Mom

would have turned 91 today, but she finally got her wish to be reunited with my father (who died of Covid in 2020) last October when she finally succumbed to a number of medical ailments which included Parkinsons. As with many diagnosed with Parkinsons, she'd exhibited diminished cognitive skills including dementia, so my mother had stopped existing as I knew her for quite a while before she actually passed away. 

I've already posted an attempt of a eulogy but the reality is that it was more a biography based on what I'd learned from her over the years. And as it is with all parents, much of what we learn from them aren't things that are overtly communicated out loud.  

The relationship I had with my mother was complicated. Even as I am contemplating what to say here, I realize that I can't identify my target audience. My story is my own. I wouldn't presume to claim that it was unique, but at the same time, I can imagine that there are others out there who've experienced something similar and might in some way benefit from knowing that others have experienced something similar even though my responses to those experiences may be very different from the choices they made in the same circumstances; in no way would I want to claim that my experience is prescriptive, yet there may still be a significant minority who would benefit from know that their experience has not been unique, and that there are ways to come to recalibrate the behaviors and beliefs that resulted from these experiences. 

I suppose the first thing I need to make clear is that I am not angry with my mother, but I did experience a great deal of ambivalence when she passed away. No child should be able to justify wishing that a parent would die, but as I stated earlier, my mother had dementia, had been confined to a bed for the last four years of her life and when my father passed two years ago, her only wish was to join him in death and she expressed her desire to die quite openly. She'd been at the weight of about 78 lbs for months when she finally passed. Even before the dementia symptoms became more pronounced, our conversations had always been fairly pragmatic. The language/education barrier was a major factor, but there were things that weren't necessarily said out loud that was influencing what I was learning to believe about things. 

There are therapeutic terms that might accurately describe my mom's behaviors over the years, but I want to avoid that, so I'm just going to say that my mom believed herself to be inadequate all of her life, so she developed a lot of different behaviors to cope with that. One of the results of that was that I spent a great deal of my life being that I was inadequate as well, which led to my developing my own set of coping mechanisms and behaviors. I'm happy to be able to say that I've come to grips with a lot of that, but as long as my mom was still alive, I retained a hope that I could someday have a meaningful conversation about some of the things she'd done and said over the years and what I'd learned from that. And when my mom finally did pass away, my greatest sense of loss was not over her dying, but that this conversation would never take place.  And until now, it seemed wrong to want to mourn about this. For all intents and purposes, my mom died a couple of years ago when it stopped being possible to have even pragmatic conversations but even before that, I'd spent almost all of life feeling unheard. I've described it this way to many people: "If I went to mom with a bump on my forehead, she'd put a bandaid on my knee, send me on my way and she'd feel good that she did what she thought a good mom should do." I have only one significant memory where I told my mom something and she responded in a way that made me feel like she'd heard me and supported me. 

It's tied to another significant experience in my life - when I was almost killed by a box cutter wielding assailant while serving dinner to the homeless in a public park in Pasadena, CA (where I still live). While recuperating in ICU for the better part of the week, the only thing I was worried about was how I was going to break the news to my mother, because she was the type of person who always imagined a worst case scenario when I shared any concern (which I learned not to do). I eventually called her and told her that I'd been hit in the neck during a church event (which was technically true) and while I was still in the hospital, I was going to be OK.  My father turned 90 later that year and I went back east to visit and on the last day of my visit, right after I'd finished packing and has a few minutes before I had to leave for the airport, I told my mom more of the actual details of how a branch of my carotid had been severed, how long I'd been in surgery, etc. but clearly I was OK now. My mom agreed that it was wise not to give her all that detail before she saw that I was OK (I didn't tell her that I'd slept about 14 hours a day for the next four months or so). I also told her that I was going to continue to feed the homeless because it was important and I thought it was what I was called to do. My mom sat there for a couple of minutes, then went into her bedroom and gave me about $200 in cash and told me that this was to pay for food to support what I was doing. 

