We Go With Him

My Beautiful Aunt, Ave Atque Vale

Saturday it was Aunt Karen's funeral in Sacramento. I so wanted to be there, I feel very wrenched in my stomach thinking about it. But Charlie having had incidents involving a trunk (of the automotive sort) twice due to anticipating my 40-hour trip to California in June, I couldn't.

Charlie maybe has a cold from the latest round of crazy weather (roasting hot 104 degree humidex one day, then breezy 70s -- like being at the ocean), and/or from a recent excess of emotional angst. He woke 3.30am and then was ultra good, cheerily acceding to me setting the timer twice for two hour segments. We all went on a walk at 7.30, then I went running while he breakfasted, then he got a fabulous haircut and shave, then he slowly did 16 miles on the bike path. He moved quite slowly, indeed, the rest of the day, on a home 6-miler and a walk in which he stood and stared at things and made gestures and noises while I thought about Sacramento. Despite a long afternoon nap, Charlie went to bed at 9.45 pm and to sleep.

My sister kindly offered to read something for me at Aunt Karen's service. Here it is.

---

My sister Jennifer, who’s reading this, and I were born in the late 1960s, when Aunt Karen was going to Cal Berkeley. She was an English major, confuting stereotypic assumptions that all Asian Americans of earlier eras were engineers and science majors. I’ve always loved books and reading and studied literature too when I went to university.

Aunt Karen often gave us books. One of the first was a worn forest-green copy of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin from a mysterious place called Portobello Road. My mom told us that this was a big market in London where old things were sold. Later “Portobello Road” became familiar to me because Jennifer had a record with the Bedknobs and Broomsticks soundtrack and the “Portobello Road” song -- “street where the riches of ages are sold” -- was one of my favorites. Thanks to Aunt Karen, I had one of those riches, from a country far away.

When I was in second grade and had the chicken pox for two weeks, Aunt Karen visited and gave me a stuffed white kitten and two Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books. Anotehr time, she gave us The Juniper Tree and Higglety Pigglety Pop! There Must Be More to Life by Maurice Sendak. She shared her copies of two piano books, one with the songs for Sendak’s Really Rosie and the Nutshell Kids and another with music and lyrics from all sorts of Lerner and Lowe musicals, from Gigi to Camelot.

No surprise that some of Aunt Karen’s gifts to Charlie were all about books and stories, a pale blue and pink blanket with Peter Rabbit embroidery and a set of plastic dishes painted with Winnie the Pooh (the Milne drawings, not the Disney ones). The plate and bowl are long gone but Charlie still uses the cup when he brushes his teeth and the blanket is safely tucked away in my bedroom.

These gifts -- and the silk scarf in dark blues and gold and red flowers, and a soft grey wool scarf -- were, to me, emblematic of Aunt Karen. She was kind and caring, there is no doubt. The things she gave us were thoughtfully chosen, with us specifically in mind: Aunt Karen noticed the finest of details. She might not tell you that, but this attentiveness came through in her gestures and actions; in, for instance, the plates of Christmas cookies she, and Alissa and Maeley, made and gave every December. My favorites were her Russian teacakes, petite and with just enough powdered sugar and melting in your mouth, and her thumbprint cookies, with a perfect smidgeon of jam in the center.

I noted this artful precision and grace in Aunt Karen’s writing when she and I exchanged some emails in recent years. I could hear her voice so clearly in her writing and have saved the emails for careful rereading. Due to Charlie’s struggles with being away from our home in New Jersey as he became a teenager, my husband Jim and I have not been able to visit California for the holidays. I’ve deeply missed the chance to see and talk to Aunt Karen and everyone in Sacramento. Happily, I was able to attend Alissa and Uri’s beautiful wedding in June and see Aunt Karen with that delighted, just-tickled-pink smile and to feel her familiar, gentle presence.

It was the smile she cheered me with when she brought me that stuffed kitten when I was little. It was a smile she never lost, through good times and sad times. Having been through some things myself in raising Charlie (he is on the moderate to severe end of the autism spectrum), I have always been inspired by, and sought to emulate, Aunt Karen’s resilience, her quiet strength and her grace in adversity.

In recent years, I have been thinking ahead to when Charlie might be able to travel again, and how it would be good to sit down with Aunt Karen and tell her how much that frayed copy of Squirrel Nutkin meant to me and to thank her for bringing literature, a taste of a world beyond, beauty and grace into my life. I’m grateful to Alissa and Maeley and Art to be able to tell you about what Aunt Karen has meant to me and to Jennifer for reading it.

