Reading

In my late teens and in my 20s, I read book after book. I always had a book in my purse or backpack, sometimes two, just in case I had even a few minutes to myself, whether I was on the subway, the LIRR, the El, or the Metro, or waiting to meet a friend at a cafe or a street corner.  When I was working, I protected my lunch hours so that I could skip out to a deli or a cafe to read a book while gulping down my lunch. And I always picked a place where I had no risk of running into someone from my office who might want to chit chat and cut into my valuable time.

I plowed through about a book or two a week. I didn't necessarily read for pleasure, even though I often enjoyed them very much. I also didn't read to escape, as some of my friends did. I read out of desperation. I thought these books could show me how to live my life -- or more precisely, how not to screw up. Mostly, by way of example, by illustrating how others lived theirs -- and what they did right or didn't. I read in search of instruction manuals.

I also read out of fear. Our family moved from Korea to the US when I was eight. During our first few years here, I was often struck by the differences between our way of living and those who lived here. Also, by the different way we saw things. And how some of them failed to understand us -- and yet had no idea how limited their perspective was. As I grew older -- and became more "Americanized"  and identified less with the Korean way of being -- I started to fear turning into one of those people, those who only knew their way of living and understood so little of others'. Books punctured through my own protected bubble and opened windows into other, much larger worlds.

I often read the same books twice. First a quick read - more than a skim but still a passive take, and then once I got the big picture, back to page one to digest more carefully, thoroughly. I sometimes underlined the sentences that resonated with me.  Often those sentences had nothing to do with the main theme of the book, but to me they were little nuggets of truth that felt truer because somebody else had written them down. And after I finished, I neatly lined up the books on my bookshelf, as proof of my growth and improvement.

I often gravitated towards literature and memoirs. For memoirs, usually those written by someone on the outside, whether African American, Jewish-American, or some kind of survivor, and everything I could find by Asian-Americans. At the end of those books, those writers felt like personal friends, with whom I'd had intimate conversations.

I am not an extravagant person, but with books, I did not limit myself. I grabbed whatever caught my eye, often purchasing a pile of books at a time. I had every intention of reading them all, even though I usually ran out of time before another pile of books caught my attention. As a result, I have more unread books than read, especially since after reading, I immediately donate books I feel do not merit shelf space.

When we moved to San Diego a couple of years ago, we did not unpack most of our belongings since we were not sure whether we would stay here for good. When we finally decided to stay, we still did not unpack since we are currently in a rental and plan to buy a house. During that time, my books have been trapped in boxes. A couple of times, I have gone through some of those boxes looking for one or two particular books that stuck in my head -- although it would been easier simply to check it out from the library or order a new copy from Amazon. But most of the time, they have remained in their boxes, marked "S's books - Read" or "S's books - Unread." The other day, I had a moment of panic fearing that they are all growing moldy.

I recently caught up with a friend from my first job out of college. She asked me what I've been reading -- and I found myself reporting that I had read less than three or four books in the last several years. What an awful record. But I feel less desperate about reading these days. Perhaps because I don't assume others know more than I do, although they often do. And perhaps because I am getting set in my ways.

But I still miss my books. And I miss having time to read. Jeff called me a "book hugger" the other day, just because I forbid him from dog-earing my books and cringe when a book is bent at the spine. I teach my children not to step on books, just the way we were taught. And I want to instill in them a love of learning, because I believe that to be the most important tool we have for finding our way in the world. But I don't think there is much for me to do, because they were born with an innate curiosity, an eagerness to learn.

I look forward to the day when I can sit with my children, each of us with our own age appropriate books in hand. But for now, reading is a group activity. We huddle together on the couch next to a big pile of board books, my face pressed against their warm, soft cheeks, our eyes locked on the hungry little caterpillar.

So, So Behind

Next month, I turn 42.  And I am still working on trying to lay the grounds to start a new career.  Laying the grounds as in trying to find time to study for the GREs, trying to find time to research some schools, trying to find time to read up more on the subject in general, trying to find time to talk to people in the field so that I can decide whether that is what I ultimately want to do, and trying to find the time to do enough due diligence on the subject so that I can assure myself that I am making the right decision. You know, the kind of stuff I should have done when I was in my early 20s.

I feel like I'm two decades behind. Well, actually, I am. The other evening, I asked a stay at home mom if she would consider starting a new career at this point.  She said, "Gosh, maybe I'll go back to what I was doing before, but I can't imagine trying to start all over again!" She is younger than me. Not too long ago, I read a New York Times article about Oprah's efforts to "attract 'women in their 30s or perhaps their 20s, to be able to reach people when they are looking to fulfill their destiny" because according to Oprah, "[b]y the time you're 40, 42, you should have kind of figured it out already."

She is right. Oprah is always right. I should have figured it out by now. I should have spent my teenage and college years exploring. Trying out this and that, talking to people in different fields to learn more about their jobs, working as an intern in organizations that piqued my interest. Instead, I spent most of my time coming up with arguments as to why I would not make a good doctor. And when my parents finally accepted that I would not become a brain surgeon, I then worked on trying to rationalize to myself why I would make a good lawyer (my parents' second and only other choice for an acceptable career), even though I had little idea what lawyers did.

We did not grow up in an environment where we were encouraged to explore and to try to determine our future paths for ourselves. Instead, all doors were closed except for one or two. And it was our job to make ourselves fit through one of those doors, no matter how misshapen or contorted. I spent a lot of time banging my head against them and then tending to my bruises. It was the antithesis of exploring.

But even so, you'd think I could have done something in my late 20s and 30s to help myself.  I graduated from law school in 1998, when I was 27. That left me 15 years to fashion some career that I could call my own. But instead, I just put on my good worker bee smile and did all that was expected of a good associate. I put in my hours, cancelled dinners as well as holiday and vacation plans when necessary, and collected my paychecks. I also spent a fair number of my free hours pondering over alternative career options with friends over $15 gin and tonics. I really have no one to blame but myself.

But it's not all that bad. I think if my last job had not ended as it had, then I may still be there or at some other law firm, washing away my doubts with $15 drinks. And telling myself that I should be lucky to have such a well paying job. And delaying my life crisis until retirement, when it would be too late to do anything about it. Thank god they threw me out.

Motherhood is my second chance. It gives me a break from the career that I never wanted and an opportunity to start again. Unlike most women who worry that taking time out to raise their children will damage their careers, I'm grateful for this time off.

But I still worry that I'm too far behind.  I feel pressured to get going on my career. I've already wasted two decades -- so much time to make up for. I hear about my college classmates who've written books, whose articles appear in the magazines I purchase, those who have fulfilled the dreams that I did not let myself entertain, much less aspire for. And when I hear about them, I sometimes find myself in tears. What have I done with all this time? Why have I accomplished so little? Why do I have so little to show for my life so far?

When I talk like this to Jeff, he often points to my law degree and my legal career. That's not nothing, he says. Perhaps, I say, but your career is only as meaningful as the value you place on it. And for me, my legal background didn't measure up to anything, not in my eyes. It held little meaning for me. And I think its unhappy ending diminished it even more.

