that day we painted four years ago

It was a few weeks after my friends bought a house and invited me and my roommate to live with them. We were all getting ready to move in - packing and gradually moving into the house that was only a few blocks from our respective apartments. I drove home early on a Saturday morning from the Rose Bowl after my running plans were thwarted by UCLA football and discovered that new plans had been made for me: we were going to paint.

That was more than four years ago, and now I realize that day was symbolic, and also indicative. We piled in the car for Home Depot, made our paint choices on the fly, bought our supplies, and were taping up the rooms before lunch. None of us had ever really painted before. Our choice of white to freshen up the trimming clashed with the white of the plantation shutters. I don't remember eating lunch, and at around 7 that evening we piled back into the car for our favorite Vietnamese restaurant (cheap, quick and filling).

The next day, we came home from church and worked on the trim. We finished later that evening and celebrated with bottles of Coronas - clearing the cluttered dining room table and surrounded by brown boxes filled with our belongings. The paint fumes, the delirium from spending all weekend inside together, the alcohol - whatever it was, we laughed hard that night. And I envisioned something good for us together.

The next four years was filled with much of the same. For me, it was often about giving up my hard-fought independence, learning to be flexible and enjoying the spontaneity of going with someone else's flow. Of course, there were times I held my ground and pursued what I wanted instead of going with the whole household, and sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn't. More recently there was some conflict about my not contributing to prep for a dumpling party. Where had I been while everyone else was chopping? I'd been at Barnes & Noble, oblivious to fact that the chopping was happening simultaneously because nobody told me. So we learned how to communicate, and how to be beholden to each other and where we wanted the boundaries of our relationships to lie. I've been let down many times, but I've also been happily surprised even more.

In a few short weeks I'll be moving out of this house. My housemate said it's like sending me off to college, and in some ways that feels true. I'll be just around the corner, but I have a feeling it will feel miles away from the family I've become a part of. Hopefully more reflection and photos to come...

P.S. Hence the new ricecooker.

finishing

When it comes to running, training plans are great for me because they play to my rigid, perfectionist personality. Checking a run off the list makes me feel good about myself. (Whether it should or not is another blog post that I may never write.) They also keep me in check towards the end of things, when it's easy for me slack.

So months ahead, I looked for a training plan for this marathon. And then all of a sudden, the time for training snuck up on me. One Sunday night in July I realized that my training should start the next morning. Feeling the need to start on time with a plan, I picked one that was similar to the one I did last time - and had admitted didn't build the kind of fitness I needed to meet my sub-2 hour goal.

Then, two weeks later my sister and brother in law somehow convinced me to try their ambitious plan, which had started two weeks before mine had. Meaning they were on week four and easily running at least 10 more miles a week than I was at that point. The first two weeks adjusting to the higher mileage and amped up paces were pretty rough and it messed with my head.

By then it was August, and hot. And busy. And then there was Hawaii, and who wants to get up at 5:30am to get a long run in when you're on vacation at the beach? Not me. I ran once while I was there. And when I came back I couldn't find my motivation. It got buried somewhere between the sand in the bottom of my suitcase and the troubling fog of confusion and despondency that blurred the weeks after my trip. I tried to run, but I didn't like it much. I remember one morning heading out at 5:30 to run an 8 mile tempo run. A few miles in I realized the tempo part would probably not happen, and then I found myself cutting the run short at 5. I felt horrible, physically and mentally, and I knew I was in trouble.

At that point, with five weeks until the race, I made some changes. To make sure I enjoyed my runs, I stepped it down to four days a week and I moved my runs to the evenings, after it cooled off, instead of getting up to run in the dark mornings. I also made my own plan and created a simple purpose for each run: speed at the track, easy miles on tired legs, long hills (for the hilly race route), and long distance. My first track workout was encouraging, and the faded colors in the late summer sky during the runs that first week of the new plan reminded me that new, good things can spring up when we're headed into the dark. I remember mounting the last hill in a 9 mile hill run during that first week, my last two easy miles left to run, and I just had to stop - not because I was worn out but because the sky was too beautiful not too look for a while. It was the first time I'd felt truly grateful in a few weeks, and that feeling isn't one to pass up on.

All this to tell you that for perhaps the first time in my short span of life thus far, I finished something stronger than I started, and that without a plan prescribed by someone else. It was a lesson in knowing myself and finding what I needed. These last few weeks of running have been some of the best I've ever had, and they even led to a personal best for me in the half marathon. My goal was to enjoy it and finish - I had thrown out a time goal weeks earlier. But it turns out I ran the race in under 2 hours for the first time, and felt powerful (not good, mind you, but strong) the whole run.

listen, watch, read

It seems like every other conversation this week is about the government shutdown. When I logged into the New York Times website on Tuesday morning, the main scrolling photos featured services outside of the capitol that were impacted by the event. One showed a man standing outside the Liberty Bell, another of signs posted at Valley Forge state park turning visitors away. I heard one man on the radio talk about a trip to the Grand Canyon that had been 18 years in the making. He was waiting outside to see if he'd still get part of his vacation.

