Saying "I love you"

Today I'd like to tell you a little something about my uncle.

My uncle is a good man. He's a good husband, a good father, he was a good older brother to my dad, and he was an exceptionally dutiful son to his parents. I live halfway across the country from my uncle, so I don't see him very often, but I do sometimes get to talk with him and my aunt on the phone. And at the end of our conversations, some variation of this exchange happens:

Me: Well, I have to go now. Thanks so much for calling! I love you!
Uncle: Uh. Yeah. Uh, great talking to you. Bye!

My uncle is a little awkward about saying (and hearing) the words "I love you." I know it's not that he doesn't feel it. As mentioned, he's a good man and he cares a great deal about family. But my uncle didn't grow up in a family that was physically or verbally demonstrative. His parents didn't hug often, didn't kiss, and rarely said the words "I love you" to their boys. They preferred to show their love in other ways -- by acts of service and kindness, by teaching their boys how to be good men, by various small but significant gifts given. And the boys knew their parents loved them. But my dad, in particular, longed for the signs of affection his parents rarely showed -- bear hugs, kisses on the cheek, and those three magic words that verified what they felt for him.

When my dad became a father, he did his best to create the kind of family he'd wanted when he was a boy. My siblings and I hugged each other, kissed our parents, and said "I love you" easily and frequently. Still, whenever he visited or called his parents, Dad would make an effort to express his love to them and they remained strong members of the you-will-know-it-by-the-way-we-show-it school of restrained affection. I suppose it was too awkward or too difficult for them to say it out loud.

I know my uncle was raised to show his love through service, not words. I know he doesn't like to say the words "I love you" out loud, and I know that it's awkward for him to hear me say those words to him. So why do I do it?

Well, for one thing, because I know life is short and there isn't time to mess around. I learned at the age of 12 that the people you love can go suddenly, without warning, and when they're gone there will never be another "next time" to express what you feel for them, so you might as well do so every chance you get. I also live halfway across the country from my aunt and uncle, so I have precious few chances to show my love and affection for them through acts of service, the way I could if I lived nearby. And you can't hug through the phone lines. So if I want my family to know how I feel about them, I've got to say it.

Understand, I don't expect my uncle to suddenly start saying "I love you" back to me. This isn't an exercise in social pressure. I already know he loves his family. I also know it's hard for him to say it. But my love for him isn't contingent on his ability to express his feelings in words. I just want him to know, the way my dad wanted his parents to know.

Do you make it a habit to tell people that you love them? Or is it hard for you to say those words aloud? Did you grow up saying the words "I love you" to the people you cared about most, or hearing them say those words to you? Do you think saying the words out loud cheapens the feeling -- or strengthens it? Have you ever wanted to tell someone you loved them, but been too nervous or afraid to do it?

XXX! (perfectly safe for work)

Today being our 24th anniversary, Captain Midnight and I decided to go out to lunch. We visited XXX Root Beer in Issaquah, a local institution since the 1940s, famed for its car-related memorabilia and root beer made on the premises.

I'd been there before. CM had not. In retrospect, I probably should have warned him about the famed size of Triple X's burgers. Buuuuuut I didn't.

So CM ordered the White Wall, their chicken-fried steak burger. This is what he got.

Unretouched photo.

Yes, it's a burger nearly the size of a hubcap, filled with chicken-fried steak and country milk gravy, and featuring a bun studded with jalapeños.

U.S. quarter included for scale.

Undeterred, CM asked a passing waitress for a knife and fork. "We don't do knives and forks here," she replied. "You just have to pick it up and eat it." And to his credit, the doughty CM did just that. It was like eating an entire pie at one go. But since he was neither starving nor a professional eater, he was unable to finish it. This, plus fries, plus a "regular" root beer float that held about a quart of liquid, would finish off all but the most steel-stomached contenders. Also, attempting to eat in one sitting an edible object bigger than the diameter of one's head is an exercise fraught with peril. So we got a doggie bag, because enormously tasty.

A gentle reminder from the XXX bathroom. Nobody wants a heapin' helpin' of your microbes, folks.

How was your day? Got any good local burger joints in your area?

The Doom That Came To Sally Beauty

So Miss V and I were having an Epic Afternoon Beauty Product Run, pretty much just picking out mascara and minding our own business, when a woman came into the store... bearing a snarling, writhing, vicious basket of death!

As Miss V approached the basket...

...this menacing month-old monster lunged at her. But Miss V is made of stern stuff.

Insensate to fear, she grappled boldly with the furry menace.

Even when it threatened to lick her to death, she stayed strong.

The terror! The terror that is a Maltichon puppy! Aaaaiieeee!

