maybe being so far away has made this easier. Maybe not. It’s certainly a distraction, but I am really feeling right now how far away from home we are as we continue to get news after news of things happening back home. Riding out the East Coast hurricane 3000 miles away was stressful. My neighbors and family are fine even if my parents are still without power, but my mom has been in the hospital twice now since we’ve been away and today there is new concern and worry about her health. We come home on Saturday to a mountain of things to be dealt with. I am anxious.

And for those very few people who read blogs and don’t think anything of leaving hurtful, judgmental comments, remember that there is a real person with real feelings on the other side of these words you read. There is just no need.

Tobi at the beginning of his life. Tobi at the end of his life.

Ridiculously surreal to be dealing with this over the phone 3000 miles away. We were on a ferry departing the San Juan Islands when I got a phone call from our cat sitter. I made the authorization to the vet to euthanize in the car ride back to Seattle. Mia overheard the phone conversations. She was very upset. Claudine was too busy with her sticker book on the ferry and was napping in the car so she wasn’t aware of what was going on. Mark later told her when they were sitting together on a park bench in Seattle that Tobi was sick and sleeping forever when she said that she missed him (she has said that a few times over the course of the trip). She then stepped away from the bench and started crying.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow we abandoned him and that he was all alone those last hours. Our neighbor (1 of 3 people we asked to stop by and take care of our cat) sent me photos of his kids giving Tobi lots of pets and hugs yesterday. The 2 year old wanted to see the cat again so they went over a second time. This made me feel better. He had lots of company on his last day.

I suspect it won’t really hit us until we get home. I’ll likely never forget that ferry ride.

We were at my parents’ house again this weekend, our only full weekend off from summer markets this summer. We didn’t really feel the record breaking heat all that much and I guess that’s one thing the suburbs have over us. When you’re shuttling in a car from one indoor space to another, you don’t really have a chance to sweat it up if you’re not walking miles through city blocks.

Random stuff:
After taking swimming lessons for 10 weeks in the Spring, Mia’s becoming quite a little swimmer. We spent the better part of the day Saturday at the town pool where my parents live, and by the end of our day there, Claudine got brave and started dunking herself completely and learned how to float too by doing the running man underwater.

You ever laugh at how different your tastes are from your mom’s? I mean we were one of those families who had plastic covers on our couches growing up. Ok, maybe that was more of an 80s thing than anything else. Meanwhile my mom thinks most of the stuff in our apartment is plain, though she does like the black walls. Then again, she totally let me have all black walls in my room when I was a teenager. Ahead of my time I was, I tell ya.

Claudine, unlike Mia, doesn’t like mealtimes here at my mom’s because there is never anything on the table that she wants to eat (she’s picky, remember?). So dinner time always ends up being plain rice, which she does like, but she doesn’t like the kind here because my parents make rice mixed with all kinds of beans and grain and it turns the rice purple. The only way she’ll eat any is if we roll it up in seaweed, so there’s that. I swear, we’re never going to be able to travel anywhere overseas with this girl. She’d starve.

The girls are off from camp this week. At the time when we reserved camp slots waaay back in the winter, we thought it’d be nice for them to have a break from camp for a week because camp days are so hectic. Uh, what the hell was I thinking? I have work to do and we have no childcare and no camp this week. I’M GOING TO DIE.