We love you, Aunt Karen. We will miss you dearly and deeply. You and your buoyant, joyous smile, will be always be in our memories and close to our hearts.

love, Kristina

[click on the photos to enlarge]

Digging around in Lake Tahoe (looks like I'm on the hunt for something in that water).

Must have been Jennifer's 2nd or 3rd birthday!

Taken in Sacramento ca. 1967 at the house on Q Street (that's Jennifer; I wasn't around yet).

Aunt Karen (with that smile -- she just looks so delighted) and her family at my cousin Alissa's June wedding.

 

 

Aunt Karen

My beautiful Aunt Karen, my mother's youngest sister, passed away this morning, around 4am, 12 July 2012, with her loved ones at her side. She was always so kind and sweet and caring.

She has had cancer, three times, for several years. She went to the University of California at Berkeley and studied English and spent a lot of time with us (me as a baby above, my sister at Lake Tahoe below) when we were little.

Sending all thoughts and prayers to my lovely cousins, Alissa and Maeley, and Aunt Karen's loving partner, Art.

And now, with utmost relief, I will barely be leaving New Jersey for the rest of the summer.

Charlie had a really hard time of it while I was in California. Most of the floorspace of the lower floor of our house was covered in plastic kitchenware, books, or a combination of bike helmets and coins and papers after Sunday night's storm. Jim had exerted the usual superhuman effort to keep Charlie together but I guess we aren't the 'tight team o' three' for nothing: It doesn't work so well when the team is down one member.

A somber boy got off the bus at 4pm and looked at me and said 'hi,' then went inside. I hadn't yet picked up all the books on the living floor. 'Clean up' said Charlie, looking at me.

The somberness lasted for most of the rest of the day and became crying on a walk and more crying after Charlie went up to bed. He had his iPad but had left his other items -- five certain articles of clothing each with symbolic associations of Jim, me and the ocean and a plastic Walkman -- on the floor of the living room. I brought these up and put them in a vaguely geometric configuration on Charlie's bed. Jim came upstairs to give Charlie a goodnight kiss.

I sat in the big brown chair at the base of the stairs and starting writing on my phone because Charlie hears the clicks of me typing on my laptop and more quiet was in order. We heard Charlie get up and take a shower and then, a happier sound, a certain string of five notes.

The iPad sounded with the six Disney songs Charlie has been listening and listening to and we could tell he was asleep by the final one, 'When You Wish Upon a Star.'

After the Vessel Was Broken We Got Out the Glue

I woke Sunday morning hearing Charlie's voice saying iPad. I went for a run up the hill past my parents' house in Oakland.

Charlie and Jim rode bikes and walked, once on Saturday night, three times on Sunday and he said mommy. He had mommied through Saturday night and was sullen on Sunday and after the third walk at 9pm, he banged and threw -- my table was overturned; I had removed some papers in anticipation -- and bit and he ran out and banged on the same car of the same neighbor.

Jim texted me when my parents were driving me from the vineyard where the wedding was, past the research lab the town was known for before having vineyards and a golf course and a huge edifice of a Target. He said he'd wanted me to enjoy the wedding and most certainly I had but I would have still I think.

My cousin was very beautiful in her long white dress and the ceremony was beautiful. Her husband is from Israel and the wedding facilitator explained some interpretations of the smashing of the wine glass and saying Mazel Tov. I thought of how objects made of clear glass have become something OCD Charlie throws, smashes, as the facilitator was talking about smashing the glass as a reminder, perhaps, of the world's cares amid the wedding joy.

I have not read much of the Kabbalah but I thought of the Breaking of the Vessels.

I thought of how my sister gave Charlie a toy baby Pegasus when he was a baby: Someone had made a montage of photos of my cousin and her husband with Disney clips and it started with baby Hercules, then there clips from the Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty.

Sweet and funny and I had some very good talks especially with a cousin, and learned about no-gear biking (my cousin's son showed me the groove on his shoe's sole from using it to stop the tire), and I thought about how fairy tales have the cartoon versions and the ones in German, and the daily work of putting the vessel's bits back together.

Charlie went to sleep after Jim showed him photos of the wedding on Facebook.

California Thinking

I've had California on my mind a lot of late. Maybe because it's the holidays and, up until last year, we always went out to see my family in California. But now it's quite impossible for Charlie to take a 6-7 hour transcontinental plane ride: For one thing, he used always to like to curl up at the window seat, but forget about that now, he's approaching 5' 9" with long, long legs and size 11 feet. 

