last thanksgiving

in true chinese fashion, our turkey marathon begins the night before. 

HOM makes his farewell bird. we have old friends over. the talk flows easily, in Christ. the year has not been easy but it has been full. there is plenty to be glad for. it is a good night.

the table misses two places. the house misses one dog.

for a young man

so quickly, and not quickly enough. twenty years ago i did not dare think we would come to this. an impudence it would have been then to peer into now. even now i look in wonder at the child who has become a man. child of triumph and laughter and weight and worry and surprises good and bad my child of ineffable joy. we thank God for you. we thank God He keeps you. 

i bow my knees... eph 3:14-19.

in case you were wondering

i meet people from home. how have you been? what did you do in the past six years? the subtext says, have you been bored? how did you tolerate it, not doing anything much? i perfect my sweet non-commital smile-cum-murmur and move on.

for the record, the six odd years have been a gift. i have been well. i can't tell you exactly what i have been doing. nothing economically profitable, i'm afraid. some non-economic activity, with some joy and satisfaction and perhaps profit there. i've been writing living epistles, by God's grace. i've been building a home.

home, ver 2.0

HOM and i check in to the hotel again. this is our third set of rooms in the same place in a little over a month. our rooms increase in altitude with each incarnation. quite clearly, we are moving up the loyalty ladder. do you feel like this is home? HOM asks me. you bet. 

J1 calls this his third home. there's his home home, there's the army barracks, and there's here, where he bunks with his dad every time business brings HOM here.

taken 2 (2012)

as one rotten tomato puts it, this movie is exactly what i hoped for in light of taken and i got to watch exactly the show i wished - stress free improbable plot james bond-esque action minimal gore-to-body ratio and an ending that winds your adrenaline and pulse down nicely. not too bad for my movie haul this year. although i have to say that outside of high heroism that Liam Neeson character is an unfortunately overbearing and overreactive father who would get my heckles up in half a second. 

i have HOM  and J1 to thank for dragging me to this show.

FAQ 2

how are you doing? do you miss them very much? do you have things to occupy you? 

er, i'm fine, thanks. they are doing quite happily, so i am, as well, to my great relief. ah actually, i am quite occupied sometimes. and we miss Dog too.

the house must be so empty now both of them are gone. it's a good thing i like what they left behind, i suppose. oh what did they leave behind? umm. their dad?

malibu melt

egg bacon cheese and avocado on a slice of hearty chewy springy farmer's bread from the local cafe. ambrosial. i am:

• an indifferent cook,
• desperately deprived,
• very hungry, or
• all of the above.

do you want me to mail you and your friends anything while i still can? i ask J2. food, please! we've been hankering after yakun kaya. whoa there! sweetie, i was thinking along the lines of a favorite book or jacket.

post-modern

i'd like your comments on some of this stuff, my old teacher writes me. do you have band-width? let me know if you have band-width.

i have skype, i reply cautiously.

HOM tells me that is not what he wants to know. something is amiss, i tell myself, when both my university professor and my teenaged children draw from the urban dictionary.

rite of passage

we leave J2 at her dorm.

is this it? HOM asks me. is this the end of her childhood and our life as we have known it for two decades? will she not come back now except with her family after this? is this it?

if  it goes well, this is it, i tell him. she becomes an adult now. if it goes well, she grows into a mature beautiful adult. if it goes well, this is the good end to childhood and childish ways.

unsung symphony

nobody ever told me sending a kid to college was this stressful. perhaps i didn't listen. or perhaps parents are so shell-shocked they just want to get on with life after that.

that being that monumentally difficult weekend during which you attempt to prophecy what the dorm requires and prepare as accordingly as possible and find out eventually that you fall short anyway,  for which you make your child pack with as close an eye to economy as possible and still find the sum total far exceeding your financial and volumetric quotas, during which you arrive cross-border to find yourself obliged to impersonate a headless chicken trying to set up bank account cellphone account pay school fees and run up smack against. the. weekend. and, naturally, doing all of this and trying to impart your years of accumulated wisdom and finding your advice competing at a disadvantage against the pull of frosh activities and other more attractive offerings. tempers, not entirely unexpectedly, get awfully frayed.

HOM and i totally need a vacation after this.

ghosts

we bring J2 to her dorm. 

it's a tiny campus. several faculty buildings surround the pre-war relic. the ceilings soar effortlessly. the bathroom has mosaic floor tiles. the stairs are double-width and covered with terrazzo. there is harsh white fluorescent lighting. you walk next door to class. 

it feels surreal, i tell HOM. this is k.e.vii all over again, and back to haunt me.

a song of ascents

L'Eternal est celui qui te garde, L'Eternal est ton ombre a ta main droite, i want to tell J2. the sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night, i want to tell HOM.

rites of passage and transitions and major life events have a way of coming together in a seething cauldron of uncertainties and forgottens and uncontrollables. 

the LORD will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever. L'Eternal gardera ton depart et ton arrivee, des  maintenant et a jamais. i need to tell them, as i need to remind myself. through shining success burning stress the warmth of comfort and heat of battle the cold evils of discouragement and machinations and darkest night he neither slumbers nor sleeps.

regard

the road to a friend's house is never long, the old proverb says.

so our friend drives from timbuktu to siberia to send us to the airport in the early hours. in the gardens that i have, the most glorious blooms are friends.

new things

even to your old age, i am He

and even to gray hairs i will carry you!

i have made, and i will bear;

even i will carry, and will deliver you.

isaiah 46:4

go with God, child.

precious mem'ries 2

they have a surprise farewell party in church for J2 and us. people come and say they will miss us. we appreciate your contributions and your faithful labor, they say. the tears come because i can't help them. not a labor, i say. it was my privilege. it was our privilege.

go with God, an old lady says. God willing we meet again. but i am old, and perhaps we will not meet in this life. she teaches me much, this old lady, about living and loving and not fearing.

respite

J2 goes off to college in a couple days. she treats me to frozen yogurt. i lend her the cash. she wants to know how to launder her favorite skirt. we trade tips over lunch at Tachibana. we wander the trinkets store and goggle at the kawaii stuff.

we've come a ways, J2 and i. at one time i did not think we would come to this place of easier conversation and active peace. 

spent, again

bearing with one another in love.

- eph 4:2

the thing about having your buttons pushed is that some buttons appear to be reserved for some specific persons. and the thing about bearing with one another is that the mutuality cannot be mandated.

empty chairs at empty tables

he comes to us on a tuesday, a cheerfully rolling creamy hairball

who happily implants himself into our hearts and our lives

he completely skips chewing, hurries through toilet training

and then stays adolescent for the rest of ten lovely years

sit, stay by the pool in regent park

heavy breathing in the trunk of the car

heavy drooling over the back seats

long, long family walks to the dog park

bunking in with Clifford

earning frequent flyer miles

swimming, and not liking it

finding cover in a thunderstorm

running into glass doors

presiding over every homecoming

the outlet malls at San Antonio

the many different homes

indiscriminate love

unquestioning forgiveness

playmate comforter companion 

he was perfect

in pace

6.19.2002 - 7.21.2012

with not a mean bone in his body.

we were so privileged.

spent

how quickly a dog goes downhill.

he's slipping away.