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Day 15: Baby Daze

4/20/2015

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Our first night of parenthood was one of complete and utter terror for my husband and me. We sat in the darkened hospital room, with our newborn son shrieking like a piglet in his bassinet, feeling like we’d been thrown into deep water without a floating device.

In the first hours since his birth, the baby had been cuddled and examined endlessly by the cadre of hospital nurses. Marie, one of the nursing staff, was particularly talented at swaddling the baby like a compact burrito. She seemed to have baby whisperer powers that we had no training in.

Now it was nearly midnight, and the flurry of staff coming and going through our room had ceased. It was just us - a brand new mom and dad with their infant. Before this moment, I had assumed that once I became a parent, I would know instinctively what to do. In reality, I was in a panic. Who was this tiny person, and why had someone in charge deemed me responsible enough to take care of another human being? Clearly some grave mistake had been made. 
The only thing comforting to me was that my husband seemed as petrified as I was. We looked at each other, and one of us said, “What do we do?!” I vaguely recall us semi-jokingly saying, “Is it too late to send the baby back?” We had read parenting books, and talked with older friends about their transition to parenting. Yet we felt completely unprepared for the reality. 

In the face of much uncertainty, we made a decision that first night to take things one day at a time. That seemed like the best course of action. Our motto was, "If no one dies, we're doing okay." The next morning, though more tired than we’d ever been, we took joy and pride in successfully surviving our first parenting rite of passage. 

As we eased into our role as parents, we eventually figured out a few things. We learned the importance of tag-teaming as spouses; when one of us was delirious from lack of sleep, the other one would take charge. We also mastered the art of the baby swaddle, which would have made nurse Marie proud. But the real lesson was that parenthood is full of transition. There would be many days when we truly had no idea what to do, and that was alright. Once we gave ourselves permission to learn and make mistakes, the journey was a lot more pleasant for all of us.
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Day 14: Enough

4/19/2015

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“You aren’t Asian enough.” My college friend said this matter-of-factly, as if there was a quantifiable ethnic quota that I had missed.

“You got fat,” said a relative, upon my return home from freshman year of college.

“You look so serious. Smile more!” encouraged a friend of my parents. It was early morning on a Sunday, giving me no particular reason to be cheery.

And the list of “shoulds” and “not enoughs” goes on and on. Who is thin enough, pretty enough, smart enough, capable enough? Is it any wonder that one would struggle to feel adequate and accepted just as they are? I’m trying to listen to a new voice. This new voice says, “You’re completely and totally enough.” It’s the only voice that actually matters. That voice and those words begin as a whisper. But maybe someday it will be the only voice that can be heard.
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Day 13: A Spiritual Moment in Jack In the Box

4/18/2015

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You know you’ve reached a low point when you’re sobbing in a Jack In the Box. There’s nothing quite so humiliating as having an emotional breakdown under fluorescent lights while workers in paper hats shout out customers’ order numbers. But there I was.

My high school boyfriend had told me the bad news - he wasn’t coming to California like we had planned. He and I were both set on moving to Los Angeles to attend college. (And here I make public the real reason I chose a college in LA - for a boy. How typically teenager.) Now, he had instead decided to stay in our hometown for a while.

I was crying over the change in plans. I was crying because I wasn’t ready to move to California by myself. I was crying because the idea of having a long-distant relationship was daunting.

In the middle of my cry-fest in the Jack In the Box booth, a voice said, “Excuse me.” I looked up to see an elderly man with kind eyes. “I don’t know you, but I know that God loves you.” Surprised at this unexpected encounter, I blinked away my tears and nodded. He smiled at me and walked away.

His words rang in my ears and heart. Though I had little grasp of God, I knew that this stranger was right. And I felt a surge of peace that came from a place outside of myself.

Much later, when I had a growing consciousness of God’s presence, I recognized that moment in Jack In the Box as one of many times when God had inserted himself into my life like a love letter from an anonymous sender. In my despair and fear, God reached in and told me he loved me. And he used a stranger in a fast food restaurant to tell me. 
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Day 12: Missed Connection

4/17/2015

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The first love of my life was Robert. Love may be too strong a sentiment, since I only knew four things about him.

  1. He was in kindergarten, like me.
  2. His name was Robert. I knew this because I overheard another boy call out his name in the school hallway.
  3. During recess, his habit was to sit for great lengths on the swings. He didn’t actually swing; he simply sat there dragging his shoes through the sand.
  4. He was the best dressed kid in school. Seemingly unaware that the unstated boy uniform was a t-shirt and shorts, Robert wore button-down shirts, tailored shorts, and my favorite, a gray tweed vest. 

I swooned after this guy. Every day at recess I had a hyper awareness of his presence, even from a distance. I dreamed of walking up to him, and asking him if I could join him on the swings.

Alas, Robert moved to a different school midway during the year, and I never saw him again. Any potential at a relationship was thwarted by external forces. I never had my chance to profess my feelings for him, and eventually moved on with my life.
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Day 11:  The Book Giver

4/16/2015

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My grandfather passed away when I was eleven. I hadn’t known him in any meaningful way, other than through gifts he gave. He always had something to give me, whether it was a special sweet treat, or a soft wool sweater. 

The most common gift he gave was books. Sometimes he had a handful of books, sometimes an entire garbage bag stuffed with books. The books spanned the genres, from Archie comics, to Babysitter’s Club, to teenage romance. I cherished the books, looking forward to receiving each new batch. 

It took me several years to notice an odd but consistent pattern with the books. Every single book had a name written on the inside cover: “L. Fong,” in simple, clear script. My grandfather’s last name was Fong, but the “L” caught my attention. There was no close Fong relative I could recall with the first initial L. Who was the previous owner of these books, I wondered. But I enjoyed the books, so after a while I forgot about the mystery of L. Fong. I supposed it was probably a distant cousin I had never met.

A year or so after my grandfather passed, my mother revealed a surprising family secret to me. “Your grandfather had a longtime affair with a woman. They had a daughter together.”

I tried to wrap my mind around this news. My mother and her siblings had a half-sister born out of an affair. She was a few years older than me. She and her mother lived nearby. All of this had been a shameful secret unbeknownst to me until my mother decided I was old enough to know the truth.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Leah,”* was my mother’s answer.

Leah Fong. L. Fong. My source of books. My half-aunt, unacknowledged by most of our family. I was curious, and asked my mother more questions about Leah. She didn't know much, but was open with what information she had. 

I kept those books for years. Each time I glanced at Leah's name on a book’s page, I thought about her, wondered about her life, and sent her a silent “thank you” for the books.


*name changed
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