Maybe it's because Friday Jim and I met with our lawyer to sign a special needs trust for Charlie and our will. Yes, I am very glad those are signed and done, though now---thoughts ever to the future---I keep thinking about how we are going to have to get Charlie out to California. He being an only child and there not being anyone in New Jersey to look out for him after we are no longer around (yes, big gulp), Charlie will need to be out there when he is older. It will be good for him to be able to get to know my family---my cousins have children who are almost all just a few years older than him--- better before too long.

Or maybe it's because Jim and I figure, live in California and Charlie can bike ride year-round. While it does seem that he and Jim are trying to make bike-riding such a knows-no-weather sport, the reality is that it will snow in New Jersey. (On Sunday, if the weather forecast is accurate.) Jim and Charlie did get in a couple mile bike ride in the early evening, but one is not inclined to go too far in temperatures in the low 30s.


Or maybe it's because I have been reading Erica's blog, The flight of our Hummingbird , about her life in California, about long days and really long nights taking care of her young daughter Izzy, whose struggles seem to go, on, and on. Charlie's have been of a quite different sort, but I know the feeling of hope-drained worry after a child has the same difficulties day after day after day, and nights too.

In Charlie's case those have been SIBs. These seem to be a lot more under control now. Friday after the bike ride, Charlie wanted to get in the car and, as it ensued, go to Jersey City for Vietnamese food. But we had just gone there on Wednesday and offered some local alternatives that Charlie usually likes, but this time he didn't want any of them. He was very distressed and asked a number of times for other things. We went home and Charlie sat for several minutes in the car in the driveway, then came inside on his own. And after going into his room and watching a video or two on his iPad, he was calm and came down and asked to go out again.

It was getting late and Jim talked about driving down to the beach and getting rested up, and Charlie went back upstairs to go to bed.

He does like to sleep in his own bed, drive around to see the usual sights and places. The last time we went to California in 2008, Charlie was not happy most of the time, largely because everything was different and he just wanted to be back home.

We'll go out again someday. And in the meantime, we will be making the most of being here in Jersey, here where we are.

But a little California thinking (about wandering through these bookstores) does not hurt, no?

Can't Beat the Heat So Just Join In

This summer of 2010 seeming very likely to be about to go down as the Hottest Ever Since They Started Keeping Records (at least so far for June), it's inevitable that I would post about it. Especially as I am, truth to tell, a heat wimp.

By which I mean, even though my genetic make-up---southern Chinese around Guangdong---would seem to 'predispose' me to being at home in hot, humid climes with the sun beating down, I really prefer summer NorCal style, that infamous San Francisco summer weather that makes for shivering tourists (thinking that if it's summer in California, it must be sunny and palm trees, right?) waiting in the cable car line on Powell Street with just bought 'SAN FRANCISCO' sweatshirts hastily pulled over their tanks and shorts. 

I've got the phrase 'and the fog comes in every evening' stuck in my head.

Yeah and '56 degrees.'

Growing up, I quickly discovered that the Bay Area (I'm an Oakland gal) was charmed when it came to weather. My mother is from Sacramento in the Great Central Valley and it was on summer visits that I first got a taste of 99+ degree heat that made the sidewalks so hot you could (as my late Uncle Quonson liked to say with a grin and a twist of his mouth) fry an egg thereupon. My mom would bring towels so we wouldn't have to sit on burning hot seats and we made sure to bring the car whose air conditioning worked well (a cream Chevrolet Caprice Classic in my formative years). We also sometimes ventured down to San Jose with the sole aim of visiting not anything having to do with matters IT or computer-ish, but to go to Frontier Village; San Jose, to me, still carries a whiff of dusty orchards and one-story, faded stucco houses. 

For four years (also very formative ones---I was 4-8 years old) we lived on the other side of the mountains in Contra Costa County, in a tract home so new there were horses behind our back yard when we first moved in (my sister and I spent a great deal of time peering through a knothole in the fence to catch of glimpse of their tails). I still remember the row of lilies of the valley my parents planted outside our bedroom windows amid the tanbark and to the side of the big beige humming air conditioner---we hadn't needed such at our old house in Oakland.