Things were rolling along somewhat while we had a babysitter, even though I found that 10 hours a week really boils down to far less -- after you have shaken the children off of your leg, put away this or that, and thrown in the laundry. And reluctant to leave both an infant and a toddler in the hands of a college student, I tried to line up the babysitter to come during our toddler's nap -- except that on occasion, he refused to go along with my plans and I would find my three hours abbreviated to one and a half. But at least I had some time to regroup myself.

Then, in early December, our babysitter quit. We quickly lined up another, and planned to get her on board right after the holidays when she would be available. But shortly after the new year, she emailed to say that she had found a more career-oriented position. So now, we are back to the drawing board. Looking up potential babysitters, setting up interviews, checking references. The whole process will take a couple of weeks or longer, and I feel so impatient. For some reason, this feels like a crisis moment -- and perhaps that is what this is. My midlife crisis.

I am starting to understand mothers who are narcissists -- those who have so many personal needs to meet that they cannot meet the needs of their children. God forbid, I'm not a narcissist -- but I can taste the hint of my personal need colliding with the needs of my children -- and at the center stage of all this is our mutual need for my time. And the biggest question is how to slice the pie so that we can all feel somewhat satisfied and not denied. All I want are a couple of hours a day -- it seems so simple, but in the middle of this feeling of crisis, I feel as if a lifetime is passing me by.

I try to still my anxiety -- and my impatience. But I don't know any tricks. I just command and rebuke myself, which only muddles things inside. I am hoping that writing this down will help me sort out my inner turmoil. Why so urgent now? What difference do a few months make, especially since I'm so late as it is? Right?

And maybe I'm not as late as I think. 42. Really, is that so late to start working on a new career? Well, actually, it'll be a couple of years before I can even start a program since I need to study for the GREs, take the exam, apply to schools, etc. So maybe 44. Not a bad number, is it? According to Wikipedia, the number is considered to be a "hitter's number" because it was the number for Hank Aaron and Reggie Jackson. So, I'll have to bank on their luck and keep my fingers crossed for a homerun when I finally get my chance at the bat. I just hope that time doesn't fly until then because I need all the time I can get.

Our baby girl turns one

We celebrated our daughter's one year birthday in December.  This photo was taken by a friend at the birthday party, and I love it.  She looks like a little Korean princess.

Adjusting

I've been a mom for a little over three years now, and I'm still adjusting.  I love my little ones.  There's nothing more wonderful and fulfilling than wrapping my arms around their warm squiggly bodies or seeing their faces light up when they see me enter the room.  The other day, my three year old walked up to me where I was sitting on the floor, put his arm around my shoulder, kissed me on the nose, and said, "I love you, Mom."  That filled me up to the core.

But as I said, I'm still adjusting.  It is a big transition to go from working in an office to hanging out with the kids all day.  

Before I had children, I don't think I really understood that becoming a mother meant entering the service industry. And not in the sense that lawyers or accountants use the phrase, but more along the lines of work performed by servants, janitors, waiters, and maids. As in working to meet the basic bodily needs of others.  This past year has been one long continuous string of changing diapers, cleaning the potty, cutting up food, setting and clearing the table, putting on and taking off socks and shoes, pumping, washing bottles, feeding, doing laundry, vacuuming, and picking up toys.

Of course I understood that parents do these things.  I expected to change diapers.  I expected to pick up after my kids.  I expected to prepare their lunches and do their laundry.  What I didn't expect was how repetitive these tasks can become or the extent of time they consume. How could such little beings generate so much laundry?

In the remaining hours when I'm not caught up in one of these tasks, I'm just hanging out.  Sitting with my three year old as he's playing with Legos.  Shadowing my 11 months old as she's cruising along the couch.  Refereeing the two as they tussle over toys.  Hanging out at a playgroup as they play with other kids.    

While the repetitive household tasks make me feel like Sisyphus, it's the hanging out part that's getting to me.  When I'm just sitting with my kids, I feel time drain away.  I'm not talking about the time when I'm reading with my son or when I'm cuddling my little girl.  I'm okay with those.  I'm talking about times when I can't fully focus on either one because they are running in different directions or I'm just hanging back while they are engaged in some activity that doesn't require my participation.  Those times when I'm just playing guard and ensuring that my children stay alive.  In those times, I fidget, pick every speck of lint from the rug, compile a to do list in my head, and wonder how long I can last as a stay at home mom.

I've never been good at hanging out.  As a teenager, I rarely talked on the telephone because I found it difficult to sit cradling the phone.  In college, I found frat parties to be a little painful as I tried to look like I was at ease sipping lukewarm beer.  For as long as I can remember, I always carried a book in my purse or backpack, just in case I had a few unexpected stray minutes -- that is until I had children.

These days, I do not have time to read.  At least not much more than an online article here and there.  But I have so much time when I'm just sitting or watching passively -- time I could use otherwise to do something.  And it kills me.

I am aware of the source of my anxiety about time. When I was growing up, I watched my parents work crazy hours at the store -- hours they found miserable.  They did nothing other than work.  And grow older.  In those hours, I saw two lives wasting away.  And the few hours that they had to themselves felt so precious, sacred.  I vowed then to use my time well, productively.

The thing about being productive, however, is that you need time to be productive.  You need the freedom to do.  And these days, with two kids to watch, my time isn't my own anymore.

Not having something to show for my time isn't easy.  My identity in part is wrapped around achievement. That's how we were raised.  My parents rarely expressed affection toward us unless we did something that merited approval.  Just being wasn't enough;  we had to do.  And I've geared my life toward doing; finding a way to be an action verb.  When I have nothing to show for my time, I feel useless, unworthy -- like that kid in the back of the class who does not merit attention because he has nothing to contribute.  

The string of tasks I do to run the household do not seem enough to merit "doing."  They are simply busywork -- not dissimilar to the type of work my parents did that seemed so empty.  And the remaining hours of hanging out -- of just being rather than doing -- feel wasted.  But of course, the irony is that they are not wasted.  I'm spending them to help my children grow, to develop.  Still, knowing that does not make it easy to put aside my own anxiety and needs.

I'm beginning to understand why parenting is so difficult.  It's not just about the physical demands -- which of course are very real and challenging.  But it is also because the needs of our children can be at odds with our own needs -- needs which are emotional and psychological and deeply entrenched in the way we function in this world.  And the inability to meet these needs can cause mini implosions within ourselves.

Despite all this, I don't regret staying at home with my children. It is a choice I make every day. I see how well adjusted my children are -- stable and free of anxiety.  On the first day of preschool, my son cried all the way home because he wanted to stay in school longer.  And he told me that he didn't cry when I dropped him off because he knew I would come get him. That made me feel as if all that time hadn't been wasted, even though it didn't appease my sense of worthlessness. Not completely.

Tomorrow, I may choose differently.  I am waiting for my children to need me a little less, although I've heard from enough parents that that day may never come.  But I know that everyday, they do need me a little less because I can see the difference.  And perhaps, the time I'm spending with them now is an investment to help them become more secure and independent in the future.