...nah, I can't. Everybody do it with me: d'AWWwww.

This puppy is still too young to be away from his mother, but in about a month he'll be ready for a new home. Miss V is pressing hard for that home to be HERE, but we're not really set up with the space for a dog. Or, for that matter, the $ this guy is going to cost.

Still, super adorable little puffball. Uh, I mean horror! HORROR!

"Singles Awareness Day?" Please.

Some folks on Twitter (company motto: A Finger on the Pulse of the Unemployed) are trending up the hashtag #singlesawarenessday today. I've held off saying anything about this for some time, because a) I went through many past Valentine's Days single, and I remember how much it sucked, and b) many of my family members and friends are currently single, and I don't want to aggravate what may already be an irritant. But I happen to believe that Singles Awareness Day (abbreviated SAD, of course, and deliberately observed on Valentine's Day) is one specimen of an attitude I see increasingly often -- passive-aggressive public sulking over a holiday of which one does not approve.

I've been as guilty of this behavior as anyone. For instance, I roll my eyes over Earth Day, Earth Hour and similar festivities, because they strike me as gimmicky and ineffective. Attempting to force people to care for the earth through rampant peer pressure doesn't work, and may actually backfire. But I'm done preaching about it; the people who love Earth Day aren't going to stop celebrating just because I don't happen to like it.

Singles Awareness Day is one of several public-sulking holidays (I'm looking at you, "Buy Nothing Day") whose existence is primarily reactionary -- in other words, most people observe them as a protest against the celebration of the formal or informal holidays on which they fall. Based on the comments I've been reading, Singles Awareness Day is an attempt to cancel out the celebration of Valentine's Day by fostering guilt and shame in couples who just want to enjoy the day -- "how dare you rub your romance in our faces" is the way one Tweet put it. (If I were to do something similar, I'd declare April 22 to be "Thank You For Littering Day" and encourage as many people as possible to pollute the environment. Sounds kinda childish and stupid, doesn't it? Exactly.)

I know what it's like to suffer through a holiday I don't celebrate. For instance, thanks to the joys of infertility, I'm not a mother -- and at this point in my life, I'm not likely ever to become one. This makes me sad, but I'm not going to gather a bunch of childless women and spearhead the initiative to rename Mother's Day "Infertility Awareness Day" because the celebration of motherhood makes me uncomfortable. It smacks too much of sour grapes. Besides, I know plenty of awesome mothers (my own mom, my mom-in-law, and Miss V's mom come readily to mind) and I can choose to celebrate them on Mother's Day rather than curling up, licking my wounds and snarling at passersby.

Valentine's Day is a celebration of love. If you don't have romantic love right now, consider finding some other way to celebrate love positively -- adopt a pet from a shelter, serve at a soup kitchen, offer free hugs, treat yourself or someone you care about to a professional massage, whatever floats your boat. There's no need to be bitter and ruin the holiday for those who just want to celebrate.

And if you still feel like you really need a day to celebrate singles, the Koreans already gotcha covered. (It sounds delicious!)

The wave of charity

Although I give my parents full credit for showing their love and affection and for trying to provide their children with a happy childhood, my early years weren't always idyllic. I dealt early with bullying in school and sometimes at church, abuse from an older relative, and in grade school I often felt haunted, struggling with the sensation that there was nowhere I could go to be safe. As I reached junior high I began to pay attention to the news, where I noticed daily reports of cruelty, wanton destruction, theft and murder. So by the time I hit age 12, I had already developed a cynical attitude about people and their motivations. Based on my own experiences and the things I'd seen on TV and in the newspapers, I couldn't believe most people were good any more; human kindness and compassion might exist, but they had to be the exception rather than the rule.

Most Americans experienced a hard financial crunch during the fall and early winter of 1981; galloping economic stagflation created high unemployment, devalued currency and played havoc with grocery prices that seemed to creep higher every week. Even in more prosperous times, it was tough to raise a family of six kids in the San Francisco Bay Area, but Mom and Dad had always worked together to make ends meet. But by early December 1981, Dad -- who made a tenuous living as a freelance graphic designer -- had been out of work for months. He was actively seeking work out of state, but meantime he and Mom were trying to keep it together with no ready money, living off our dwindling emergency food storage and trying to scrape up enough cash to pay the mortgage every month.

We kids had already been told that our Christmas gifts would be small and simple that year. Because any money that came their way was earmarked for necessities, Mom and Dad had gone through their personal belongings to see if they could find anything suitable for our Christmas gifts; they'd already decided that, as the oldest, I could appreciate a pearl ring that had once been Mom's, and had sorted out several other items as gifts for the other children. Meanwhile, Dad made extra money by approaching various businesses around the Bay Area and offering to paint Christmas windows for them.

