my grandmother

There are grandmothers who come to visit, carrying heavy purses filled with candies twisted in crinkly plastic wrappers. These are the grandmothers who admire the painting you made with your fingers. They give you folded $5 bills and bake cookies for you and tell you how smart you are. Smarter than them. They gather you into their arms because they love you. They tell you this. It bubbles forth. They can't contain it.

This was not my grandmother. Love was a luxury my grandmother could not afford. In times of war and the change it wreaks upon those who suffer through it, my grandparents trekked back and forth between Hong Kong and China, trying to survive with an ever growing family tailing behind them. In an era when women did not know how to read and write, my grandmother knew and she used this to her advantage in protecting her husband and their children, working as something of a registrar for a village "mayor." Having no farmland, my grandfather left her, my aunt and my father to make a living in a city far away. She raised the children and cared for her father-in-law while concocting plans to reunite with her husband. It is doubtful she did this out of love. The chances of overcoming one hazardous situation after the next would be increased if they worked as a unit. To her, love was a practical mixture of obligation, duty and survival. She did not choose to be born or married off. So, to give her life a purpose she would have to choose to endure it.

The stories my family members retold of this period were always distant recollections of seemingly unfathomable circumstances. Running along dirt roads with a small satchel of rice from which to grab small handfuls but only when you could no longer stand the hunger. Sleeping on dirt floors in makeshift hovels with four people to a bed. With bare hands, dragging the bodies of people killed by the Japanese into communal graves. These were the tales told to me, the only grandchild out of seven who took interest. I am the only grandchild who has returned to their homeland as an adult. I have seen the countryside that was once a battleground. I may be the only one who is moved by her death.

I remember the roughness of her hands. Small and effective. Her fingernails, yellow and thick, were always a tidy length. Her fingertips scraped my arm when she held onto it, usually to make a point about studying hard and being responsible to my parents and sisters. The callouses seemed to insist that she was to be believed. I would appease her in Cantonese with the assurance that I would be an industrious student and a kind daughter. It was the way the grandchildren showed her we loved her. We would repeat our vows, quietly in the beginning when she would lure us into the guest room during humid summer visits and then loudly after years of my grandfather's snoring eroded her hearing. Her hands would give us one last squeeze and pat. The soft, loose flesh of her upper arms would wiggle. We would smile.

They each loved her in their own way; her husband, her children, her grandchildren. Her husband never took a mistress as was tolerated by her generation. Her children never truly disobeyed. Her grandchildren never disrespected her. And she in turn, loved each of us in her unique style that almost seemed unloving. It was coarse and factual. It was advice and admonishments. This was her way. Her mind would never allow her heart to shake off the horrors she had witnessed or the rage she developed in order to persevere. The ability to disregard the trivial would become her strength. The inability to let her guard down would enclose her in the past and alienate her from her family. Because of this, we are able to soldier through bad news via long distance telephone calls, make clear-headed funeral arrangements, purchase airfare online, email our friends about the unexpected and fortuitous chance to meet for an overpriced dinner. We are practical now. Detached. As she was.

my first marathon

Yesterday, I participated in my first marathon. It wasn't even a marathon really. The Nike Run Hit Remix is more an organized phalanx of runners on a course dotted with stages mounted by forgotten but still beloved bands. Vanilla Ice, Young MC, Digital Underground. The headliner this year is De La Soul. A marketing opportunity disguised as charity. Nike affords Nike the precious opportunity to expose 10,000 people to Nike shoes and accessories. I paid $30 for this opportunity to be exposed to.

In training for this 5 mile run, 4.5 miles of which I walked, I had been waking up earlier than normal to save myself from zombie-esque behavior come 8:30am Sunday morning. I had to "train" in order to get out of bed. You can see how my moxie was tested.

Friday, I rose at 7am to go for a jog/walk. There is a very beautiful and affluent neighborhood just north of my apartment. On my side, there is an Irish pub, an LSAT prep school, a chiropractor. On the other side, a golf course, avenues blossoming with million dollar homes, Parisian inspired street lamps. Between the two, along the major thoroughfare, the divide is marked by a very discomforting freeway overpass. Some may find the freeway itself to be the greatest convenient nuisance. Its noise and soot tumbling onto the adjacent houses. For me, it is most treacherous to navigate the sidewalk plotted under the overpass; a sidewalk speckled with pidgeon droppings and littered with worn shopping bags. There is a once maroon couch that probably emits foul scents were I to approach it. Amidst tall strands of yellowing grass, there are empty beer bottles sleeping next to jagged styrofoam cups. And in a rusting van, parked almost always next to the same sidewalk on this particular side of the street, lives a man whom I can only assume is a drug dealer.

I label him a drug dealer because this morning, for the first time, I saw him outside of his van. He is tanned in a disregarded way. Long hair, moustache, scrawny and prematurely aged. As I ran past, he leans into its dark, cavernous interior while a woman dressed in discount clothing, sheepishly acknowledged my presence. It was an overly plain smile. One forced out of nervous lips that would not denote an illegal transaction. It inspired me to push myself farther because I was scared. It gave me speed and I ran home as fast as I could.