That's the mom whose passing I now mourn. I wish I'd seen her more than once my whole life.

The Blessing 2

I blogged this a while back and never published it.

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My father would have been 97 today had he not succumbed to the coronavirus last summer. I blogged about that last year. The last time I saw him was exactly three years ago and I blogged about that event as well. Reminiscing on that trip, it occurs to me that I received more of a full blessing from him than I'd originally understood.

I suppose I have to mention that before I left Ohio to move to CA, my relationship with my dad wasn't all that great. After graduating from college, I didn't find meaningful work in IT for over three years, and I spent a lot of time at home doing nothing. One day I was waiting in the car to go somewhere, and while playing with the seat belt, I managed to pull it all the way out and it wouldn't retract. My dad came out, saw me frantically trying to get the seat belt to retract and said: "You f--k up everything." I carried that pronouncement/prophecy with me to CA, where I engaged in a lot of self-sabotaging behavior. More on that in a future post. 

I'd already received what I'd call the first part of the blessing when he affirmed my ability to take care of myself when I began my sabbatical. I was talking with my mom on the phone, my dad got on the line, asked me if I had everything covered, and I told him yes. He said: "ok." and he never brought it up again.

Going on to my last visit, I'd already mentioned helping him with the yardwork when I first got home, but I think I should also mention what happened the night before I left. My dad always reviewed his change and saved certain coins. The night before I left, he gave some of these coins, including a huge container of pennies, thinking that the older pennies might be valuable. He thought it would take at least a half hour to identify those pennies and I told him I'd be done in about 10 minutes by using a more efficient search criterion; instead of looking at the year, all I had to do was check the backs of the pennies to eliminate all the newer pennies and remove them from the pile. I was done even sooner than I expected, and when I showed him, he gave one of those 'huh!' kind of laughs you make when you're pleasantly surprised. He gave another of those laughs when I showed him how I did it. Something changed in that moment; he'd never seen me exercise my mind before.

A Seat At The Table

For those of you who don't know, I've been feeding the homeless on a weekly basis in the greater Pasadena area for over a decade. We bring the food to a park where there are a couple of picnic tables and we serve food there. While making sure that everyone who shows up gets a nutritious hot meal is the highest priority, we encourage people to sit at a table and eat their meal there. Some do so regularly.

The point is that everyone is welcome to a seat at the table. Logistically that wasn't always possible - those two tables might seat a total of 12-16 people, and in years past we fed as many seventy people during an evening and we had a lot of people sitting in groups of twos and threes eating together on the grass.

We get all types of people. I'd like to describe two of them who were sharing a table last night. I will not use their names, and in an effort to protect their identities, I will be somewhat vague in the details that follow. One of them happened to have a criminal past, and it was during his incarceration he was diagnosed with some psychological issues for which he now takes three kinds of medication to help him cope. He fulfilled all the conditions of his parole and was about to enter a job training program when the pandemic struck, resulting in the cancellation of the classes he was scheduled to attend.  He still shows up regularly though not necessarily every week; there are days when he hasn't taken his meds and he knows that he can say things he will regret later so he'll choose to isolate himself.  The other comes from what most would probably describe as being at the other end of any spectrum that might include both of these people. This person has among things worked in the White House in Washington as a press secretary for a cabinet member, written speeches for various heads of state. Unfortunately, problems with addictive behavior has led to him living outdoors.

Perhaps the metaphor would be better if the tables were round so that there could be no perceived hierarchy based on where one sat in relation to the head of the table, but the point remains, there a place for anyone to come have a family dinner.

 

Comfort IV: Learning

I expect that people who know me well know I have a passion for partner dancing, even if they don't understand it, or understand what it is I value about it. But I didn't start dancing until my mid 30's and before that, volleyball was a major constellation in my universe. I played about 4-5 nights a week & followed the sport pretty closely.  

