grit

In the face of inconvenience, sentimentality and grit prevail.

This is the first Christmas that my childhood best friend will soldier
through without her mother who passed away suddenly in May. It will be a
season of memories that cannot be reshaped, only burnished with the
acknowledgement that things just won't be the same. This doesn't keep the
snow from falling or the lights from twinkling. It is the unmovable and
natural movement of the world.

I sent her a note a couple of weeks ago asking if she might want to do a
foreign gift exchange. It wasn't a request without its considerations of
the logistics and the cost and the guessing game played by two very faraway
albeit longtime friends. I wanted to send her something to comfort her and
bring her a bit of joy and knowing that she would want to do the same, an
exchange would be necessary.

She agreed that it would be a fine tradition to resurrect after a few latent
years. Ideas were rallied back and forth. A massage, a robe, a good book
perhaps. We settled on two very different items that we each needed in our
own ways. I was to send a bottle of wine and she was to send a sharpening
stone for my knives. One takes the edge off while the other puts it on.

The grit of a sharpening stone is determined by the nearly microscopic
particle size of the stone. They are measured in microns which are
one-thousandths of a millimeter. Tiny. I have a 1000 grit (about 11
microns) stone from Osaka and needed a 5000 grit (2.5 microns) or higher to
really a polished edge on my knives. The higher the grit number, the
smaller the particles and the sharper the knife. But, stones are easy.

How does one measure the grit of a woman with multiple university degrees, a
full-time job and a little girl? How narrowly do we have to squint to see
the indomitable spirit of my childhood friend as she gave her mother's
eulogy, her future sister-in-law occupying her daughter in the lobby of the
funeral home? In her speech, she said that her mother had become a
transcendent force, able to not only move through space and time but able to
grow and shrink. I sat in the front row, my friend in white as is our
tradition, thinking about her mother zooming into the nucleus of a cell.
Perhaps in the needle of a Christmas pine. Perhaps in the organized lattice
work of a snowflake on her daughter's lapel or in a raw sugar crystal on a
butter cookie. Or maybe she's as big as the goodwill of men.

I will smile and bow my head as my friend toasts her mother this holiday
with well-traveled cabernet that will chill on her doorstep until she
retrieves it. "[My daughter] has more toys than she can shake a stick at.
But what she really needs are a mom and a dad, extended family to love her,
good food, sunshine, health care when she needs it and kindness and
boundaries. It doesn't change after your grow up, either." A few thousand
miles away, the soft, rhythmic brushing of Japanese steel on smooth ceramic
will herald a new year of refocus. It is the steel that is scraped away
which leaves the steel that remains in the shape that will best serve its
purpose.

Playing Grown-Up

The day before Halloween, I had a date with my friend Miranda that was less a rendezvous for grown-up discourse and more an afternoon of children's board games with her brilliant daughter Allison, age 5.

We meandered through Candyland as "Dora" (Allison) and "Backpack" (me) and we braved the perils of a garden, paying aphids to grasshoppers to secure our safety. After game pieces were put back in plastic pouches and paper trails were folded and returned to their cardboard homes, Allison and I went for a walk. When asked if her parents should join us, she firmly responded, "No."

Off we went on a real adventure, our path cut into spaces by scores in the sidewalk. At first, Allison danced down the street as I kept steady time with steps that were decidedly adult. She expended a child's energy with arms flailing and legs kicked at unnecessary angles. She swung her body to and fro but eventually settled into a more uniform pattern.

As we moved under the shade of trees down the quiet neighborhood, I asked her if I could ask her a question. In doing this, I wanted to gauge her ability and desire to answer. To my relief, she said yes. I really did have questions for her. Life questions. Questions usually posed to individuals whose answers I never believe for more than a day. I knew that Allison would share her knee-high views on whatever topics I could muster.

"Allison, what do you do if a boy doesn't love you?" Had I really focused, I could have brought myself to tears at this point for effect. She took a step and continued our walk without so much as a moment's consideration.

"You walk away and you don't play with him forever." Ah, yes.

"And what do you do if he does love you?"

"You play with him forever." Her answers fluttered out so naturally.

"How do you find happiness?"

"You just be nice and friendly and then you will be happy!"

"What do you do with a broken heart?"

"Um...you go to the doctor?" She was quizzical like a girl who's never had one. And I hope she never will.

The questions ended when she seemed to grow weary of my stupidity. We walked around a corner and I gave her a short piggy-back ride. As we headed back to the house, we played a spelling game using the objects around us like grass and trees for inspiration. All the while, my heart memorizing her sagacity in pulses and chants.

For Halloween, I dressed up like a schoolgirl in a uniform and pigtails. An homage to the 5 year-old who may only know a limited number of facts but who has the pristine problem solving skills that have never been marred by overthinking, romantic comedies or mixed drinks. She has the perfect heart, full of faith and unencumbered clarity. Her answers were faultless and exact and one day, I'll be young enough to know what she meant by them.

