Category: captured

thank you NI for the pic!

it was a long night last night. first, AL and NI found out that the second leg of their trip was cancelled… TWO MONTHS AGO! actually, the whole route was discontinued, but neither their booking agent nor the airline informed them of the change. so then AL had to call both parties to figure out what was going on and what their options were. i think i watched one too many episodes of oprah or read one too many travel reports about how to negotiate with airlines in these situations so i jumped in, pretending to be AL and tried, unsuccessfully, to get air canada to book them on another airline so that they could land in haneda as originally planned. boo hiss. the only thing that came out of the 2+ hour negotiation was a slight “upgrade” to the emergency seats which offers a little more leg room (as seen in the pic above). they are now, sadly, on their way back to japan. the apartment feels so empty aside from the birds who, for whatever reason, are still pecking at the kitchen window. the good news is MGS will be landing soon, too, and i’m excited to see him. it’s been so long!

the other night NI and i discussed our widowed mothers and how they’ve been coping with their losses. it wasn’t until relatively recently that her mother opened up about her grief and mourning process. i explained that my mother has never been shy about talking about dad and how she reminds me each time i speak to her how much she misses him. could it be people hold onto grief because grieving is a way of never forgetting?

though the circumstances are in no way alike, i think about how i feel when MGS is away: even though it’s only usually for relatively brief periods of time, there is a small part in me that fears “forgetting” what it feels like to be with him. if i learned to be independent again – watch movies alone, sleep alone, eat alone – then it’s like i’m abandoning the relationship (err — which might only reveal my own neuroses, but …). i imagine it’s somewhat similar to mourning a spouse, which leads the widower into murky territory. the trick is not to mistaken “happiness” with “abandonment,” which i feel my mom is definitely working towards. not to say there are not good memories, but if i understand grief at all, it’s much harder for a person to think about the “good times we shared” positively when you’re constantly thinking about “the good times we could’ve shared.” and to have to learn how to break the habits you adopt in coupledom!!! i can’t imagine — i don’t want to imagine.

gorgeous morning. woke up 20 minutes later than i usually do and still ended up at the office early. decided to walk down to the pier and by chance, saw the sea lions! totally didn’t realize this was the pier where they congregate. this is an awful photo, but you can kinda make out a sea lion in sun salutation pose.

i saw the movie version of proof last night. gwyneth paltrow plays a daughter coping with the recent loss of her schizophrenic/alzheimer-plagued father, a renowned mathematician played by anthony hopkins. paltrow dropped out of college to care for him, but now isolates herself for fear that she’s inherited his illness. her type-a sister, played by hope davis, arrives from new york to help out with the funeral and further fuels paltrow’s paranoia that she’s a little cray-cray. a young, studly, nerdy, phd-teacher played by jake gyllenhall enters her life to research hopkin’s old notebooks hoping to find potential mathematical proofs that the ill-genius may have written during the peak of his insanity. she slowly opens up to him and we find out that while paltrow may have inherited some of her dad’s mental instability, she may have also inherited his genius.

i read the script for the broadway play awhile ago and had high expectations, but this movie stunk. still, david auburn made an admirable attempt to detail the struggles for family members that accompany mental illness. it’s tough choosing between your life and having to care for the afflicted. my grandma suffered from alzheimer’s and her health deteriorated really quickly and unexpectedly. my cousin, who lived with my grandma at the time and was one of her caretakers, told me about how impossible it was to have to watch after her 24-7. there were times when grandma’d see and talk to a little boy who didn’t exist. other times, she chased after him outdoors in the middle of the night and fell, hurting her head. we found out later that she was probably seeing visions of her son who passed away when he was only an infant. we like to think that he was coming back to make sure grandma had company on her journey to the afterlife.

after she passed, we all had varying levels of guilt. my cousin and her parents also had to deal with a fair amount of blame from those who had the least involvement in grandma’s life during the latter years. oh chinese families.

alzheimer’s runs in my fam. our eldest uncle had it and i’m pretty sure a few relatives are exhibiting early signs. i’m just bracing for the day when i finally succumb to it, too (dun dun dun). i already have trouble remembering what people told me five minutes ago so the future’s not looking too bright, although recent research seems to be pretty promising. fingers-crossed that they’ll have a cure in a couple of decades.