Then, one Saturday about two weeks before Christmas, Dad went out to paint windows and didn't come back. On the way home, he swerved to miss something on the wet road -- the police thought it might have been some teenagers playing "chicken" with his car -- and went over a 50-foot embankment. He was killed instantly.

Mom looked to her family and Dad's family for help in the days immediately after Dad's death, but at first she didn't want to ask for any other kind of assistance. She reasoned that our family had always gotten by without going to anyone for a handout, and she wasn't prepared to start then. But as it turns out, she didn't need to -- news got around anyway, and people started coming forward to offer their help. Some of them were people we knew -- family, friends, neighbors, people from school or church -- but many more were total strangers who had heard about our family's situation from a friend of a friend, or who had simply read my dad's obituary in the Contra Costa Times, looked us up in the phone book and decided they had to do something.

I can't tell you all the acts of kindness people did for our family -- there are literally too many to count -- but I can give a small sample. People we knew came over to be with us, mourn with us, give us blessings and let us talk through our grief. Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus came to our house, spoke to all of us kids and asked what we wanted for Christmas, and took notes. Strangers sent us money in the mail or dropped off gifts or food on our doorstep. At one point there were five turkeys in our freezer.

And then Christmas morning came, and we discovered that someone had gotten in cahoots with my uncle to deliver gifts to our home while we were all in bed. There had been a few modest gifts under the tree on Christmas Eve. By Christmas morning the entire living room was packed with presents -- all the way to the stairs.

The news may not reflect it, and personal experiences may not always bear it out in the short term, but I am now convinced that the majority of people have a desire to do good -- that if they have an opportunity to perform a kindness, especially for someone in crisis, they will usually rise to the occasion. I didn't believe it at first, but when you're faced with hundreds of concrete personal examples of selfless compassion, it becomes very difficult to deny the good side of human nature.

Giving Trees and other toy and gift drives start popping up everywhere at this time of year. I see it as a personal imperative to contribute to these drives whenever it's possible -- not just as a way of reaching out to individuals and families in need, but as a way of acknowledging the multitude of anonymous strangers who reached out to a crippled, grieving family they didn't even know, inundating us with a wave of love and charity that continues to impel each of us forward, even three decades on. Most of these people were probably struggling financially themselves, and no one ever would have known if they'd chosen not to help, but they did it anyway. I can't thank them the way they deserve -- I don't even know who they were -- but I do what little I can by trying to continue the wave they started, to move it on to others in need. And the most pressing need of our time may be the need to know we don't have to make it through this life alone.

The Red Scarf Project

When I was about eight years old, my great-grandma taught me how to knit. She was infinitely kind and patient, giving bits of advice in her calm, Dutch-accented alto voice and resisting what must have been a tremendous urge to take over for me, as I knitted into the wrong holes and dropped stitches and accidentally wove pieces of my own long auburn hair into the sparkly pink garter-stitch swatch I was making. Needless to say, my first attempt at learning to knit didn't go very well, and I was soon back to passively accepting knitted and crocheted gifts from my older relatives.

Although my knitting career didn't begin auspiciously, I loved hand-knitted items. Hand-knitted socks are warm and strong in a way no store-bought socks ever will be, hand-knitted mittens are likewise made to last, and long hand-knitted scarves -- possibly the best of all -- are a sure sign of someone's love for you, like a warm embrace made brightly visible. (A scarf project, in fact, was what started me knitting again in high school. Back in 1985, probably inspired by Doctor Who reruns on PBS, I knitted a long, long cream-colored scarf with tassels and wore it around Provo High nearly every day for the next two years. 28 years later, it's still going strong and will probably outlast me.)

I was fortunate enough to grow up around such items, and to take them for granted. Didn't every kid have a grandma to make him beanie hats and crochet warm soles onto the bottoms of his footed pajamas? Didn't everyone have a handmade ripple-stitch afghan lying across the foot of the bed, or a granny square afghan draped along the back of the couch? It was just part of the fabric of American life to have such things, wasn't it?

Well, that's not the way it works if you're a kid growing up in foster care.

You never know where you'll be living, where you'll be going to school, where you'll sleep. You can't know in advance whether your newest foster parents -- the people you depend on for food, clothing and shelter -- will be loving, aloof, strict, easygoing, hovering, neurotic, absent or abusive. You have no idea whether you'll ever be adopted and find some love and permanency in your life, or whether you'll simply age out of the system and be dropped head-first into an uncaring adult world. And in the whirlwind of constant uncertainty and frequent fear that is life in foster care, it is a small but telling thing that most foster kids have never received a handmade article of clothing -- something that was made just for them, by someone who loves them.