The greatest volleyball player of all time is generally acknowledged to be someone named Karch Kiraly. Let's put it this way: as a freshman at UCLA he played with the varsity and beat the second string and third string teams. Then he'd switch to the second string and they'd beat the first string. Then he's switch to the third string and THEY would beat the first string.  He's won 3 Gold medals at the Olympics and he's now the head coach of the Olympic women's volleyball team.

Karch has recorded a few videos about his approach to coaching. There's one about learning that prompted this post. Hopefully this link will still exist by the time you read this: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_64FAxU99d0

If not, do a search for Karch Kiraly Becoming A Learner. The video is maybe 3 minutes long and it likely take me longer to summarize it, but here goes:

In order to learn, you have to embrace making mistakes. In essence, you have to embrace discomfort. Karch goes on to suggest that doing this also requires that we be patient with ourselves. This applies to how we respond when we make a mistake, and also in how we respond to feedback when it feels like criticism. 

A lot of things come easily to me. Ironically, volleyball was not one of these things and I spent a lot of free time at the gym hoping to find someone to work out with to develop my skills. But for the most part I've not been particularly patient with myself. Shame was a big factor. 

Eat A Peach

 is the name of a memoir written world renowned chef David Chang. It's a little weird because Chang is only in his 40's.

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I started this post almost a week ago, then forgot to save so I have to start over pretty much from scratch. After a couple days of grieving losing that many hours of effort I'm restarting. Though in retrospect, it may not be a bad thing because I've had some time to meditate/contemplate on what I've read (I've since acquired and read/re-read Eat A Peach) and I think what's coming out is a bit more thought-out vs. stream of consciousness/initial response in what I wrote originally. 

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Now almost a year has passed and I let this drift, mainly because I began this in the wrong blog and I'm copying and pasting it into this blog.

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Even though it was published in 2020, I only discovered it because the original topic of this blog was going to be about ethnic food shaming, and I was going to include a quote by David Chang who once said something along the line of that one of the worst things in life was to be made fun of because of the food you eat, especially if it's the ethnic food of one's culture. I was searching for the quote when I found a transcript of an interview of David Chang about this memoir. As I read the transcript, I was further drawn in by references to specific memories described beyond the foods shaming, which included how Chang as a young child broke his leg and because of his father, tried to gut it out and walk on it and cried for at least five days before his leg was eventually x-rayed and it was determined that Chang had suffered a greenstick fracture which ran down most of the length of his femur. I also learned that Chang has been diagnosed as bipolar and has frequently dealt with suicidal thoughts and he describes his success as a byproduct of dealing with his shame (though he doesn't identify it as such) and associated anger and depression.

(NOTE: shame as it's defined in therapeutic terms is IMO something the average westerner just doesn't grasp in terms of its impact as well as its severity. It's not limited to Asian cultures, but it's also a fundamental part of Asian cultures, in how Asians are motivated to perform by being inoculated with the sense that something is fundamentally wrong with them, typically by being compared to some standard that can never be matched. It's fundamentally different from guilt, which are bad feelings which result from some sort of action of behavior. Guilt comes from doing, while shame is being.)

Chang also refers to han, which is a term unique to Korean culture popularized during the last century. There are varied descriptions/definitions of it, but I personally would categorize it as collective cultural shame for not being whole, which again is a concept westerners will likely have difficulty in grasping because the concept of a holistic/community based world view is totally foreign to them. But when the community is everything, families separated into North/South Koreans are irrevocably fractured. And when things identified with one's culture are defined to be inferior as the Japanese did during their occupation of Japan, their culture is fractured and han is a symptom of that trauma. And each Korean will experience it in their own way, so that one particular Korean's experience/description will not necessarily be prescriptive. But it's interesting that Chang points out that his grandfather was essentially Japanese in his preferences and ways of thinking because his grandfather had been educated in Japan. Chang also mentions that his parents were originally from North Korea and fled to the south.