In the meantime, I am also working on keeping my anxiety in check, while working on small ways to scrounge up some time for myself -- time I can use to read and write and nurture myself.  It'll be a while before I can get to the many things on the list of things I want to do for myself, but for now, just a few hours a week isn't bad.  I feel very lucky that we have the means to hire some regular help during the week. Maybe it's a good thing that I had children later in life so that I was able to have my 20s and early 30s to myself, even though a part of me wonders if I just got spoiled and too used to having so much time to myself.  Would I trade those days of freedom for these?  Not in a million years.

Must Read Article

"The Innocent Man" by Pamela Colloff in the November and December issues of Texas Monthly is simply amazing.  It is a heartbreaking story -- one that will keep you up at night.  I have such respect for the attorneys who worked on the exoneration case as well as Colloff for the excellent reporting.  An example of how meaningful the work of as an attorney or a journalist can be.

Dinner Time

I love watching my son eat.

Last night, it was just him and me at the dinner table.  Jeff left earlier for a trip to LA, and the baby went down for the night shortly before.  T is sick, so I let him nap much longer than usual to let his body do its thing.  I roused him from his sleep around 7:30 pm with a sippy cup of warm milk in hand, thinking that he should have something even if he had no appetite.  But he popped himself up, and said, "Yes, I want dinner!"

I brought him downstairs, sat him on his booster seat, and wrapped the owl bib around his neck.  He asked for the personal pan pizza that he didn't eat for lunch.  While a slice was heating in the toaster oven, I cut up a link of hot dog (microwaved) and poured out some frozen peas (still frozen, just the way he likes them).  Not a gourmet dinner, I know, but when my son is sick, I let him eat whatever he wants.  My goal is just to put some food in his little tummy.

When I laid the food in front of him, he picked up the pizza with both hands and clamped his little fingers around the crust, the same way he holds his harmonica.  The grease immediately oozed onto his fingernails, and little pockets of tomato sauce squeezed out through the cheese.  He brought the slice up to his puckered lips and took a big bite. And then another, and then a third.  He chewed open mouthed, showing little bits of masticated crust, mozzarella, and tomato sauce wedged between his gaping teeth.  His dimples moved up and down with the rhythm of his bites.

As he chewed, he scrutinized his slice of pizza, turning it this way and that.  It became a plane, then a spaceship, then a hot air balloon.  Then without a second thought, he dropped the slice down on his plate and started fingering the frozen peas.  Pop, pop, they went into his mouth.  

Between bites, little drops of three-year old thoughts fell out :

"Mama, I'm a little big boy!"

"I'm three years old, not four years old, just three years old!"

"Mama, can I get another lego set if I poo-poo in potty?"

After the peas, he grabbed the hot dog.  All four pieces at once.  He assembled them, saying "They were like this!  Mama, were they like that?" as he re-constructed the link that had been divided.  Then he rammed all four pieces into his mouth.  There they dangled, until I told him to take them out.

T dropped all of the pieces onto his plate, and then picked up just one piece once again.  He gripped the quartered link with all of his fingers, and started chewing on it as if he were gnawing on a piece of beef jerky.  He worked at it until the piece was done.  Then his greasy hands grabbed the sippy cup of warm milk, and he sipped and sipped and sipped until he was satisfied.

As he ate, I just watched him. Less than two feet away from his face. Openly gazed at him as he chewed, played with his food, sipped his milk. It was nothing unusual for him. To have his mommy stare at him as he chewed with his mouth open while we discussed numerous topics of conversation, from his birthday party in October to various offerings of lego sets to sounds made by cougars to his preschool friends.

By the time he was finished, he had a milk and tomato sauce moustache coated with cheese and hot dog grease.  Petite English peas covered the floor and the bottom of his booster seat.  The black table shined with the smear of food stains.  Drops of milk trailed from his cup to his plate to his bib.  And a little boy with a full belly was ready to play.

Holiday Cooking

When I was growing up, I always associated holidays with cooking.  Even when my parents were working 13 hour days, six days a week, my mom always took the time to cook a few special dishes for the holidays.

When my sister and I were in college, we would always go to my parents' dry cleaners on the day before the holiday, sometimes for the whole day but more often, just for the afternoon.  We would walk about 45 minutes from my parents' house to the LIRR station in Port Washington, and ride to Little Neck.  From the Little Neck station, we would either walk or my dad would come pick us up to take us to Mayflower Cleaners, located where Northern Boulevard meets Great Neck Boulevard.  There, we would help my parents finish up their labor for the day: handling customers as they came in, sorting the clothes, removing the lint from each of the items, bagging the clothes in plastic, putting them on the conveyor belt, restocking all the supplies for the next work day, vacuuming, and wiping down the counters.

As soon as it was closing time, we would hurry out of the store with my parents' black leather bag containing the day's earnings and their canvas bag of empty tupperwear lunch containers and a few apples.  My dad would lock the store door, pull once, then twice, then a third time to ensure that he had locked it properly.  We would then load the bags in the car while my mom re-checked the door to ensure that my dad had checked it properly.  And then once again just in case.  After my dad had loaded the car, he would return to the door to make sure that it had been thoroughly locked, and my mom would say, "Oh, for goodness sakes, enough, enough.  You'll break it already!"

Once in the Mercury Sable, my dad would adjust the old sofa cushion on his back, which he had put in place after the seat electrical adjustor broke.  My mom would ask him whether he had put the black leather bag in the back seat, and my sister and I would pipe up that the bag was right there next to our feet.  She would then remind us to give it to Dad before we went into the grocery store.

From there, we would drive to the Korean grocery on Northern Boulevard in Flushing.  Even if we arrived close to 8pm, the parking lot would be packed with people thronging everywhere.   My dad waited in the locked car with the black leather bag under his seat, while my sister, my mother, and I went to shop.  I usually pushed the cart while my mom and sister went ahead, picking out items we needed.  We went through every aisle methodically, with my mom clutching her grocery list compiled on dry cleaner slips held together by a safety pin.  We usually left the store with bags of groceries and a small package of prepared foods, like fried calamari, kim bap, soon dae, or mandoo.  We often arrived home one package lighter.

The next morning, my mom would wake up around 5am to start preparing.  By the time my sister and I woke up, around 6:30 or so, she would be ready to direct.  Chop these, wash those, pan fry these.  We would cook, as we gabbed about this or that.  Whatever we wanted to discuss.  School.  Our friends.  Books we had read.  Movies we had watched.  Things we had seen in school.  Our relatives in Korea.  With my mom standing at the sink, washing some vegetable or another.  My sister standing in front of the stove with a spatula in hand, pan frying some dish.  Me sitting at the table chopping.  Talking made easier because it was centered around an activity.

Hours would pass like this.  We would eat breakfast, fruits, and samples as we cooked, and take out little plates for our dad sitting in the living room behind his newspaper.  We would often finish by the middle of the day, and we would then take a break to watch some melodrama on TV chosen by our mom.

After, we would sit down to eat what we had cooked.  More than enough for a few meals.  A bounty we had come to expect on occasions like these.  A day to feed ourselves after working, working, and working some more.  A day to remind ourselves that we may not be able to eat like this in Korea, even if we had more money.  A day to remember the justification for why my parents worked as they did.  A day to engage in one of the few family activities that we had.

