Peaches

Not two minutes ago, my phone rang. It was my grandma, my mother's mother who lives in Cerritos, about thirty minutes away.

"Where are you?" she asked, not bothering to say hello.
"I'm at home."
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing, just reading."
"Well, are you going to pick the peaches in the backyard?"

I knew exactly what she was worried about, and without missing a beat I assured her that I had picked some peaches yesterday, but that my father had given them to my aunt last night when he went over to play ping pong.

"There are more peaches on that tree," my grandma said pointedly.
"Of course there are, and I shall pick them tomorrow and bring them to you on Friday."
"Well, if you don't have time to pick them, I'll go over and pick them myself."

I rolled my eyes, wondering how in the world she planned on doing this, but of course she had no such plan. Of course I would pick them and of course I would bring them over, just as she wanted me to. She was calling to make sure I would clean out the tree so none of the fruit would go to waste.

"Don't let them rot on the tree," she said, "Those are good, sweet peaches."
"I know, Grandma. I'll pick them all and bring them to you on Friday."
"Good. Don't forget."
"I won't," I assured her and began to say goodbye, but the line was already dead. My Grandmother never says goodbye on the telephone.

Yes, yes.

One recent afternoon my father was hacking up another watermelon when my aunt phoned. I was eating left over Indian curry from the night before, chewing slowly while trying to catch the gist of the conversation from my father's end.
"Don't worry about inviting so and so," he was saying, "The old man wants to take people out to dinner, then let him, but just keep it small...
"...I know this is a special occasion, but there's no need to make him go all out and take us to Sam Woo...it's too expensive, there's no need..."
Sam Woo is the Cantonese seafood restaurant in which my family practically celebrated every birthday, Father's and Mother's day. They specialized in crab and lobster stir-fries, which were always begun with a server bringing the live animal to our table to show you both how large and alive it was. My father, who usually did the ordering, would peer into the bucket and smile, nodding both to the server and back at us, "Oh, it's a big one."
We ate there so often that for a while, I feared going there. But now, having been away for school for so long, it sounded like a refreshing treat. Assuming "the old man" was my Uncle Louis, my ears perked up and I wondered if indeed, we would soon be dining at Sam Woo. My Aunt Joanie and Uncle Louis moved less than a year ago to a house less then fifteen minute’s walking distance away from ours. They often ate dinner together, alternating houses as well as palates (heavy, salty and meaty at our house, light, bland and vegetarian at theirs) and occasionally they would choose to take the party outside and treat the other family to a restaurant meal.
My father hung up and returned to butchering the watermelon, taking occasional hunks and putting them into his mouth. Between stupendously slurpy sounds, he said, "That was your Aunt Joannie calling (slurp), Grandpa Yang wants to treat everyone to dinner (slurp) and she's getting a headache deciding where."
"Grandpa Yang?" I said, my expression bordering on incredulity.
"Yup (slurp)."
"He said those words? He said, "I want to take everyone out to dinner?"
"(Slurp) Yep."
"When?”
"Last night."
"Are you sure? He said the words? He spoke?"
"Yes!"
My father understood my disbelief yet let me sputter on for ten minutes as I asked him variations of the same question. It seemed incredible to me that the "old man" had opened his mouth to speak, when the only sounds I ever heard from him were soft snores from when he was asleep on the mechanical massage chair, which, after his bed, was his second favorite spot in my uncle's home, and the slurping of soup when he ate. At ninety-eight years old, he reminded me of my own grandfather, who had passed away last year at one hundred at one, but Grandpa Yang was nowhere near as vain or health conscious as my grandpa was. For one thing, he disliked the taste of water so would drink none of it and ate about as many vegetables as there were worries on his mind, which were few if any at all. Additionally, it was only this past year that he quit smoking two packs a day, a habit he had sustained for nearly seven decades. When I asked my aunt why he quit, she shrugged. "He just did."
For the better part of my childhood, I saw Grandpa Yang only at large family gatherings, especially the ones my Aunt and Uncle hosted at their home in Cerritos, though Grandpa Yang didn't live with them. After his wife passed away he moved to a sparsely furnished house in a nearby city and recommenced a short-stint of bachelorhood. I distinctly remember his arrival at a Chinese New Year party one year, walking through my Aunt's wrought iron door with a short, squat woman trailing behind him. Her name was Grandma Miao and her face was round and wrinkled like a dried Chinese pork bun that had been left out too long. She must have been around sixty-five or seventy at the time, way past the "dating" age in my book, and yet she was introduced to the children as Grandpa Yang's “girlfriend.”
I must have snickered, but not any more than the adults did. I could detect a tiny hint of sarcasm in my aunt's voice whenever Grandpa Yang's girlfriend came up, while my uncle sounded slightly defeated. But the secret to old age, they realized, was to care little for what others thought, and so Grandpa Yang came and went with his girlfriend on his arm, utterly oblivious to what the younger generations were saying about them. I grew to see them as a sterling example of love's second wind.