All of that makes me kinda sad and angry and like I want to scold those politicians for bickering with each other like children. I'm sure there are factors at play that I'm totally unaware of and probably unable to grasp, but still.

So, the bad news is that some of the beauty of our country is off limits for a little while and there are grown men (and women, I suppose?) acting like children. The good news is that there are still plenty of people doing wonderful and surprising things. So in case you got turned away from a museum or monument or park and are twiddling your thumbs or writing death notes to congress, here are a few alternatives for you.

1. listen
My favorite host on NPR's Morning Edition (a Lancaster, PA native!) interviewed a 12-year-old girl with some extraordinary musical talent. At the end of the interview, he gives her a scenario and she makes up a song for it. The tune comes to her so quickly, so naturally it's like a second language. She speaks in key strokes. It had me thinking about what second languages some others of us have - unique abilities that maybe aren't quite so lauded but are extraordinary nonetheless. Apparently it also had my nephew practicing extra hard for his first solo piano performance (he's in second grade).

2. watch
You may not consider comedians high culture, but watch this appearance by Louise C.K. He's onto something and I admire his honesty, and the way he can help us to listen to an uncomfortable truth through his humor. (I've also picked up my phone a lot less.)



3. read
And lastly, this quote from Isabel Wilkerson talking about her process of finding people with the stories that would eventually make up her book The Warmth of Other Suns. (What a great title, right?) I guess the reason it struck me as so beautiful is because I still try to outrun my mistakes, thinking I can somehow reverse them or make up for them. That's a lot of running. If any of you readers are distance runners, you know that the best part of the run is almost always that moment at the end when you can stop. That's what I imagine she's talking about here.

I wanted people who were beautifully imperfect. Perfection is not real, and readers cannot identify with people presented as perfect. I wanted to find people who were at peace with their mistakes and with the things they had done not particularly well. I wanted people who were willing to be who they really, truly were. Via here.

under the night sky

A [night sky classified as] Bortle Class 1 is so dark that it's bright. That's the great thing - the darker it gets, if it's clear, the brighter the night is. That's something we never see either, because it's so artificially bright in all the places we live. We never see the natural light of the night sky. -Via here.

When I was in high school, I spent a few weeks of each summer working at the camp I grew up attending. Those first few years working there, the only thing I was old enough to do was waitress in the kitchen. It was mostly grunt work - in the kitchen three times a day, sweeping and mopping the whole dining hall every night, washing out ketchup lids and reshaping butter sticks (yes, we did that). But we got free time in between meals and at night. In August we served rental groups and had fewer restrictions on our free time, which meant we had the chance to do all the things we'd always wanted to do at camp but didn't want to risk getting in trouble for. One time, a few waitress friends and I slept outside on the dock by the lake. The uneven wood boards were terribly uncomfortable, but we were there for the experience of it. To say we did it. Except that in the middle of the night we woke up wet from dew and unable to really sleep well. So we bundled up in our sleeping bags and grabbed our pillows. We'd forgotten a flashlight, since our plan was to return to our cabin after the sun had risen. The first part of the path back was under a dome of tree branches and leaves that blocked out any light coming from the night sky, and we couldn't see a thing. We held tight to each other and took small steps forward so we wouldn't trip on anything. We'd traveled this wide path hundreds of times before, but without any light it was completely foreign to us. It wasn't long until we made it to the clearing and the night got lighter around us.

I've been thinking about walking in darkness and how scary it can be, and how it makes me want to find some kind of light, any kind, to break the darkness. But really, if I'm able to resist these urges, the night can be light on its own.

Reminds me of these verses from Psalm 139: If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

fall is here

This week fall came to Southern California. Summer always holds on through most of September, sometimes even pops back up in October. That picture of a grinning sun with streaming rays taunts me: tell me you love me, tell me you want me to stay forever, it demands, just like all the celebrities with their oversized sunglasses and egos. But now: a cool breeze fills the house when we open the french doors, I slept with a sweatshirt on the other night, and the sky is an indescribable color at 7pm, light and dark touching and the moon shining and the mountains reflecting all of this off their mysterious ridges.

Finally. Why does it always seem like such a long time coming?

But even with all my anticipation, the shift in season caught me off guard. I had to remember, yes, this is what fall feels like, this is how things change. I have to make room for it. It will be sticking around for a few months.

And it will be sticking around for only a few months. To remember that is reassuring because even though I wanted this new season, it brings its lack. Leaves fall, light wanes, eventually birds stop their singing. But soon enough the season will change again and bring with it new gifts, new growth. The hillsides here are filled with bright green things after the rest and rain of the fall and winter.

a mercy

It always happens over dishes, this explaining of ourselves to each other. I pumped soap onto the wet sponge and lathered it over the pot as you started, as you told me you didn't know how to start. You explained your piece as best you could while I focused on the dishes, on piling them up carefully on the drying rack so that they wouldn't fall. I squeezed the sponge dry, turned off the water, and turned to stand against the counter. I knew I needed to respond but wasn't sure how I would do it without crying the tears that have been coming so easily, like a deep well with no bottom. We both acknowledged we didn't want things to change, and we both agreed that they probably would, maybe they already had. Just the day before I'd been lying on my bed looking at the bookcase you helped me move into my room when the thought, "what will I do without her" came to my mind, and with it new tears. I hadn't really let myself think about it that way until I remembered the bookcase, how heavy and big it was. It had weighed on my mind for days, how to get it into the house from the garage where I'd put it together. It was a job for more than one person.