These days, I no longer cook with my sister and my mom.  My sister has estranged me and we no longer talk.  The last meal we shared together was in 2006 at a restaurant that has since gone out of business on Valencia near 24th in San Francisco.  We had sat across the table from each other, failing to understand each other.  My mother visits from New York once in a while, and we sometimes cook together, but not very often.  Nowadays, her cooking is hurried, impatient, and sometimes begrudging.

For the holidays, I make plans to cook.  I pour over my cookbooks, make my lists, shop in advance.  But my children are too young to cook with me and too small to eat much more than a few spoonfuls.  My husband sees little point in cooking and asks if we really need to bother.  My in-laws, who live nearby and are invited for every major holiday, eat like birds and have no inclination to humor the cook.  "No, I don't eat that" is not an uncommon response when I hold a dish out to them.  When I try to send them home with something I made for them, my father-in-law says, "I don't need your mercy food."

But yesterday, I cooked.  I decided to cook for me.  Just because.  Just because I once found pleasure in it.  Just because I want to be the kind of mom who knows how to feed her family.  Just because I have hopes of being able to nourish myself, even if others do not join.  Just because I don't want to give in to the past and give up on the future.

So I turned on some music as I patted the turkey dry.  I rubbed it with herb butter that I had prepared the night before.  I filled its cavities with onions, carrots, and celery.  I soaked a cheesecloth with chicken stock and covered the bird, and repeated the process every half hour for the next five hours.  I then prepared the stuffing, first cooking the bacon, and then mixing it with chestnuts, onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, bread crumbs, chicken stock, and milk.  After, I cooked the candied sweet potatoes and heated the cranberry-ginger chutney that I had prepared the night before.

I didin't talk much as I cooked, although I sang along to the Beatles.  Just a few feet away, my husband played with the kids, and the house felt nice and toasty from the oven.  The turkey balloon bopped in the middle of the room.  The flower cornucopia adorned the table.  And I remembered to be thankful, even as I remembered all that was gone.    

The Search for Back Up Parents

Nothing has brought me closer to death than giving birth.

Before I had my son, I thought about death, but only occasionally, the way I assume most others do.  It was there in the abstract, off in the distance, never threatening, never looming.  Like a distant cousin, it reminded me of its existence every once in a while, when I happened to pass an accident on the freeway or read a novel with tragic ending, which in turn reminded me to live more purposefully, meaningfully.  But apart from its occasional pep talk, it had little to do with me.

Back then, I didn't fear death.  If anything, I felt cavalier.  So what, I remember saying.  What do I have to lose?  My life was my own, and I was beholden to no one.  If something were to happen to me, a few others may be sad or even devastated, but I didn't own their grief.  I was the only one who could potentially suffer, but not really because wouldn't I be dead after all?  Just make it quick and don't let me suffer too much, was my canned retort.

This cavalier attitude started to change when I became pregnant.  I'm not sure if it was the hormones or just the change in circumstances, but suddenly, the threat of death seemed to be everywhere.  And it seemed so real, so possible.  I could slip down the stairs.  Jeff's car could be side-wiped by any of the crazy aggressive drivers out here.  My toddler son could fall off of a jungle gym.  My baby could chock on a piece of carrot.  My brain seemed to have entered a heightened state, and my eyes were suddenly opened to the many colorful ways in which one could die.  Throughout the day, a million different scenarios of death danced in my head.

I became hyper-aware of all that I had to lose.  And I couldn't stop thinking that our babies were wholly dependent on me and Jeff.  Wholly.  What if something happened to us?  How could they survive?  Who would take care of them?  If I could, I would have hid in a cave like Gollum, protecting my precious from all the harm that could befall us.  But we don't own a cave.  All we have is a rental house in La Jolla.  And locking oneself in a house with a toddler and a baby is not a good strategy, especially less than half a mile from the beach.  Besides, staying at home is no guarantee of safety.  I kept imagining myself accidentally skewering myself on one of Jeff's many tools in the garage while at home with the kids alone.  Would my son know how to undo the safety latch on the pantry to at least open a can of spam and a box of Fruitables until he was found?    

So Jeff and I came up with our next best strategy.  We decided to finalize our trust papers and set up back-up guardians in case something happened to us.  We didn't understand the complexity of this task -- or the difficulty of identifying a suitable person -- until we started talking through it.

I think I had just assumed that my children would be raised by someone in our extended family if something were to happen.  I secretly preferred someone on my side of the family because I feared that my children would otherwise lose any understanding of my personal history as an immigrant and a Korean-American.  Besides, Jeff's parents are quite old and would his unmarried brother really want to become a parent overnight when he has never changed a single diaper (that is, if you don't count his dog's)?

The only problem with selecting someone from my family is that there is no one in my family whom I would entrust to raise my children.  The best candidates would be my parents, except that they are old.  And now that I was squarely facing the question, I wondered how my children would fare with my parents who, even after four decades in the US, still have trouble communicating with non-Koreans and lack exposure to wide swaths of American life.  Did I really want my children to be bogged down by the same cross cultural issues that I had growing up?

As for my siblings, my relationship with them is essentially nonexistent.  My sister and I used to be close, but about five years ago, over some issues that I still do not understand, she cut me off, and we haven't talked since.  My brother is married with kids, but we never really understood each other growing up and have made little effort to stay in touch as adults, except for the occasional gift exchange or gathering at my parents'.  Apart from my nuclear family, we have no other relatives in the US, except for one of my dad's cousins, whom I've met only a few times.

Taking stock of one's family in this fashion is an eye opening exercise.  It's unsettling to assess your family through a utilitarian lens, but after I did, I felt a disappointment creep in.  Perhaps it has something to do with my history of having grown up as an immigrant, where our nuclear family was alone in this country for so long, where we were repeatedly told that we had no one but each other in times of trouble.  Or a result of living in a country unfamiliar to my parents, where the role of the parents and dependents were inverted at times, and the assimilated children sometimes took the leading role in navigating this foreign land.  But the thought that I couldn't turn to anyone in my family on a matter as important as this made me feel angry.  My family felt defective -- as if we've failed in one of the basic functions that a family should be and do for each other.  Yet again, we couldn't be the kind of family I wanted us to be.

Obviously, it takes two to have a bad (or a non-existent) relationship, and it is unfair for me to put the blame squarely on them.  After the anger subsided, I felt sad, as I often have in the past, about the failed relationships in our family.  It pains me that my sister has never met my children.  And my brother and his family have met my three year old son once and never met my 11 months old daughter.  For some reason, we failed to weather life's stresses together, perhaps because there were too many or because we lacked the skills to manage them.  But whatever the cause, we were now drifting in separate directions, without the means to reach out and tie our rafts together.

I had been raised with traditional Korean values.  Growing up, there seemed to be an invisible ring around our family, separating those in the family from others.  Friends, no matter how close, were not family and would never be.  Blood was holy, and we were never to elevate outsiders above family.  But in this process of choosing a guardian for my children, I seem to have no choice but to look to outsiders.  That has been a giant mental hurdle for me, and a part of me feels reluctant to accept it, even though it is obvious that I have no choice.