My mother snorted when I shared my view on Grandpa Yang's relationship.
"It's more that a man can't live very long without a woman," she said, citing my own grandfather's multiple marriages as sterling examples, "It's not love, Betty, it's companionship."
Maybe so, I said, but I couldn't help but see them as an "item" - an utterly adorable couple who had the luck to find each other after their first loves had passed away. I imagined them holding hands, sitting side by side on the couch while Chinese game shows glowed at their hunched figures from the television. I imagined Grandma Pork Bun fixing breakfast for Grandpa Yang each morning, rising early to make sure the congee was just the right texture for the few real teeth they both had left. I imagined them sharing their pasts with each other, shopping for groceries together, playing mahjong and laughing with friends together...
"No way," my aunt Yang said to me the other day, when I shared my geriatric fantasies over dinner at her house. Grandpa Yang was silently drinking soup, though to me, he appeared to be asleep.
"They didn't get along at all."
"But they were together for fourteen years!" I sputtered.
"Yeah, but this one" - she nodded towards Grandpa Yang - "only got older and more deaf. Grandma Pork Bun complained that he was stingy, and that he was a pervert."
"A pervert!"
Somewhere between my high school graduation and my semesters at college, the adults had become less wary of talking around me and it was through this new access to adult conversations that I learned my rosy colored vision of Grandpa Yang's relationship had been grossly idealized. My mother was right; it wasn't love that brought the two together but a need for companionship. Because the dating pool for people in their eighties was extremely limited, our family thought it had struck gold in Grandma Miao, the widowed mother of a woman my mom knew through Chinese school circles. A set up was arranged and two people were brought together for no other reasons than that they were old, their spouses dead, and they were of the opposite sex.
Their first meeting, I'm certain, went well. It was only recently that I became interested enough to take a good close look at Grandpa Yang's physiognomy, which, though old, is far from decrepit. Grandpa Yang, at fifteen years younger than his current ninety-seven, showered and groomed, must have presented remarkably well. He was tall and thin with a full head of hair, which he slicked back with hair oil. He had a swarthy complexion, which had been passed down to my uncle and two of my cousins, the older of which was often mistaken for a Philippine, and regardless of whether it was hair oil or face cream, he always sported a shiny forehead that gave him an air of health and vitality.
When in books I first learned the phrase “aquiline features,” I immediately thought of Grandpa Yang, who with his prominent nose and beak-like mouth, reminded me of a regal hawk or owl. This comparison complimented Grandpa Yang’s career as a police officer in China before immigrating to the United States. He had been an eagle-eyed officer, vigorously chasing after thieves, burglars, and prostitutes. My uncle told me that Grandpa Yang had been a formidable figure both on the task force and at home as a father, but his stern countenance belied the fact that he had been a Chinese Casanova.
“He only married once,” Uncle Louis told me, “but he had many girlfriends. He was very handsome. Very handsome.”
Grandpa Yang and Grandma Miao had money issues. Grandma Miao complained that he was stingy - an iron rooster who refused to part with even one feather- while he sat stoically when accused and only shook his head. She wailed that he never gave her enough money for groceries, yet when my uncle inquired to see if this was true, he discovered that Grandpa Yang had been giving her enough grocery money to feed a family of four. As for the accusations of being a pervert, my aunt merely shrugged and said that the old man did enjoy an off color joke every once in a while. But my mother would later tell me an interesting fact that Grandpa Yang had revealed to her many years ago: when he was younger and when his creative juices flowed more freely, he liked to write erotica.
“I would strip naked and write them,” he said gleefully, “and I sent them in to be published too!” My mother edged herself away from him but understood that he was, after all, a man. However, to Grandma Miao, whose sex drive had all but deserted her and to whom nature had bestowed a face reminiscent of a steamed Chinese delicacy, Grandpa Yang's testosterone-fueled interests were appalling.
Their relationship ended not too long ago. The deafness that plagued Grandpa Yang’s ears grew too much for Grandma Miao – she had walls enough back home to speak to – and she left in a dramatic huff. Grandpa Yang, I’m guessing, didn’t even say goodbye. The bachelor pad was sold and my aunt and uncle briefly entertained the thought of putting Grandpa Yang in a senior home. They had just purchased their new home for less than a year however, when Grandpa Yang was brought over for a visit.
By then he rarely spoke, unless it was a soft “Yes, yes” in response to a question or a querying look, no matter what the right answer was. In his old age, he became a “Yes, yes,” man, as in “Yes, yes, please be quiet,” and “Yes, yes, I’ve been alive much longer than you can imagine and my deafness suits me fine because you younger people make so much fuss and noise.” And deafness makes other activities less enjoyable. He slowly stopped watching television, preferring instead to stare contentedly into the atmosphere, and as his walking slowed to a shuffle, he did that less too, choosing to sit for hours at a time in a single spot while the world moved around him.
