A Moment

The sound of our kids' heavy breathing fills the small hotel room. T is under the covers, smack in the middle of the other queen bed about 3 feet away, with the sheets tightly tucked between the mattress and the box to keep him from rolling out. Our little S is curled up in her sleepsack in the pack-n-play by the window, her hair tousled around her face like a protective cloud. The kids passed out immediately after a busy day of visiting old friends and jumping around in an indoor playground. When we drove into San Francisco mid-morning to meet my friend and her daughter at the Academy of Sciences, my six-year-old T, who lived in San Francisco from birth until the day after his first birthday, said, "I love visiting my old friends."

It is only 9pm, but Jeff and I are lying in the dark, whispering to each other, my head on his shoulder, warm under the cover. We hadn't had much time to talk during the day since he came on the trip for business and allowed us to tag along only if we agreed to leave him alone to work. We left him to his meetings after we grabbed my Starbucks in the lobby in the morning and returned after a giggle-filled dinner.

In the dark, we talk about anything and everything: our schedule for the week, funny things the kids said during the day, his mother's declining health.

I don't even remember what it was I said, but he tells me, "You're a better person than me."

"No, it's not true. That's not true. Why would you even say that?"

"You are a good person," he says.

"What does that even mean, to be a good person?" I ask.

"You always try to do the right thing," he says.

And at this comment, I feel my eyes well up. He doesn't see me cry, but I feel the tears roll down my face.

"But it doesn't do any good. It doesn't make any difference."

He pulls me in closer and tightens his arm around me. And by his deep breath, I know he understands.

He kisses the top of my head and says, "It'll be ok."

I lie there as his words settle around me. I recognize the weight of his efforts -- to try to fill the void that he didn't create, to help heal what he didn't damage, to try to compensate when others have failed. I think of the weight he carries for me. And I hope I have the fortitude to do the same for him when my turn comes.

Detours

I fell for the wrong man once. It was doomed from the start, even though I didn't know it then. I was in my late 20s, and the life I had lived until then had been sheltered. I was the girl who listened to her parents, who got good grades, who had clear rules of morality. I spent most of my 20s hoping to meet a man who met my parents' requirements. The problem was that they did not meet mine. I rarely met a man I found attractive, and I worried that something was wrong with me, that I was too frigid. When he came along and my heart did the little thump, thump, I felt relieved.

He had traits that I used to put on a pedestal - a dry wit, intellectualism, a tortured soul. Before I knew it, a cavalier version of me that I hadn't known existed stepped forward. Perhaps because I had been guarded for so long, my emotions suddenly opened up with an intensity I didn't know I had. I wanted to give in to the experience and let it happen. I didn't care how it might end. I assumed that I could then walk away and resume my normal life. I didn't know that your emotions can grab you as if you were a piece of wilted spinach and thrash you around. I didn't know that what I thought was in my command could consume me and take over, drag me by my hair even as my brain grappled for control.

The relationship slugged on longer than it should have. The happy moments were overshadowed by tortured exchanges as I demanded a logical explanation for what he couldn't -- or didn't want to -- put into words. The first time we broke up, I talked to a few friends. The second, third, and the fourth time, I kept quiet, ashamed that I was so out of control, that I couldn't walk away and mean it. I knew it would never work. I knew it the first time we broke up. But my emotions kept dragging me back, as if I were caught in ripples of waves that kept pulling me in over and over again.

I wasted so much time first trying to fix what I could not, even as he told me it could not work, not really. Then I wasted more time fighting myself, trying to convince myself that I had to extricate myself, even as I let myself get pulled in deeper. One day, I suddenly realized that I wanted a normal life, a life that comes with a family, children. It was no longer enough to have the freedom marked by staying out as late as I wanted without having to make a call, grocery shopping for one, not having to compromise. The intense emotions - as much as I indulged in them - did not make a life. I needed more. I found that I was no longer embarrassed to admit - to myself or others - that I wanted to meet someone to marry and have children.

Sometimes, when I am walking hand in hand with Jeff, I wonder if I could have gotten here without that tortured experience. Could I have realized how much I wanted this life had I not lived so long with what I could not have? I wonder what it was in myself that was so tied to that dead-end relationship, what kind of a strange comfort I felt. Why I had endured so much less than I deserved. That's when I grab Jeff's hand tighter and kiss his sweet lips. And thank him for finding me.

Limits

I lived outside his mile limit. His profile identified a range of 0 to 25 miles. I was in San Francisco, he in San Jose. A distance of more than 45 miles.