That's why The Red Scarf Project exists.

Foster Care to Success is an American charitable organization that aims to support former foster children on the road to adulthood. Very few foster children who have not found a permanent family by age 18 go on to attend college, and those who do have none of the family support most college students take for granted. That means no letters from home, no care packages, no money for books and school supplies, and certainly nothing handmade. FC2S provides some of these grace notes to struggling former fosters who are going to college. They ask needleworkers to make and donate a hand-knitted or hand-crocheted red scarf, which they include in their Valentine's Day care packages to college students. It may seem like an insignificant thing, but if you've grown up seeing mostly the cruel and callous side of humanity, there's something lovely about opening a package in the dead of winter, unrolling a beautiful crimson scarf, wrapping its softness loosely around your neck and realizing that someone out there cared enough about you to make something solely for your comfort.

If you like to knit or crochet and you don't already have a fall project in progress, may I suggest a red scarf? It can be as simple as a long garter-stitched rectangle or as fancy as you care to make it (remember that the final design should be suitable for either men or women). You can work a few rows on the bus, in the doctor's office, or while you wait to pick up a kid from school. All the information you'll need to make and donate a scarf can be found here.

Go on, make your great-grandma proud of you!

ETA: finished!

It turned out rather well, I think. Now trying to decide if I have enough time to knit another one.

20 years

Some time ago, I met this balding, boyishly cute computer geek with twinkly blue eyes.

And he proceeded to steal my heart. (You can read all about that story here, if you feel inclined.)

After some gentle persuasion...

...we got hitched. Still the best decision I ever made.

Happy anniversary, honey. What do you say to another 20?

Oahu: Day 1

Since our brains were still on PST, we woke freakishly early (well, freakishly early for me) and listened to the far-off sound of roosters trying to bring up the sun.  We ate breakfast with the family, prepped for the day, then headed toward Pearl Harbor to visit the U.S.S. Arizona memorial.

If you go, some things you should know:
1) Admission is free, though you do need to secure tickets for a spot on the boat over to the memorial.  These tickets are first-come, first-served, so it behooves you to get there earlier than we did, before the hordes of tourists descend.
2) For security reasons, no purses, backpacks or other large carry-in items are allowed into the memorial.  Leave your purse at home or in a safe place, as the memorial's parking lot is what is known as a theft-rich location.  If you plan on spending any money in the gift shops, bring in something like a wallet.  Or do as Miss V did, and bug your uncle.

Speaking of which, Miss V was not overly pleased to be stuck waiting for a boat ride at a national monument.  We had some time to kill before 11:15 and she didn't see enough opportunities to go shopping.  So we let her go off to Target with the fam while we took a look around.

Captain Midnight is the bomb.  That green thing behind him is the torpedo.  Know Your Ordnance.

Having grown up an Air Force brat, CM proceeded to make himself right at home.  Pew pew!

We checked out the cross-section of a conning tower...

...did our best not to taunt Happy Fun Nuke Torpedo...

...and discovered the world's biggest soda bottle.

Well, as Monty Python says, "enough of this gay banter."  None of this was really the reason we were there.

This -- out on the other side of the harbor, near Ford Island -- was the reason.  The white memorial building seems to hover in the harbor, suspended on blocks just above the water.  It looks graceful, its mid-century futurist architectural style reminiscent of Seattle's Space Needle, but it floats forever above a tomb.  Beneath it are the submerged remnants of the U.S.S. Arizona, still sheltering the bodies of her dead.

Miss V rejoined us around 11:00, still a bit sulky as she waited around for the boat.  She wasn't the least bit interested at first.  But before you ride over to the memorial, you watch a short documentary film about what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  There is archival footage of the attack, including what it looked like when the Arizona was bombed.  70+ years later, the footage still has the power to send a shock wave of horror through the audience.

After the film, V had plenty of questions.

We talked about them quietly on the boat, and when we reached the memorial.

She was most alarmed by the thought that there are still human remains inside the ship.

In fact, there are more every year.  Since the 1980s, those who survived the bombing of the Arizona may choose to have their remains cremated and returned to the ship to be sealed inside; some of the names of those who have done so are shown here.

The full list of those who died aboard the Arizona on December 7.  It took just 9 minutes for the ship, the size of a small floating city, to blaze up and sink after it was bombed. There are over a thousand names on the wall.

While we were here, a Japanese lady and her small son stood beside this plaque. She read the words in English, then painstakingly translated them into Japanese, so her son would understand what they meant.