It was this older, quieter, seemingly detached version of Grandpa Yang that came to visit Uncle Louis’ new home and after slowly touring the house’s many rooms, the glittering swimming pool out back surrounded by a sun-soaked lawn, and the flat, mostly one-story layout, the bachelor noticed that the only other inhabitants of the house would be his son and daughter-in-law, both of whom were nearing senior-citizen status themselves.
It would be a quiet house, Grandpa Yang thought, and relishing this thought, he spoke the longest sentence since a while.
"I would like to live here at Louis’ place," he said.
My aunt and uncle obliged him immediately and moved the old man in, bringing over his few belongings - an old TV set from the early eighties and a few clothes that now only hung upon his wiry frame.
Now, living in my uncle's home, he sank deeper and deeper into his own world. He was far from senile, but his ears were giving out and he disliked wearing a hearing aid for the same reason my grandfather disliked it: it was too loud, the sound too crisp - often, they heard more than they wanted to. His head bathed in a perpetual aural cloud and drooping eyelids threatened to cover his sight, but he remedied that by choosing to close them in slumber most hours of a day. And just like that his first, then second, then third, fourth, fifth, and sixth month passed under the wing of filial hospitality. My aunt and uncle continued to talk loudly inches away from his ear when it was time to eat or bathe, and he alternated between a lawn chair in the backyard, in which he sat directly under the sun’s rays for five hours straight and the massage chair in the living room, in which he logged so many hours that the leather arm and headrests began to thin. In this way, we all expected him to live out the rest of his days, saying nothing, seeing nothing, wanting nothing.
And so the sudden desire to treat the entire family to dinner. It came out of the blue, utterly independent from anyone’s coaxing or prodding, and, according to my aunt, was a startling show of energy from a man she had begun to see as a social lost cause.
Without further ado, a restaurant was chosen, the dishes selected, and the guests rounded up – unfortunately, the children were excluded. The dinner passed without a hiccup, except that by then Grandpa Yang had reverted back to his old, stoic ways. He had sat quietly at the dinner table and spoke to no one, merely nodding when Uncle Louis put more food on his plate. When he was full, he leaned back and waited for the rest of the guests to finish, nearly falling asleep. The bill came and Uncle Louis paid with the cash Grandpa Yang had him take out of his bank account on the night he suggested the dinner. Only in that it was Grandpa Yang’s money could the dinner be attributed to him; cash aside, it was as though he hadn’t been present at all.
“It was very strange,” my aunt admitted, several days after the dinner occurred, “I don’t know where he got all the breath but he was positively enthusiastic when suggesting the dinner party. ‘Invite everybody!’ he kept on saying, ‘I want to take the whole family out to dinner!’” my aunt paused to look at me, “your expression is very strange,” she said.
And so it was, but I couldn’t help but remember my own grandfather’s actions in the months leading up to his death. Less cryptic than Grandpa Yang, but no less telling.
He was one hundred years old and it was winter. The following summer would mark his one hundred-and-first birthday, a mark he knew he would hit. But beyond that – well, perhaps he knew as well. Like Grandpa Yang, my grandfather had become mute – his ears were not hard of hearing, but he chose not to hear. It had been like that for the past five or so years, that grandpa stopped talking, and we were used to it. That winter however, he looked up suddenly one night at dinner and noticed how big the round table was and, in comparison, how few family members were sitting around it. He had spawned a larger clan than this, he was certain of it.
“I’m old,” he said, and the family froze to listen, “I haven’t many days left, but I would like it if we could eat dinner together as a family for the rest of those days. All of us.”
He motioned for my aunt to call my aunt and uncle and two cousins down from upstairs to have dinner and she obeyed. Moments later, the round table was filled with his sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, save for my brother and I, who were in the states at the time. Less than half a year later, he passed away.
“It’s not exactly the same,” I said to my aunt, “but perhaps he knows his time is coming, and he wanted to give something back.”
“Perhaps, perhaps,” my aunt said. We were in her kitchen then, clearing the dishes from another bland, home-cooked meal. The soft whirr of the mechanical massage chair could be heard from the general direction of the living room. I walked over, drying my hands on my shirt and stood in front of him, blocking the glare of the television. He must have sensed the sudden change in light, or perhaps the machine shifted gears, but he opened his eyes and gazed at me.
Knowing he couldn’t hear me, I waved but couldn’t stop myself from thinking, “Is it time?” Certain I wasn’t going to say anything he smiled, lips sealed shut. He didn’t have to say it, now or ever – but the answer, as always, was “Yes, yes.”