Chang goes on to document how he coped with his anger/depression/shame/sense of inadequacy by essentially killing his meek, soft-spoke persona and adopting a workaholic set of behaviors that fueled the success of his restaurants but left nothing scorched earth behind when it came to dealing with subordinates. He also abused drugs and alcohol as part of his coping behaviors. He has since recognized the damage he's done and is trying to adopt new behaviors while maintaining the success of his restaurants. We'll see how that goes. 

I have more thoughts, but I'll stop here after noting that while Chang was raised in a devoutly Presbyterian household, he states that he won't ask for forgiveness from those he's hurt and he knows that he has to earn their forgiveness, which reflects a lack of understanding about forgiveness; forgiveness is not about the transgressor, it's about the one who was transgressed against being freed from holding any grudges. But I suspect his shame prompts him to continue to think the way he does. And I'm pretty sure a lot of Asian Americans who profess to being Christian still allow their sense of shame to dictate their thinking and behavior.   

Again, I (and David Chang) want to emphasize that his experience is not prescriptive, but I'd be comfortable wagering a sizeable amount that these stories create a lot of emotional resonance for a large percentage (if not a majority) of Asian Americans (perhaps more for males than females - there's another potential topic for a future post). But at the same time, I suspect Chang's shame plays a factor in this, he's quoted as thinking that other Asians will read his story and respond that they went through something similar and they didn't choose the same coping behaviors that Chang did, and basically say "grow up, you baby".

Be Curious, Not Judgemental

The title is a quote misattributed to Walt Whitman. No one can associate the phrase with any specific person, but I'm going to give Jason Sudeikis credit for it.  Sudeikis is the creator of the Apple TV series "Ted Lasso" and also plays the title character. The series has received both public and critical acclaim garnering a number of industry awards for their first two seasons. 

I didn't discover the show until the end of last year, and only because there was a connection between the main character and the head football coach at my alma mater. It seems that Sudeikis, whose character Ted Lasso is a college football coach, consulted Jim Harbaugh to develop a portrayal of a successful college coach. While discussing this in an interview, Harbaugh referred to a scene that's gone viral, known by many as 'the darts scene' or 'be curious' and can be found on youtube using either of those as a search phrase. I invite you to watch it.

The scene makes more sense if you understand the following before watching it, especially if you see the scene with the game already in progress:

1) Ted Lasso is a college football coach who was hired to coach a (soccer) football team in England;

2) The owner of that team has gone through a messy divorce and is motivated solely by revenge. She got the team as part of the divorce agreemen, and the motive behind hiring Ted is to sabotage any chances of the team being successful;

3) The ex-husband enjoys antagonizing the ex-wife who initiated the divorce proceedings, so much so that he's bought a minor share of the team in the name of his current girlfriend/future fiance, which allows him to be in the owner's box for all games. The plan is to conduct interviews lambasting the ex-wife for the poor performance of the team. In his own words: "It will be relentless.";

This sets you up if you watch a video version that's about three and half minutes long; there are two scenes spliced together.

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Hopefully you have taken the time to watch the scene. If your response was anything like mine, you watched the scene over and over about five times. It was cathartic for me on a lot of different levels. 

First off, it was fun to see Rupert get his comeuppance. He's the only obvious villain in the entire series. But it's Ted's soliloquy that gets the main press on this scene. And it scored on two main levels. I've gone through life feeling misunderstood and I've seldom felt like I ever had a chance to even voice my thoughts and/or motivation for anything that might have transpired. It took some time for me to recognize how much shame I'd retained over that when the reality was that their behavior had been judgmental. Then I was prompted to examine how my lack of curiosity in many situations may have resulted in judgmental behavior on my part. I've never bought into the concept of new year's resolutions, but this year, I've made a conscious choice to try and be more curious. 

Just watch the show. You don't have to rely on my endorsement: Rotten Tomatoes gives the series a 95% on its tomatometer. The show has back to back Emmy wins for seasons 1 & 2 for best comedy series and has won a total of about 75 different awards.