We had never met before. A random email dropped out of cyberspace into my inbox. And tickled me with expectancy.

He had seen my profile and decided to drop me a line. Extending himself outside of his zone of comfort in the hopes of making a connection. With a stranger who could cease being a stranger.

And that is what happened. We met for a drink, then a dinner a week after, then many more drinks and many more dinners. Soon, I was no longer a stranger. I became a girlfriend, a fiancée, then a wife. Today is our one year anniversary.

A change that began with a few written words sent outside one's defined radius. That is how we found each other.

Everyday Moments

They are everyday moments, no different than the countless other evenings we've had before. On the couch, his head resting on my lap, our eyes focused on someone else's drama unfolding on the screen in front of us. I reach down to stroke his hair, and for no reason, an image emerges -- of me, forty odd years later, alone, on this couch. Of time churning forward, producing an unbearable catastrophe that has to be borne. Me, looking back from the other side of time, reminiscing of these moments.

I lean down to kiss him and take in his smell, knowing these are the moments I will remember when I think of the good days, those happy days. And I know that right here and now, I am living those moments, the culmination of what is precious, of my life at its most sacred. As I sit here, I want to live these moments as intensely as I can, as I would if I were giving a performance, acing a test, or marking an achievement. To not fail myself and ruin the moments, but to give them all that I have and to live up to what the moments require.

If I could, I would store these moments in a bottle, as one does preserve, perfume, a genie. I would open the bottle in moments of need, evoke the power of the moments I saved, and pray to be granted the wish of today.

Guilt

I suffer from an overdose of guilt. It probably has to do with my upbringing, like everything else we can't explain away in one sentence. Maybe partly because I asked my mom if I was adopted and didn't believe her answer until she dug out my birth certificate years later on a two week trip back to Korea after rummaging through moth ball scented clothes and mildewed photo albums that had been left behind in the attic of our old house in Seoul. Maybe because I screamed as if someone were pulling my toenails out with a plier every time my brother exceeded the speed limit when he was trying to learn how to drive. Maybe because I hadn't washed my hands each time I said I did. Who knows what dramas are constantly being replayed in our complicated little brains and which scenes make us shudder and close our eyes?

All I know is that guilt chases me throughout the day. When Sherlock sits by my feet, rests his head on my keyboard, and peers up at me with his lollipop eyes, I can see the bubble rise out of his head with a plea on why I should take him to the beach that very minute, even though I took him for an extended romp yesterday. It is just a matter of minutes before I start to contemplate the grey line between neglect and abuse, wonder whether I am fit to be a mother, of a dog or a child, and debate whether I should pick up where the old dog walker left off and take him to the beach for three hours a day now that I'm working from home. I then feel his mortality looming and wonder if he is getting out of life what he should and if I am failing to do my part in that endeavor.

I probably read too much Ayn Rand when I was in high school. I believed her too earnestly when she told me that every minute of life is precious. A part of me wants to live by the creed to live every day as if it's your last - while helping Sherlock with his - but it does seem to conflict at times (with itself and others'). It also gets exhausting after a while to imagine the obituary that you'd appoint your most loyal and creative friend to write, especially when you aren't living up to your mental image of how you should be living.

And if you are living your life like it's your last, how about everyone else? Are they doing the same? Who would then make the funeral arrangements? I'm the kind of person who never asks for a ride to the airport because I would rather lug my suitcase on a bus, then a subway, and then another bus, and walk through three different terminals before arriving where I need to be three hours later than ask someone to take an hour out of their day. That, or pay $60 for a cab. When I went off to college in Chicago from NY, I arrived at the dorm with two suitcases while other kids showed up with their loaded u-haul trucks with their nuclear and extended families in tow, including the grandma in her wheelchair. It's easier to be self-contained and not impose on others when you can't return the favor.

Even now, when Jeff returns at 9pm after an hour's commute from work and sweetly insists on doing the dishes after our quick dinner, I hover over him to make myself useful in any small way. I worry about how I'm only working four hour days doing my contract work after spending $14.50 at lunch with a friend and $21.32 for black mission figs at Whole Foods while Jeff works at least eight more hours, dining on his company's gourmet cafeteria food.

In my mind, it always boils down to the sum of human effort. And it often feels like a zero sum game.

In a perfect world, we would have absolute equality all of the time. Jeff and I would work the same hours at the same level of effort, squeezing the same level of enjoyment from our life's work. Or I would do a tad extra so that I would have a small reserve for the day I want to slack off.

Or we can squat on some remote beach and teach Sherlock how to fish.

I haven't thought through the part when (if?) one of us gets pregnant.