Droplets of oil still rise from the hull of the Arizona and break on the surface of the water, dispersing into rainbow ripples.  These are known as the "tears of the Arizona," and they have been leaking into the harbor for the past 70 years.  I saw some of these, though I wasn't able to get them on camera. Legend has it that these tears will stop rising when the last Pearl Harbor survivor passes away.

It is solemn and sad and beautiful, and it was worth seeing.

On the boat ride back, I snapped a quick (and blurry) picture of Tripler Army Hospital, the big pink building where my friend Fen was born.

Everybody was hungry at that point, so we went to two long-running local institutions: Rainbow Drive-In for plate lunches...

...followed by Leonard's for some fresh-made malasadas (Portuguese-style donuts).  The malasada in particular did terrible things to my blood sugar, but oohhhhh so tasty.  Sometimes you just gotta live a little.  (Can you blame me?  Come on, look at that display case and tell me you'd have the willpower to resist!)

After that we went to the Punchbowl.  No, it is not a drinking establishment.

It's actually a military cemetery, located inside the bowl-like caldera of an extinct volcano (thus the name).

Lest you think we were being excessively morbid on Valentine's Day...

...the Punchbowl happens to have some spectacular views of downtown Honolulu (that's Diamond Head off in the distance).

Plus, it really is a lovely cemetery.

Inside, tucked behind the fountain shown above, there's a multi-denominational chapel.

The stained glass windows are interesting, in that the only true "windows" are the stained glass panels. The rest is just open filigree work.  Each panel has a high-relief profile of Lady Liberty or a character who looks to be Christopher Columbus.

Once we'd had enough of the Punchbowl, we headed back for the North Shore, stopping to take in the Pali Lookout.

Not only is the view here spectacular (as shall be seen), but the wind is so strong you can practically lean into it.

There's a great view of the Ko'olau mountain range...

...and the bedroom community of Kane'ohe.

This place gets the Miss V seal of approval.

Oh yeah, another thing: behold the bird of paradise.  Yes, the chicken.  There are bands of wild chickens all over Oahu.  They roam unrestrained across the beaches, through the streets, and pretty much anywhere else they choose to go, crowing and clucking.  No doubt this would warm the cockles of Colonel Sanders' heart.

Later in the evening, Captain Midnight and I did some sweetheart-y stuff at the Polynesian Cultural Center, which was having a big Valentine's Day feast that reminded me of nothing so much as the first 10 minutes of Spirited Away.

Enter here for the Island Feast!  OMNOMNOM.  It was quite delicious.

After we ate our fill, CM and I sauntered out to take a boat ride around the park.  The usual ride had been transformed with paper lanterns and tiny lights and other Valentinesque detritus, with lots of lurve ballads playing.  This made us a little silly, so that as we headed back to the dock and another boat approached ours, the woman sitting beside us couldn't help but shout, "RAMMING SPEED!" and we began to pantomime beating drums to spur on our gondolier to commit mayhem.  Fun!

Much satisfied with our first full day on Oahu, we went home and fell into bed.

Cuppycakes!

Miss V was deep in the middle of a reading jag today.

"Suzie, could you go to the store and buy me a cupcake?" she asked.

Hmm.  Well, yeah, I guess I could.  But I had the ingredients and the will to do BETTER than that.

Behold!

Cream-cake cupcake with vanilla-almond powdered-sugar frosting.  All homemade.  Mmm-hmm!

Anybody can buy a boring ol' Pinkabella cupcake... and there's nothing wrong with store-bought goodies.  But nothing tastes quite as good as homemade food cooked from scratch.

Which reminds me, local people: who's coming to Soup Night tomorrow?  7 p.m. at our place.  Bring a bowl and spoon.  If you plan on coming, send me a comment so I can get an accurate head count.

In the meantime, we've got a whole lot of extra cupcakes and I'm a diabetic.  Is there a brave volunteer willing to throw himself/herself on a cupcake grenade and take one for the team?

(Please?)

Simeon the lonely heart

Then it happened.

On Easter Simeon went into the bathroom to get snuggly with Terry, and she was just -- gone. No farewell, no note of explanation. Nothing. In her accustomed place was a white rabbit.

Simeon was so despondent he didn't emerge from the stateroom for several days. He even missed seeing the splendors of Egypt.

Instead, Paddington Bear went to Cairo.

He saw the pyramids, too.

Simeon's host family had to enjoy the Nile without him...

...visit the Sphinx without him...

...even see the ruins of Karnak without him.

Simeon is heartbroken, thinking with sad nostalgia about his star-crossed trip on the Love Boat. Poor monkey.