From where I'm sitting on our tough, and highly functional (and large), IKEA couch, I can hear our air conditioner working away just outside the backyard living room window of our house here in north central New Jersey. We haven't turn it off in what must be weeks. Our bedrooms are on the second floor and when Charlie goes up to bed we really blast it; it's certainly cooler on the first floor, but Charlie, Mr. Creature of Habit if there ever was one, sleeps in his bed, in his bedroom.

My own inclination in such temperatures ( 90+ degrees Fahrenheit/35 degrees+ Celsius) is to bunker down inside wherever there's air conditioning with a book and/or my computer and a big cup of hot coffee, sometimes tea (yes, you read that right, hot coffee or tea---in 1988 I spent summer studying Mandarin in Taipei, Taiwan; I had a room with a fan about as large as said laptop and learned to drink hot things to cool down). 

As you know, we don't exactly do that around here, at least not while Charlie is home and awake and rarin' to go on bike rides (he called for that within 10 minutes of stepping in the door Wednesday afternoon) and a walk (he and I went on one after a sudden bout of rain and thunder with the sun out). Charlie makes a complete wimp of me: No matter how high the mercury, how intense the 3pm sun on the concrete, how schwul-ish the air, he just keeps putting one foot in front of the other and walking on, and at a quite fast 'power-walker' pace. Charlie gets hot and sweaty but he just seems quite inclined to put up with it and do what he wants to do, walk, be it walking or riding, for miles.

(And I think I finally understand how those ancient Greek hoplites could march for miles and days carrying their bronze helmets, breastplates, greaves, swords, spears, shields, etc. etc., not to mention their packs with food, etc. etc.. Charlie embodies the meaning of 'soldiering on.')

And just as I learned (after 30 or so years) to swim because I had to chase Charlie around the indoor swimming pool, so I've found myself able to keep on going in the heat. I can't say I don't mind it or that I like it (the latter would be an utter lie), but, maybe the ol' genetic make-up is kicking in for me (as it clearly has for Charlie). 

As a result of the latest round of hot 'n' humid walks with Charlie, I'm quite up for my morning rush down John F. Kennedy Boulevard, with the exhaust of buses, beat-up cars, and semis blowing us all in the face (there always seem to be people out and walking and some in suits and many women with hijabs); the trickle-drip of air conditioner condensation from apartments above; and full sun (which does feel intense when there's no trees save some poor scraggly things, under brick apartment buildings built a century ago and not always well up-kept, and workers clearing asbestos and who knows what in a powdery cloud, all amid litter of various sorts, sizes, and quantities). The afternoon rush-walk to get back to Journal Square to take the PATH to Newark and then the train home is a little more, ah, perspiration-inducing, especially with a Bag of Stuff. (Make that, actually, Bags, to 'distribute the weight evenly.') 

Once again, Charlie and our life with him teaches one that one can endure, that one can do, much more than one might have thought.

But I still don't like this heat.

You. Are. Here.

 In A Subarctic Autism Awareness Day Analogy,  Shannon proposes a "new and more appropriate geographic autism analogy" in lieu of Emily Perl Kingsley's Welcome to Holland. That essay, Shannon notes, was written for families with children with Down Syndrome; she proposes 

 Welcome to Yellowknife! 

As Shannon writes:

Receiving a child's autism diagnosis is like living in the world's most wonderful city, San Francisco, then being suddenly informed of your family's relocation to Yellowknife, a busy city in Canada's subarctic. Even parents who know only that the subarctic is where the globe turns from green to white are aware it's not a place one lives casually. If you're going to survive the long, dark, fierce winters and bug-ridden summers, you have to be prepared. You have to budget for expensive supplies and services that people in San Francisco never need consider. Yellowknife is also remote -- you may find that not all of your former families and friends are able to visit you there.

Living in Yellowknife can be exhilarating, it can by trying, it can be depressing, and it may just fill your soul with light.

I find Shannon's Yellowknife indeed to be a "more appropriate geographic autism analogy." I referenced the Welcome to Holland essay in a pre-autism awareness month post (Yes, We Are the Weird Ones); that essay and Shannon's post got me to think about how much I'm drawn to metaphors of geography and travel and to images of places and spaces in writing about what it's like to be the mother of an autistic son. In an earlier incarnation, this blog was called Autismland, a term coined by Jim to describe to the "country of difference" (another of his wordsmithings) that we've found ourselves journeying through with Charlie.