20/20

A few weeks ago, I was rummaging through old photographs when I found one of myself. It was taken in a hotel lobby, the anteroom to a thumping fiasco of Asian American college students gyrating to hip hop music. "Baby, when we're grinding, I get so excited..." Stating the obvious will never go out of style.

I was 21, wearing a little black dress my boyfriend at the time had bought me and standing tall in chunky, black heels. The boyfriend had taken this picture of me next to my future roommate. I was a few pounds slimmer then and I remembered that I still have the dress. Would it still fit? And more importantly, could I, philosophically, still wear it out in public?

I exhumed it from my closet and pulled it over my body a dozen years later. It fit tiny a bit differently but mostly it was the same snug polyester costume a young man in love had bought for a girl he thought was "gorgeous". His word, not mine. I liked and still like how it felt. Though like the dress, it's a fits a bit differently now.

Despite my ability to physically cover mainly my chest and hips with it, this is not a dress to be worn in the presence of respectable adults. Now that I have had time away from this strappy time capsule, I must say that it puts the little in "little black dress." I shake my head at my juvenile taste. Back then, I loved wearing what my boyfriend bought me. Even if later I would consider it to be underwear.

The saying goes that hindsight is 20/20. But in this instance, hindsight will be less and less. No one should show that much hind without charging for a glimpse. And I certainly didn't go to college to learn how to do THAT.

sought

When I was in high school, my mother's coworker came to visit one day and with her brought her 4 year-old son. Alex was an adorable little boy with wide brown eyes and a sweet sense of trust.

As our mothers spoke, we played a game of Hide and Seek. I would count loudly as the seeker while Alex would hide just as loudly. He never knew that I could hear his scurrying into the nooks around our house. Every time I would find him, he'd giggle with surprise. His laugh was full of delight and a joy of having shared a secret: his hiding place.

One time, as I neared the finale of my audible enumeration, I realized that I didn't know where he had gone. He'd actually managed to hide himself and had quietly tucked into a place I couldn't guess.

I wandered around the first floor, asking my mother and her friend for leads. They hadn't seen him so I figured that he must have gone to the second floor. As I walked up the stairs, I heard a tiny voice echo from far back in a room. "Katie...come find me!" And I did.

Announcements. The way we are found. It's a twig snapping in the woods as the hunter evades a grizzly. It's lit flares. A neon sign. It's a profile on match.com. When we wish to be discovered, we must proclaim our whereabouts.

I used to believe that fate would intervene. Despite their efforts, everyone would receive their rewards in commensurate proportion to an unknown plan. But I'm starting to change my tune. I see now that there are steps we take to essentially ask for more. Whether we receive it may still be part of a plan but to announce a desire by way of moving or shaking or hustling, this is clearer to me now. To not move would be to hide.

In believing, I shouted next to the ocean today. I gave my exact coordinates to the universe and asked it to find me. I made my presence known because I am in need of discovering. Olly olly oxen free.

the folly of a follicle

A knot is a unit of measure used by seafarers to reference their speed in the water. Also employed by pilots, one knot is one nautical mile which is approximately 1.151 mph.

Though mistakenly considered a auditory abbreviation, the term knot isn't a shortening of nautical mile. It's a reference to the old school way devised by ingenious sailors to help keep track of their adventures. Simply, a piece of wood called a chip log was carved in an agreed-upon shape and tied to an extremely long rope. The rope, called a log line, was tied with knots at increments of 47.25 feet. One sailor would cast the chip log and its log line into the water while the ship was moving and a second sailor would keep time with a 28 second sand glass, like a modified hourglass. The knots that would unspool would be counted against the time and the ship's speed could be calculated. With a little bit of math, of course.

I learned about this log from an article about blogging sent to me by grad student and personal hero An. In the same way that ship logs were almost forgery proof due to their real-time nature, blogs serve as real-time notations of our adventures and thoughts. Markers that you read newest to oldest in anti-chronological order.

As I idly stroked my hair in a meeting the other day, my fingers teased out a strand of hair that was oddly textured. It wasn't smooth like the rest but lumpy and wavy with various spots thinner than others. With a scientific inquisition, I ran my fingertips along its entire length from my scalp to its end and noticed that a third of it, a section closest to my head, was normal. This seemed to suggest that most recently, this follicle was producing shiny, smooth and healthy hair. I was so morbidly fascinated by this biological abnormality that when I got home that night, I snipped the strand and saved the section that contains the varying thicknesses. I studied it wondering what had happened. Was it evidence of undulating health?

Hair springs forth from our heads as a product of protein and calcium. Its qualities such as straight or curly or grey can be dictated by genetics and by stress, age or nutrition. It is a log, though a thin one, that recounts your state of being.

The speed at which hair grows is approximately 0.5" per month. From end to end, the original length of this abnormal strand of my hair is about 18". It's been about 27 months since my last haircut which would mean that my hair grows a bit faster than normal at about 0.66" per month.