It's sad to think that my original family could be erased from my children's lives.  The relationships are so tenuous now;  how much more attenuated would they be if I were no longer in the picture?  Would my East Coast parents visit more than sporadically, and how would they deal with the logistics once my children were living with another family?  Would my children even realize that they have an uncle and an aunt on my side of the family and that they have cousins?  Who would tell them that their history wasn't always of this country, that they could stake claim to another land, another people?  These questions give me a headache, and the answers seem obvious -- and painful.

The irony in all this is that we have incredible friends.  Friends who would eagerly step in and help out.  Friends who would treat our children as their own.  Friends who pamper our children the way my own brother and sister have not.

So when Jeff and I sat down to select a guardian for our son, we started by ruling out my family.  It is a hypothetical situation, and yet, it feels so final, so determinative.  But you can't plan your children's future on some far-fetched hope of reconciliation.  And that seems to be enough of a bridge for me to make my mental leap.

After we closed the door to my family, we opened the door to our friends.  There, on the perch, we scanned the crowd and started to sort.  First, we ruled out all of our single friends because we were worried that they may no longer be able to commit once a new spouse entered the picture.  Then we ruled out our friends who chose not to have children because we didn't want to impose a different lifestyle on them than they had chosen for themselves.  Also, now that we were parents, we understood how radically one's life changes with children, how so much is centered around them.  And we wondered if our friends without children could understand how much they were agreeing to give up even if they graciously agreed out of the goodness of their hearts.

After that initial sorting, we did a little more fine tuning.  So and so may not work out because they don't want more than one kid.  So and so may not be good because he has a medical condition and we shouldn't add more stresses on their lives.  So and so may not want to because aren't they already overwhelmed with four kids of their own?

Then, Jeff and I talked about our remaining friends individually and made a mental list of several friends who fit the bill.  As we discussed then one by one, we found ourselves saying things like, "Oh, yeah, so and so would be great.  They are such good parents." or "Oh, I bet they would do it.  Such good people.  And I know they would take good care of them." After we had gone through our friends in such manner, we had several candidates.  Among them, we selected one couple simply because we like them so much -- and because they are incredible parents to their two children.

When we next met with them, we popped the question.  When we asked, I found myself scrutinizing their facial expressions to see if they were really saying "yes," or just saying "yes" because they felt they couldn't say "no."  But the minute we asked, they said, "Of course!"  And followed with, "I can't believe you even asked us.  It would be such an honor!"  Their response warmed my heart, and I couldn't believe that they were so enthusiastic in their response.  We asked them to think about it for a couple of days, and they said, "We don't have to think about it.  The answer is still yes."

Later, I followed up with an email to them and let them know that if anything should happen, they would of course get all of our assets to pay for the expense of raising our children.  And they responded that they would do it even without the assets.

A couple of years later, when I became pregnant with my second child, we asked them the question again to see if they would agree to be guardians for our second child as well.  And again, their response was an enthusiastic "yes!".

We recently spent a week visiting them in the Bay Area.  They moved their son into his sister's room for the week so that our son could use his bed.  They fed us breakfast every morning, and incorporated our son into their own children's routine, including sharing a cup of homemade smoothie every morning and taking a bath together in their big tub at the end of the day.  When the week was over, my son whined that he didn't want to go home.  He wanted to play longer at M and K's house.

As we drove away, Jeff and I talked about what good parents they are.  Ridiculously well organized and diligent, they are one of the few couples we know who make us feel like total slackers.  How fortunate we are to be friends with such generous souls.

They aren't blood kin.  They aren't even Korean.  But they are willing to stretch themselves to make room for our children in their home and their hearts.  Knowing that makes a little bit of that fear inside me subside.  And makes me want to return the favor to some other parent reluctant to burrow in a cave.  

Our Little Baby Girl

Just a Headache

It is the middle of the night.  Not sure when.  Maybe around 3 or 4 in the morning. One of those visits home during a break from college.  I wake to the sound of wailing -- of crying and screaming -- a mix of all those.  I throw off my comforter and jump out of bed, open the door, out to the living room, where I see my mother crouched on the sofa in front of the window, rumpled in her pajamas, her hands covering her head.  The wailing, crying, screaming streaming out of her.  Tears falling out of her eyes.  In pain, she is in pain.  She is wailing, crying, screaming in pain.  What, what's going on, what's wrong?  I ask as I approach.  My father and brother, still in their pajamas, stand by the side of the TV as she sits alone.

Her head hurts, my dad says.  It's okay.  Go back to sleep.

Mom, what's wrong?  Are you okay?  Where does it hurt?

As I approach, she flinches, as if afraid to be touched.  She continues to wail, cry, scream.  She does not answer.  Cries and cries.  More tears dropping out of her now closed eyes.  Her arms wrapped around her head.  Crouched on the sofa, her feet bare.  Rocking like a caged monkey.

I step back, afraid to cause her more pain.

Go back to sleep, my dad repeats.  She'll be okay.

Okay?  What do you mean she'll be okay?  She's not okay.  Look at her.  How long has she been crying like this?

Not too long.  It'll go away.  Don't worry.

My father and brother continue to stand there.  She'll be okay, they repeat.  They do not budge.  Just stand there as if they are waiting for their sandwiches at the deli.

Throughout, my mother is wailing, crying, screaming.  Face scrunched, mouth open, tears dropping.  Gripping her head, her arms a vise.

The sound of her pain fills the room.  It is a maddening sound.  I am trapped in her cry, a cry I cannot stop.      

Dad, we have to take her to the hospital.  Something is wrong.  We have to get it checked out.  Let's go.

Just go to sleep, my father says again.  It's just a headache.  Go back to sleep.

I look at him, my eyes widening.  What do you mean it's just a headache.  Do you hear her crying?  It could be something really bad.  Why are you just standing there?  Let's go to the hospital.  Let's go.  Why are you just standing there?  Mom, let's go.  We have to go to the hospital.

My father and brother continue to stand there.  Shoulders drooping.  Expressionless.

I'm screaming.  Do you hear me?  Get the keys.  Let's get in the car.  We have to go to the hospital.  LET'S GO.  LET'S GO.  Why are we just standing here??  LET'S GO.  I'll drive her.  I'll drive her myself.  Give me the keys.  Where are they?  I'll call an ambulance.  I'll pay for it.  How much can it cost to get this checked out?  We have to take her to the hospital.

They are silent, my father and brother.

And I'm screaming and crying.  Tears dropping down my face.  Me clutching my head whirling in the madness of it all.  LET'S GO.  LET'S GO.  WE HAVE TO TAKE HER TO THE HOSPITAL.  Mom, let's go.  Let's get in the car.  LET'S GO.

And as I'm screaming, crying, and wailing, my mother looks up and pauses long enough to whisper, "It's okay.  Go to sleep.  It's just a headache."

On Anger

I've never seen myself as an angry person.  In fact, I thought of myself as the opposite -- even keeled, controlled, cool headed.  I don't know if it's still the hormones or this role of being a parent, but I find myself on the edge of anger more often than I had ever been before.  The kind of anger where I clench my teeth and claw my hands.  Where I contain the urge to bash my fist into the wall.