I like the notion of that journey being in the subarctic climes of Yellowknife, rather than the temperate setting of northern California. San Francisco is great though it always has a bit of an Oz-like quality to me. In Cantonese, San Francisco is Jiow Jin Shan, the Old Gold Mountain and this name, and the Golden Gate Bridge, have always made me think that the city across the bay has something magical, glittering, gleaming about it.

Yes, SF's the city across the bay to me. I was born in Oakland which, even with a newer population of dot-comers and urban farmers, remains a grittier, more workaday kind of place. I haven't lived in California since 1986, when I went to college here in New Jersey, but I like to say that "I'm originally from Oakland." We've moved around a bit, in Missouri (Charlie's place o' birth) and Minnesota (where I got my first tenure-track job), and came back to New Jersey in June of 2001. Jim's a native and Charlie's lived here the longest of the places he's been and I do feel very at home here in the Garden State but still something of a foreigner: I've no Jersey accent to speak of (Jim tells me he still hears traces of "California Valley Girl" though he's fully aware I'm from the northern part of the state). My wardrobe tends towards (very un-Hudson County-like) earth tones with a dash of Berkeley bohemia/natural fibers/handmade and nary a high heel---I don't do malls---and the last time anyone in this household wore make-up was when Jim did his Channel 13-WNET interview. I never can seem to get the phrasing right when ordering a pizza over the phone. And on the rare occasions when I get my hair cut, I'm always the only person not getting highlights or a manicure/pedicure. 

The Garden State is something of a Yellowknife, for me, at least.

One does learn to adapt, by force of circumstance. The two ways in which I've gone beyond myself and approached a bit of Jersey-girl-ness (according to Jim) are: # 1, acute love of the Jersey Shore and the beautiful ocean and #2, decent and ever-expanding ability to drive anywhere and everywhere in New Jersey.

Indeed, forget your images of sun-kissed California girls bronzing on the beach. Many members of my family are not big beach-goers and, too, cannot swim. (I learned in an indoor pool right here in our town, while chasing after Charlie on cold winter nights.) And that golden image of Golden State teenagers cruising around on lazy summer nights? Definitely not me. I got my driver's license after I graduated from high school and never really learned to drive until I finished graduate school, with Jim giving me kindly encouragement. 

But I really learned to drive when I had to take Charlie to this and that doctor an hour away. While I used always have to have my route (every turn, every street) mapped out from A to Z, I was forced to learn how to improvise by scooting onto side streets and local roads when there was a traffic jam on the highway; Charlie prefers to be in motion and better, yes, to be moving with him scanning strange streets than twitching and moaning on finding himself stuck in a stationary car, behind many other such cars.

Yesterday after I picked up Charlie from school, he told me "that way" and pointed right out the parking lot of his school. We headed towards the central Jersey town we used to live in and then, with Charlie pointing me one way, I decided to get creative (and to not end up doing exactly the same route we did twice last week while he was on Spring Break) and took a road that I was pretty sure led to a certain central Jersey college town. I was right, though it took awhile to get there; a call from Jim and the GoogleMaps app on my iPhone assured me that we were headed towards a road I knew. Charlie was starting to look concerned in the back seat but once we were on the highway he got more relaxed. And once we got back on the Garden State Parkway, I for one knew I could always find my way home.

While very glad to be back at school, Charlie has not had a mellifluous re-entry. Being back in school means being back among a lot of other people (students, teachers, therapists, staff) and not just Jim and me; among other voices, sounds, expectations, responsibilities. Again, it's a matter of being now in one place, and then finding oneself in quite a different one, and managing the cognitive dissonance.

Sort of like, perhaps, when (on Monday) I went to an Asian food store and asked for two jien duey. The woman at the bakery counter said something in Chinese---Mandarin, Cantonese, I couldn't tell---to me and I could't figure it out at all, or what to say; I can usually at least understand a basic question, if not respond in Chinese. Talking to Jim, I realized that I'd had my ear tuned to hear modern Greek, as that's the language I've been trying to learn. 

Welcome to Yellowknife.

To Autismland.

Back Into It All in New Jersey

Ngin Ngin's seven great-grandchildren---Charlie is the second youngest---were a big focus at her funeral. Five of them (the youngest is a toddler) all came up to the lectern at the funeral home and read a biography of her life. As I listened to them, I thought of what Charlie might have done had he been there: Jim and/or I would most likely have been standing beside him, and he would not have read. But presence counts for more than a lot.