We talked for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, each of us saying basically the same thing over and over. You let me feel my pain, which to some might have seemed merciless, but was a mercy to me. You didn't try to dry my tears or cry them with me, but you let them flow, maybe hoping with me that the well will dry up someday soon. Later, I took out the cake you brought home for me the night before, and when I asked if you wanted to share it, you said no. You brought it home for me, not for us. So I ate it alone.

an alternative syllabus for inner city life

I have a short resume of living in ghettos, slums and "the hood," as people inside and outside of these neighborhoods will refer to them. While there, I tried to be more than someone with a mailing address there - I tried to be a neighbor. For me, that meant primarily being a friend: speaking some Spanish (or Tagalog, for the short time I was in Manila), playing Uno, watching tv and eating some really great food. It also meant difficult conversations about cell phones, school behavior and math homework. And now, a few blocks away and a few years later, I realize it also included some misunderstanding, wrong assumptions, and plenty of mistakes. (Some of this I acknowledged at the time, but to acquire insight required a bit of distance.)

Recently a few books have been shelved on my "read" bookshelf that might have helped my perspective and understanding of my neighbors. It may also be that these experiences have helped my reading of these books to be deeper, more full of appreciation. Either way, I imagine that these three books - all different in scope, topic and style - would make a lively and helpful syllabus for cross-cultural, cross-socioeconomic living. Here are quick excerpts from each that, in my mind, capture the themes of these books. (Emphasis mine.)*

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo:

(Abdul, Sunil and Kalu are all young Indian men living in a Mumbai slum.)

"Do you ever think when you look at someone, when you listen to someone, does that person really have a life?" Abdul was asking the boy who was not listening. He seemed to be in one of the possessions that came over him from time to time, ever since he got locked up at Dongri.

"Like that woman who just went to hang herself, or her husband, who probably beat her before she did this? I wonder what kind of life is that," Abdul went on. "I go through tensions just to see it. But it is a life. Even the person who lives like a dog still has a kind of life. Once my mother was beating me, and that thought came to me. I said, 'If what is happening now, you beating me, is to keep happening for the rest of my life, it would be a bad life, but it would be a life, too.' And my mother was so shocked when I said that. She said, 'Don't confuse yourself by thinking about such terrible lives.'"

Sunil thought that he, too, had a life. A bad life, certainly - the kind that could be ended as Kalu's had been and then forgotten, because it made no difference to the people who lived in the overcity. But something he'd come to realize on the roof, leaning out, thinking about what would happen if he leaned too far, was that a boy's life could still matter to himself.

Random Family by Adrian Nicole Leblanc:

(Cesar is in jail, and his young family is visiting him.)

Cesar pulled out the gooey taffy and offered it to [his daughter], but just as she reached for it, he pulled it back. He teased her with the offer again, and just as she reached for it, he swallowed it and smacked his lips. He smothered her hurt feelings with hugs, making it into a game, drowning out her crying with laughter and kisses and silly smooching sounds. In the subtle tyranny of that moment beat the pulse of Cesar's neighborhood - the bid for attention, the undercurrent of hostility for so many small needs ignored and unmet, the pleasure of holding power, camouflaged in teasing, the rush of love. Then the moment passed, and Cesar's three-year-old daughter walked back out into the world and left him behind.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman:

(Neil is an ambitious, highly respected pediatrician who is treating young Lia, a Hmong girl with epilepsy.)

Neil Ernst was a doctor of a different breed. It would have gone completely against his grain to apply two different standards of care to his patients: a higher one for the Americans, a lower one for the Hmong. But might Lia Lee have been better off if her family had brought her to Roger Fife? Might Neil actually have compromised Lia’s health by being so uncompromising? That latter question still bothers him. For example, if Lia’s prescriptions hadn’t been changed so often, her parents might have been more likely to give her her medications, since they would have been less confused and more confident that the doctors knew what they were doing. Neil was pretty sure, however, that because Lia’s condition was progressive and unpredictable, he could treat it best by constantly fine-tuning her drug regimen. If had chosen a single pretty-good anticonvulsant and stuck with it, he would have had to decide that Lia wasn’t going to get the same care he would have given the daughter of a middle-class American family who would have been willing and able to comply with a complex course of treatment. Which would have been more discriminatory, to deprive Lia of the optimal care that another child would have received, or to fail to tailor her treatment in such a way that her family would be most likely to comply with it?

*I intended to say more about each book and what they offer, as part of a syllabus, in addition to the more typical fact-driven expository nonfiction. But I'm leaving on a jet plane in the morning (a real vacation!) and wanted to get this written. So you may see more of this - just a warning.