On Saturday, I didn't rise as early but, I did venture out of my parents' home and headed towards my old high school approximately 2 miles away. The scenery is peaceful in the town of Walnut and the drug dealers are few. As I made my way back to senior year, I passed the football field and the track that encircles it. There on the grass, was an industrious young man. He was alone, wearing a football jersey. "Special Team" I called him in my mind. He stood in front of the goal posts with a few footballs on the ground, one placed gently in its tee and ready for his leg to send it flying. I watched him take a carefully counted number of steps back. I watched him run a few calculated steps and kick the ball for the extra point. It was something he trained for, as I trained to run. He was disciplined. He was an expert. I wanted to ask him to teach me how to do it. But, I think there are laws against such "lessons." Especially after hours on a high school campus. Nonetheless, his solitary practice left an impression on me. In my endeavors, there is only one person who can help me become better at me and my thang. And yes, this person is of legal age for drinking, voting and viewing pornography.

I finished the race. Something I didn't think I would or could do. Though my body aches, I am proud to wear my medal of non-specific metal because it is a token of overcoming my own fears, physical and mental. I have a broken heart but no broken bones. I didn't break any records; I simply ran until I couldn't run any more. Then I walked. Then I forced myself to run a few minutes more. It is how any hardship is endured. One step at a time. My coach being me.

head and shoulders

On Thursday, I laughed for the first time in months. Like really, really laughed. The kind of laughter that builds upon itself. That escapes from your stomach in a vibrating gust so sudden you startle yourself. Usually, it's because someone has said something funny to me that I begin this abdominal adventure. The one mildly amusing statement snowballs and every subsequent sentence is more gas on the fire. In this particular instance, a good friend of mine decided to confess something that bothered him about his ex-girlfriend of years and years ago. Something he never told her. A secret gripe that plagues his mind to this day with questions of his superficiality.

Plain and simple: She had dandruff.

Did it make him a horrible person that he was annoyed by this? No, I didn't think so. I personally thought it was hilarious. My friend went on to say that he discovered bottles of anti-dandruff shampoo in her cabinets. Not just standard issue over-the-counter Selsun Blue shampoo, industrial grade shampoo. This fact only increased the severity of my delight. Perhaps it was the triviality of his confession or his amazement that she thought she could hide her problem from him or the fact that I too get a few flakes now and then. I was in hysterics and it felt so good. Reunited with joy for a brief moment on a Thursday evening, a faraway friend on the telephone.

unexpected

The years of ignored dust have settled on the window sill in my bathroom. It is a blanket of neglect. To one side, an abandoned spray bottle of cleanser, not quite empty. To the other, a poured candle in an aluminum tin. Its fitted lid snug but askew reads "Vanilla Cookie." The picture of the cookies is bleached by the sun to pale blues and greens as if it were a photo of moldy biscuits. Next to the vanilla cookie candle is a North American lilac candle. Also a poured candle, it is in a small glass jar with an out-turned lip. Then, an open book of matches sponsored by Winston cigarettes. The text that you are exposed to when you twist one of the 18 matches from its stapled roots informs you that Winstons are 100% First-cut Tobacco. No additives. No preservatives. I have not seen the front of the matchbook in a long while. I believe it was a bustling scene of attractive yet ordinary smokers, gathered in a freeze frame of nicotine euphoria. Between the matches and the bottle of cleanser sits a small black digital alarm clock. The LCD is a standard murky greyish green with black sections that appear and disappear in permutations that yield numbers. The façade is ridged to give it a futuristic design. The time is accurate. During daylight savings, a substantial amount of dust is wiped away by insistent fingertips holding the time button and tapping the hour button until the hour is corrected.

It is here between the dusty clock and the match book that a spider has made his residence. He has lived there for approximately 9 months to a full year. Perhaps longer since there is dust on the silky threads. At first, the skeleton of his web was not apparent. But, when I really took notice of him about 6 months ago, he had already added intricate strands which connected in three dimensions. This is not a web that recalls a snowflake's six prongs. It is like a jungle gym made of glistening nothing. It is here that he waits, upside down mostly, for food. I find comfort in knowing that he will eat whatever insects dare enter through the overlooked crevices between the window screen and its frame. I have grown to be considerate of him. When I return from work, I look for him asleep under the matchbook. When I crank the window open in the evening, I do not jolt it violently as I once did because I noticed it frightened him. Once, after a rotting apple core in my garbage can had attracted fruit flies, I carefully lifted their carcasses off my palms and laid them gently at his door. At first he did not know what to make of such a coup; two flies without a flutter left between them, resting on the edge of his home, smelling of a strange, animal sweat. Days passed and he eventually retrieved them. That day, we became friends.

I have been disappointed by many humans. But in the most natural sense, the spider and I exist in a plane of emotion that is void of expectations or demands. I know that he will behave in the way that spiders do and never err. I do not ask him to be human. He does not ask me to be spider. He finds my dwelling to be acceptable as his own. So much so that I think he now has a roommate or perhaps it is a newborn child. We share the space in my humble bathroom. My clean bathroom with the very serene and untouched window sill.