The odd thing is I don't know where it comes from -- this anger.  Stupid little things set it off.  Seeing a stray piece of the dog's fur on my baby's mouth.  Coming back to the car and finding the adjacent car parked so closely that I can't fit in my baby's car seat.  Discovering that my three year old had again rolled and run around in his poopy diaper, so much so that the poop had oozed through the elastic and caked around his little thighs.

In those moments, I literally seethe.  Throw my arms in the air.  And clench my fist.  And release a little Argh.  Or even a God damn it!  Even in front of my three year old who is sure to repeat it with his next breath.

It is easy to forget the anger.  To pretend it hadn't overcome me as it had.  To find my voice of reason and later retell the event to a friend or to Jeff as if it were some humorous or notable episode.  To see it as just a fleeting scene that leaves no mark.

But it isn't quite so easy.  The other day, I saw my three year old -- after I had refused his request for some sugary snack -- throw his hands up in the air, as I sometimes have, and scream out Argh!  They are little video cameras, these little people.  But it's not only their witnessing.  It is also that they can sometimes be the object of my anger.  When I berate a three year old for again failing to announce that he had pooped, how does that information process in his brain?  In my reasonable brain, I know that he is three.  But in my anger, I rail about the conversation we previously had -- about how he should poop in the potty, how he should tell me when he poops, how he should know better -- expecting him to know better than a three year old could.

Everyone experiences anger, I know that.  And it can be a useful emotion -- one that alerts you and others of the gravity of the situation at hand, one that signals that you mean business.  An emotion that can be a crutch for when other emotions seem overpowering.  But what worries me is that my anger arises over such trivial matters.  That my emotions seem out of proportion to the situation at hand.  And it makes me suspect that the anger arises from something other than the immediate situation.  I'm sure if I read some books on the subject, I could educate myself on this subject.  (And if anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to read some.)

It makes me wonder what junk resides in the well of my mind that it should so overpower me.  I've been thinking for a few days that I should just write about every past incident that made me angry -- I mean, really angry -- or upset in the past.  Maybe that's one way to exorcise some of these demons.  I've heard that re-living an emotionally gripping episode from one's past can often take away the power of those events.  So I'm going to try to do that -- find some time to write about those unhappy incidents in my past.  If this blog seems skewed in portraying an angry Asian girl, that's what's going on.

Studying Again

I'm starting to study for the GREs!  In someways, it feels silly to be preparing to go back to school at my age, but in another way, it feels liberating.  I think I decided more than a year ago that I am quitting the practice of law, but I have yet to file for inactive status with the California State Bar.  I have thought about doing the paperwork, but for some reason, I am hesitant to do it.  Maybe because it feels so permanent?   But when I think about studying something else and going back to school to do it, I get so excited!  I am thinking of going for a masters in psychology, as I wrote a while back.  Since I wrote about it back then, I have done really nothing about it.  But I am finally getting to a point where I feel comfortable entrusting my little baby with a baby sitter.  So today, we had a baby sitter come and play with little S while I cracked open my GRE prep book as I paddled away on our elliptical.  I started with the vocabulary section because that is the one section I feel comfortable with.  It is the last section that I need to study, but I am too intimidated to look at the math section.  I don't know how I am going to re-learn all that I need to in order to take a standardized test!  Maybe I have to take some prep course.  Or teach myself on Kahn Academy.  But either way, I am going to ace this damn thing and put myself on the right career path once and for all.   

Vertical Time

For the first time today, the house is silent -- except for the occasional soft purring from my 8 week old who sleeps a few feet away from me. My two year old is nowhere to be heard, at least until he wakes and charges into another day with his shouts, giggles, and stomps.

I wonder how best to use my undisturbed time. Exercising is at the top of my list, especially since I need to lose 30 pounds of this pregnancy fat. until I feel waves of drowsiness from my limited sleep last night. Then sleep seems the next best choice, but I don't want to squander my minutes of freedom. My pile of unopened New Yorkers seems tempting, but then I remember my blog -- and how I've neglected it. And missed it.

I've missed writing. And reading. And talking in more than short spurts between chasing a 2 year old around the house and tending to my newborn. In general, functioning like the kind of grown up I was in my 20s and early 30s.

As much as I love my children, I sometimes miss those days. When I could read a book or a magazine and work out and enjoy a cup of coffee in uninterrupted sips and get a good night's sleep -- all within 24 hours. But most of all, I miss connecting with people on a certain level, which is what writing allows for me -- and having long engaging conversations in a coffee shop -- the kind I indulged in as a college student. Talking and thinking about the grandiose subject of life and how best to live it. I get it in short spurts these days. Or if I do have a conversation, it is about how to potty train or deal with tamper tantrums.

I then vow to figure out a way to make more time for it -- and for me. I think about how best to squeeze it in before my head plunges into the pillow, heavy with all the frenzies of the day. Or to maximize the time during my toddler's nap to have more me-time. How to free myself from the array of menial tasks that dominate my day. How to fit everything in when there are only so many hours available. It's like trying to beat time at its own game. But I usually nod off before I can even formulate any cogent thought.

I then remember my husband's suggestion that life can be segmented vertically. That I don't have to try to fit all in one time frame. I don't have to learn to manage a newborn with a toddler, start a new career, catch up on all of the world's events, learn to cook, and figure out my retirement plan all at once. Or at least not two months after popping out a second kid. I can hold off on starting the new career for another year -- or five. And work on all the self improvement issues that have been on my list for the past decade or two.

I can't help but wonder if I've already used up the time to indulge on myself -- and to ponder life's big questions. That my 20s and early 30s were the times to do that -- and I am now passing through the time to live out the life that I was supposed to have figured out. I hope not.

When I was pregnant with my first child, a friend advised that the easiest way to be a mother is to give in to the demands of motherhood. That motherhood is so overwhelming that we should give in rather than fighting it. I now see the wisdom of that. To submit to the demands of the day -- at least for the time being -- and not to try to do more than that. To be easy on myself. To give myself the permission to be less ambitious.

The thing to remember is that this is only for a limited amount of time. In just a few years, my little ones will soon be off in school. They will no longer need me in the same way, and I can have back some of the freedom - or burden - of focusing on myself.

I imagine that in my old age, I'll probably look back on these days and think of the afternoons when I held my baby and nuzzled her. When I marveled at the string of words coming out of my little boy's mouth. When I was allowed the time to indulge in my children -- and they were there to be indulged in.

There is a lesson to be learned about the trite maxim of living in the moment. It is a lesson I have yet to learn. But maybe this little break from the day was what I needed to be reminded of all that I have left to learn.

In the meantime, I'm just going to try to refrain from wanting too much. At least for now.

Update

The latest in my life:



A bundle of sweetness.

I've been spending all of my time tending to the little ones. And once in a while, I wonder what I did before their arrival.

NY TImes Article (Notes From a Dragon Mom)

This has to be one of the most moving (and sad) articles I've read in a long time.

Two Years Later...

Earlier this month, we celebrated our little guy's 2d birthday. Hard to believe it's been two years already!

On the Shame of Blogging

A year ago, one evening in July, I received a call from my mother around 9pm PST. She lives on the East Coast, so it was around midnight her time. I picked up the phone, alarmed that something could have happened to her or my father who live alone in a closed-blind suburb of New York.

"Mom, is everything ok?" I asked as soon as I answered.