With a little math, I laid a ruler down and the strand of hair beside it. I looked at what months fell where based on my calculations. Working backwards with the evidence before me, the two and a quarter years from my past came flooding back in a tidal wave of memories. There is no precision in marking the months and days but the general appearance of depleted proteins fell in line with a period of time when I worked for a company that challenged me in both good and bad ways. I loved this job and easily worked six days a week, at least 10 hours a day tackling strategy, politics and minutia. Towards the end, a mentor commented to my then boss, "You've basically left her in a boat in the middle of the ocean and told her to fish with no net." I worked a dream job and it worked me.

This period was also noteworthy as I was then in love with the chef I've mentioned before. I see now that my hair kept time as we danced a tenuous pas de deux. Inch 1: He told me he didn't like me romantically. Inch 1.66: We weren't speaking. Inch 2.1: He'd find a reason to re-engage us. Inch 2.33: We were hanging out every day. And so on. For months, he vacillated between occupying and vacating my apartment leaving my hair and me wavy and uneven.

Though the seven inches of this log line strand that are still attached to me are silky, it is not always smooth sailing. The winds change. My hair becomes knotted. The tides rise. And I attempt to stay the course with sails and line to manage the journey. There are days that drag without a breeze for miles. The sheets are slack and the progress is nil. There are blustery days that toss me about, knotting my hair and making me motion sick. And as I try to right myself, my body retains the breaks and malnourishment as evidence to exhibit my fallibility and my recuperation. And as I try to write myself in between it all, with words I log.

listen

Music plays such a big part in so many lives. Those who create it can't keep the sounds from within their imaginations from finding their way through instruments. Those who are comforted by it crave the notes that lilt and fall. Some of us tag songs with memories of a first date, a last dance and other surprise moments in between.

My friend is heartbroken right now. She fights herself every day with the ups and downs of feeling assured and then simply feeling like ass. There's a song she'd heard that reminded her of her ex- and it soon became a frequency modulated enemy, its opening bars ambushing her in the car, in convenience stores, on television.

It made me sad to know this about her struggle. It's a joyful song, full of love and shyness, adoration and modesty. It hurt her to remember these things. I wanted her to be able to enjoy it as much as I do and to be able to smile at its sweet sincerity.

One morning, it hit me like a bolt of lightning that I would take the song back for her. I would make it hers and not the sadness'. Despite being rusty in my songwriting skills, I re-wrote the lyrics to the song in a way that applied to my friend. I re-appropriated this radio hit with words that came from our friendship; words of encouragement and humor layered above the original lyrics. Like a fresh coat of paint to hide the dented and rusty eyesores.

A few days later, we sat at my kitchen table and I played her the song, singing awkwardly but with a heartfelt wish that it would take the place of a sad memory. She sat with her hands over her mouth, manicured nails shining, eyes sparkling. She told me she couldn't stop smiling. So it worked. We have reclaimed a song from the clutches of a broken heart. Copyright laws be damned.

go

On a balmy night in Palm Springs, I delivered a speech to An and her adoring fans in a noisy diner with a classic lean-to roof. Empty, glasses with lip-stained rims sat in their eventual and unplanned pattern on the table. I read the speech from my Blackberry, a horrid sight but it was convenient and modern. Or at least the modern definition of modern and not the Palm Springs, 1960's space themed architecture and interior design modern.

In the speech, I spoke on behalf of the collective of An's fans including me. I personified Manhattan as a person receiving a gift from California and warned it of the gift's import. I only addressed An briefly in two parts of the speech so I thought I'd better serve our relationship by writing directly to her. An homage as well as an open letter to my friend the journalist.

When we sit at stoplights--you, the good host, in the driver's seat; me in the passenger's seat, shamelessly holding my distended belly and a bag of cookies or chocolates or chocolate cookies--there is a comfort between us that is familiar and familial. We are two, obedient girls. We heed and we consider. At stoplights, our minds wander, we have a moment of silence, I think of what we should eat next, you check out the cute boys in the car next to us and when the light turns green, on more than one occasion, I snap you out of your sunshiny San Diego reverie and say "It's your light, An."

Right now, you're on a plane to New York where there will be more lights than you can count. I was there, in the same city, with the same excitement and the same hope that something wondrous would happen. When you fly over Manhattan on your way to JFK, I hope you will have the same moment of double vision elation at the thought of what your move means. You are a brave girl. You said I was an inspiration when I moved away but you are your own inspiration now. Few people are so lucky.

Girls who obey are destined for lives that they don't know why they want. Girls who heed and consider will wait for permission so long that they'll forget what it was they couldn't do and become complacent. There's nothing you can't do. And for you, the wait is over.

It might be hectic at first, bumping into all those people on the street, selecting and ordering furniture for your apartment, learning how many groceries you can handle in one trip. But no matter the rain, the slushy black snow, the swindlers, the stairs and the taxis, I want you to go for it, no matter what it is. Fuck the noisy neighbors who smoke in the hallway, the train that never comes when you're in a hurry, the classmates you think are smarter than you, the wide eyed tourists in Times Square, the paper that just won't materialize in pixels on your laptop. Don't let any of it get the better of you. Nothing can stop you. You're a New Yorker now and you will jaywalk with the best of them because from now on, even if it's not, it's YOUR light, An.