Charlie just about a week younger than one of his second cousins (my first cousin's cousins). Until the birth of youngest great-grandchild about two years ago, he was the six great-grandchildren. While the three of us only visit California once a year, during Christmas, my relatives seek to include Charlie as much as is possible. In lieu of flowers for Ngin Ngin, my family had put down two organizations to which people could donate money. One was (at my request) the Friends of Children with Special Needs, which was started by a Chinese American family with an autistic child. Indeed, my mom and dad met with the center's director last week to discuss setting up a fund "in memory of Lee Chew for Charlie Fisher."

I've been fortunate to have met a couple of families with kids like Charlie in California; I've always liked to keep up with services, programs, and the like in my native state. Jim and I have often discussed the possibility of getting ourselves out to California by the time Charlie is an adult, as Charlie has no siblings and he'll need family around to support him as much as might be possible when he is older.

I'll be honest that our recent experience in finding an appropriate school for Charlie has shaken our sense of how much New Jersey can offer Charlie. Jim and I specifically moved back to Jersey in 2001 so that Charlie could attend an autism program here. Some years and schools have indeed been great---and some not. Jim often reminds me that there's "no geographical cure": Perhaps the lesson to take from the past year of struggle and uncertainty is to remember this phrase, and the importance of doing things---of teaching---Charlie ourselves.

In light of all this I've been reflecting on recent initiatives about autism in New Jersey. 

Sunlight and Rain

After flying into San Francisco at 10.30pm on Friday night, I stayed up till 2am talking to my parents. Saturday the sun shone warm (temps in the 70s) on a beautiful day in Oakland. I want to say more about the service for Ngin Ngin. I've just a few more hours visiting my parents here in their house and want to get in some more chat of the live kind, so this post will be brief. (No. my parents are not on Facebook.) (Yet.) 

The photo shows where we all said our final good-byes to Ngin Ngin, up on a mountain in the cemetery. From here, you look out over the San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond to the Pacific Ocean, all the way back to China. 

I had woken up at 6am PST (=9am EST) and, when I talked to Jim at 7.15am/10.15am, found out that he and Charlie had already been on a bike ride, breakfasted on bagels, and gotten completely soaked in a freezing rain on the way back.  

Can I say this boy's got something in him---some kind of spirit, some kind of spunk? Charlie did not complain or whine on what must have been a cold (to say the least) and rugged ride back home, and I'm not saying that just because Charlie's language is limited. On his bike with Jim, Charlie knows he's going to get where he needs to; knows he can get home no matter what the weather.

Back to the Old Gold Mountain

Charlie has been accepted into the big autism center. We will be meeting with the director and Charlie's case manager next week.

I learned about this when I checked the voice mail on my office phone as Jim was driving Charlie and me for a quick diner dinner. I was due at the Newark Airport for a 7.05pm flight to San Francisco: Ngin Ngin's funeral is 9am this Saturday morning. Afterwards she will be laid to rest beside Yeh Yeh, my grandfather, on a mountain that looks west towards the San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and (as my dad has so often said to me) all the way back to China.

We didn't dawdle at the diner. It's become wintry in New Jersey, with a cold rain. Not sure if Jim and Charlie will be able to make it out on their bikes this weekend while I'm gone, let alone kayak (though Jim noted that, should Charlie call out "kayak, yes," they will likely " be the twosome in the only vessel bobbling through choppy Barnegat Bay").

San Francisco, where I flew into around 10.30pm, was known as Old Gold Mountain to the Chinese who emigrated from Toisan in Guangdong Province. That's where Ngin Ngin and Yeh Yeh were from; that's where, in a kind of ultimate way, I'm from. San Francisco got that moniker because the Chinese who came over were, like so many others, in search of gold and riches (California was also called "Gold Mountain"). They didn't exactly find gold: Many found more hardship, and loneliness, and sorrow, and suffering, than they might ever have imagined---and many struggled through it all, and (like Ngin Ngin and Yeh Yeh) made it, though the road was often rough and rocky.

I guess you could say we've been on a similar road so often in our life with Charlie. When times get tough (as they have been), it goes without saying, it helps me a lot to think of what Ngin Ngin and Yeh Yeh endured. There are times when I know that Jim and I just need to put our heads down, set our shoulders straight, and keep pushing, keep plodding, onward.

As I got out of the car at the airport, Charlie looked at Jim and me and said "No. No." I opened the back door and gave him a fast kiss and one to Jim, and grabbed my bags. I'll be back with them tomorrow, Sunday morning; back on the long road together.

I can hardly wait: Life with my best friends of us is just too good to miss.