"Are you writing about our family in a blog?" she asked.

I was too stunned to respond. I had been keeping a blog for the past few years, and I had written liberally about our family. But I had not told any members of my family about it.

"Why are you writing about our family?" she continued. "And why are you doing it in your name? Other people blog anonymously. Why do you have to put your full name on your blog?"

I wondered how she found out about my blog. My mother had recently started to use the computer, mainly to watch Korean dramas on the internet. And as far as I knew, she did not know how to run searches. She navigated between the sites she frequented by going to her favorite links, which had been set up for her by my brother.

"What if someone reads it? Why did you write about your sister-in-law? What if your niece reads it? What are we going to do? How can you do this?"

I had written about my sister-in-law in one of my earlier posts as well as other members of my family. But nothing all too horrible, I thought, nothing to be ashamed about. And in my posts, I thought I had written with some respect for their perspectives and some understanding of their experiences. And then I wondered how she read all these posts - and if she even understood them. Her commands of written English was limited and I've never seen her read anything more than a few words. I had previously shown her my articles published in magazines, and she never even tried to read them.

The phone call ended badly, with me trying to defend my blog and her crying that I was bringing shame onto the family.

The following day, I shut down my blog that had been maintained under my name, moved it to a new site, and started posting anonymously. I didn't know what to do about my Kimchi Mamas posts, since I had been posting under my own name and the site even included a bio along with my photo. I didn't know what to do.

It wasn't that I thought my mother was right. I didn't. I didn't believe that she had done justice to my posts because if she had read them, she would have reacted with a little more understanding than having a knee jerk reaction as she did. And I didn't share her sense of shame, her worries of social stigma. What was shameful to her seemed to be simply a fact of life to me, something worth discussing.

But a part of me wondered if she had a point because I had written about her -- and others in our family without their permission, including conversations they obviously assumed would be private. And I was also a solicitous child, eager to please and to be approved by them. I rarely did anything that merited serious disapproval, and did not know how to handle this rebuke.

So for the following year or so, I stopped writing publicly.

For as long as I remember, as we were growing up, our actions were always controlled by threats of disapproval and shame. What we did could bring shame on our family, and it was our obligation to avoid that at all cost. We lived alone in the US, with no relatives. There were very few people here who knew what we did, or much less even cared enough for us to have felt shame in their eyes. But my parents always reminded us of our relatives back in Korea, those grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, who heard news of our welfare. And it was always they whose eyes reached more than 6500 miles across the sea to our dingy apartment in the US and scrutinized our report cards, our reward certificates at the end of the year, news of our college acceptance, our career choices, and marriage prospects.

Over the years, as our grandparents passed away and our uncles and aunts slowly faded one by one, I have to admit that I felt a slight sense of relief. Those people we hardly knew could no longer have a say in what or how we did. They could no longer look down on my parents and pity them for their children who failed to live up to expectations.

But after my call with my mom, I realized that she did not live in such a world. For her, the world was always full of disapproving eyes, and lurking around her were new candidates, like my niece, who could bear witness to her shame. According to her, our lives had to be kept secret, lest anyone find out the truth about the way we lived, and the information to be released publicly had to be managed, just the way politicians doled out massaged truth for public consumption.

I feel relieved that I do not live in such a socially restricted world. Maybe the system works in Korea, where people understand each others' hardships and can relate to each other, even without having to verbalize them. But that has not been my experience here. Our lives as immigrants in the US has been full of difficulties and heartaches, and I found that many do not understand what we experienced unless I tell them. Once in college, I wrote an essay about our family's immigration experience, and one non-Korean reader came up to me and said that she believed it "had to be true" because it was written so earnestly. I was stunned that she could have believed that it may not have been true. And her reaction made me feel even lonelier than I had ever felt before.

And when I think about that feeling of loneliness, I realize that I should write about my experiences. That we all should. And we should share our stories because without them, we are lost in our own little bubbles, floating aimlessly without perspective and with less understanding. So I post here once again, and look forward to the day when my children are old enough to read what I have written so that they too can understand a little more, care a little more.

Matters of Approval

When we were growing up, there was usually a right and a wrong answer for almost everything. What is the proper way to read? Sitting upright with the book held at eye level approximately 1.5 feet away. What is the right way to sit? Never with your back hunched over. What is the right amount of rice to serve? Always more than just one scoop. What is the amount of food properly left behind on one's plate? Certainly never just a morsel or a spoonful.

These answers, fed to us in bite-sized aphorisms, ranged from the mundane to the weighty. For some of the more serious issues, the questions were never posed because the right answers were presumed to be understood. For example, our parents never asked us, What kind of a person would you like to marry? They never asked, Do you wish to marry a white person? What about someone of Hispanic background? Or someone black? We understood that we were to marry a Korean.

I'm not sure how we first came to that understanding. Maybe the time when my father consoled his friend whose daughter was dating an Indian. My dad's friend muttered, "An Indian," as he spit on the ground. Or the time I told my mom that my Korean-American friend was married to a Japanese woman, and she exclaimed, "How could he do that to his parents!" I have a vague recollection of my parents taking us aside after these incidents and explaining how Koreans should be married to Koreans.

Later, my mother clarified that a Korean-American -- as opposed to a Korean who grew up in Korea -- would be better for me since I was so head-strong. A couple of years after I started working, she further clarified that he should earn as much as I did -- and have an advanced degree as I did, lest he be humiliated in the eyes of his wife.

We painfully learned the consequences of making the wrong choices. Like the time my brother brought home a wrong girlfriend. She seemed right at first. She was Korean-American from a decent enough family. Seemingly polite enough. But for some unspoken reason, my dad decided that she was not right. Not right for our household, even if my brother had apparently decided that she was right for him and I silently thought she was good for him in many ways. But my father felt otherwise. When she came over, my father refused to acknowledge her, even when she greeted him politely and did all the proper things. Sadly, she did not last long.

This process of making decisions by viewing all variables through the disapproving eyes of our parents wasn't limited to just dating. It dominated almost all decisions in our lives, including school selection, our career choices, where to live. When I was applying to colleges, there were only a handful of colleges that were acceptable to my parents. A wide assortment of Yale, Harvard, or Columbia. That was about it. Maybe they would have been okay with Princeton. When I did not get accepted into any of those, my father insisted that I would have to attend a state school, even though I had been accepted into the University of Chicago, my first choice. It became an uphill battle to try to convince my father -- and perhaps myself -- that I wasn't a complete failure because I had not been accepted into those three or four schools deemed acceptable in his eyes.

Most decisions in our lives seemed to be a matter of approval or disapproval. Either our actions pleased our parents or they did not. As children, I don't think we ever stopped to consider the difference between our actions and our being -- or the difference between approval and love. When they approved of something we did, we beamed in their eyes and felt loved. When they disapproved, we felt spurned and rejected.

I've discussed the notion of unconditional love with some of my Korean-American friends, and we often conclude that we do not believe in such a concept. Maybe because we grew up in households where love was never verbalized. Where the only semblance of love was approval, which peaked and waned with the choices we made.

Focusing so much on my parents' approval often cast a shadow over other factors that we should have considered, either more carefully or in their own light. Most decisions became for or against them -- but we rarely considered the question of were they right for us? Maybe we did ask those questions, but often they were so cluttered with worries and anxieties about our parents' reaction that I wonder if they ever got the attention they deserved.

I think my parents must have grown up in a time and a culture where children did not make decisions. At least not to the degree children do here. I remember my mother once marveling over how American parents stop to ask even toddlers their preferences on things, including what they want to eat or where they want to sit. She rued that she had not done so with us -- that she had always simply told us what to do and how to do it.

I sometimes wonder about this part of my upbringing. Even now, I often find it difficult to make decisions. And the decision making process becomes easier when I have an opposing force -- that kicks me into an emotional and reactive mode. I have been trying to think of ways to extricate myself from this overdeveloped need to gain approval -- or to fight against disapproval. To be a person with more integrity to keep her in balance.

And I think about ways in which I raise my son -- to allow him to be his own person without needing to meet my approval at every turn. To help him to develop the skills to assess and meet his own needs -- without feeling crippled by the needs of others. And to fortify him with the assurance that he stands on solid ground even when we disapprove -- that our love does not peak and wane with the school he attends or the girl he chooses to date.

For my part, I intend to speak clearly when I speak of love -- and softly and sparingly when I disapprove, if I have to disapprove at all.

Wasting time

A few months ago, I transferred my cases to a trial lawyer -- a real trial lawyer, with more than 175 trials under his belt, not a glorified paper pusher like me (and most big law firm partners I worked with over the years).

The transfer came after weeks of overwhelming stress. We have a nanny who comes about 20 hours a week, and I easily had enough work to fill up 40. As a result, Jeff and I had been - for a series of weekends - negotiating how to split the weekends so that we could each get done all that we needed to. The first weekend of February, I worked most of Saturday, and Jeff had most of Sunday, even though we took a break in the middle to go out for lunch and a stroll -- to celebrate my birthday. When he asked me how I wanted to celebrate, my response was, "I really don't have the time to celebrate right now."

I had days when I was so overwhelmed with work that I couldn't work. I never had those before. I would sit down in the front of the computer and my mind would be reeling with the list of tasks in front of me. Unable to focus. Touching this paper and that, piling them up, and then reshuffling them again. When I worked at firms, I remember having a lot to do at times, but I never shut down with stress. A partner once commented what a cool cucumber I was under pressure, and that's how I remember myself. I don't know when she wilted.

Ever since I handed off my cases, I've had the luxury of having free time. Little T goes down for his nap around 2pm these days -- and happily snoozes until 6pm. Four whopping hours. Along with the luxury of free time has come the luxury of wasting them. After I've picked up his toys, thrown the clothes in the laundry, folded the ones in the drier, and filled the dishwasher, I look for other tasks to keep me busy. On some days, I read a book from cover to end in one sitting. On others, I watch a movie - and then immediately start another. There are days when I surf the net and then stare out the window.

Why haven't I been writing more? Well, the last couple of months, I've been blissfully napping. Overtaken by overwhelming drowsiness that comes with pregnancy. I'm about to start my 20th week of pregnancy -- and so thrilled with the news that this one is a girl. The last three pregnancies, including two miscarriages, have all been boys, and I assumed that we were only capable of making little men. I was almost ready to tuck away my dream of shopping for little dresses, adorning a little one with frilly hats, and making time for girl to girl talks. It never felt so much better to have beaten the odds.

The Short Visit

We returned late Wednesday night, or rather early Thursday morning, from a 15 hour visit to San Francisco. The visit was wedged between two 9+ hours of driving - from San Diego and back. It was meant to be a normal visit - a 1.5 hour flight in the morning and a 1.5 hour return that night with a short deposition in the middle of the day. That is until Jeff found out that he had to be in the Bay Area as well on the same day for his work. We realized it was more complicated when I remembered that I had to be in Los Angeles the day before, and we couldn't figure out how I could be back in San Diego in time for Jeff to make the last flight out of San Diego (a woefully early flight of 6:50 p.m.). We have a part time nanny, but she goes to school in the evenings, and we are not together enough to have lined up a back-up babysitter for such emergency situations. Hence this brilliant idea of driving 18 hours in a 34 hour span.

So on Tuesday morning, I boarded Amtrak's Surfliner for Los Angeles at 6:45 a.m. with my suitcase of exhibits for my deposition. That afternoon, at approximately 3:00 p.m., as I bombarded my witness with my endless list of tedious questions, Jeff left San Diego to pick me up in LA with our little guy strapped in his carseat in the back. After wading through LA traffic, he found me waiting at a Starbucks after my depo. I greeted him with a big cup of coffee for his driving, and we continued to drive and drive and drive -- with a quick stop at In-n-Out after the Grapevine -- until we found ourselves in our familiar terrain, our home that no longer was home. But it still felt like home, even the East Bay, where we had hardly spent any time except to visit our close friends and for the occasional visit to Ikea -- but the signs leading to Berkeley, the lights on the Bay Bridge, and even the potholes on the roads felt like they were mine in some way.

When we checked in at the Hyatt Regency at 1:00 a.m., the guy asked if we needed directions around the city. Oh, no, we said. We used to live here - until we moved away four months ago. He, a native of some unmemorable state like Arkansas or Idaho, raved about the Chinese food in San Francisco. And suddenly, I couldn't stop thinking about the Chinese food in San Francisco.

I stayed up to finish preparing for my next deposition and made the mistake of sitting in front of a mirror with lighting that worked far too well. I noticed all my gray strands as I sat typing in my questions -- and vanity required that I spend at least 30 minutes at 3 in the morning pulling out all my unwanted signs of aging.

At 7:00 a.m., Jeff left for his meeting in Silicon Valley. After showering and getting dressed, I hung out with little T at Starbuck's across the street where I had spent many mornings before work in my days before little T. As we sat there, me in my suit and he in his stroller, he munching on a blueberry scone, me sipping my grande latte, I felt conspicuous -- a mom with a baby in the midst of all those careerists.

Suddenly, I thought of all my friends who must be on their way to work at that very moment and perhaps even passing the very Starbuck's we were sitting in. I regretted the short visit and wished we had set aside some time to see our dear friends that we missed. I impulsively left messages with a few who worked within a 2 block radius, knowing how busy they must be and knowing they would not likely be able to see us on such short notice. At 8:25, we rushed back to the hotel room when little T pooped and waited for my friend who had agreed to watch him while I took the deposition.

At around 9am, as I tried to finish preparing for the deposition, I was surprised by an email from one of the friends I had pinged, and half an hour later, she was knocking on the hotel room door. These visits after a long stretch are never as satisfying as they are meant to be because there is never enough time to say all that you wanted to say or to give as firm as hug as you meant to give. But they are good enough placeholders for the next visit, the next hug.

Seven hours later, after the deposition, after the other meetings, and after talking on the phone with friends who were sick with a cold or couldn't make it to the city that day, we packed our stuff back into the car and started the drive out of SF. It was a mad rush to beat the rush hour traffic, to be ahead of the onslaught of cars pouring out of the feeder ramps. And that was our focus until we were well past Livermore, and miles away from our old home and the friends we didn't get a chance to see.