I Was Born Upon Thy Bank, River

I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever
At the bottom of my dream.
Henry David Thoreau


This morning, during breakfast, a man phoned asking for my mother.
"She's not in," I said, "She's in Taiwan right now."
"What about your dad?" the man asked.
"He's in Taiwan too."

I detected the slightest tinge of worry in his voice, but when I asked if the matter was urgent, he said, a little too quickly, "No, not too important." He was calling from the Southern California Association of Chinese Schools and wanted to talk to my mother regarding something beyond me. I couldn't help him and the woman who could was three thousand miles away. To divert his attention from the fact that I had neither my parents' cell phone numbers in Taiwan nor our house numbers, I assured him that even if he had their numbers, they'd be all but impossible to reach.

"My grandfather passed away last summer," I said, "So this summer, they're performing some sort of uh - my brain clawed at the appropriate words - death anniversary. They're probably going to be in the temple for the next few days."

The man seemed embarrassed after that, for attempting to hunt my mother down when she was in the middle of such heavy family affairs, and before I could say that it was alright, that if he emailed her I was sure she would respond to him post-haste, he denied that he ever needed to speak to her at all and told me not to worry and that he could wait patiently (for a month) until my mother was stateside once again and ready to deal with the real world. Well, those were not his words exactly, but they were what I thought when I hung up and imagined, rather enviously, of my mother reaping the benefits of being in Taiwan. She no doubt had received the man's email - and while she will respond and most likely call before comes back to the US, for the time being, she is allowed the luxury of being "abroad," of having her daughter field her phone calls in America, of reading emails and not being compelled to respond right away for fear that the writer might become impatient and call, of taking a step back from her real world and indulging in a breath of humid air, unattached to the million pressures of daily life that await her back home.

For us, Americans with ties to Taiwan, such was the magic of that charming little island.

My parents traveling to Taipei without me and my brother is nothing new, but in the past, during these summer months, it has almost been de rigueur for all four of us to be in Taipei for my grandfather's birthday. I have just turned twenty-four, and in all my twenty-four years, there has never been a summer during which I did not say, "I'm going to Taiwan for my grandpa's birthday," except for last year, when "funeral" was substituted for "birthday" and the face of summer changed forever.

As a child, I didn't understand that traveling once a year to Taiwan was a luxury until I noticed that many of my family and friends could not afford to do it. In college, when the value of a dollar became even more apparent, I still pushed the envelope, traveling more often to new locations, yet still maintaining my yearly pilgrimage to Taipei. Always, I went under the guise that I had to visit an aging grandfather. Sometimes I went twice a year, and for a while I felt that my relatives were beginning to tire of hosting me, the excitement in their expression lessened somewhat when they saw me walking out into the arrivals lounge. But my grandfather always smiled when he saw me, and life was so easy and carefree in Taiwan that there was absolutely nothing negative that prevented me from going back year after year.

In Taiwan, I was nobody of importance. My identity was that of "visiting relative" and my responsibilities consisted of dining out with family and friends, picking which movies to watch, and choosing which air conditioned mega-mall to while away the afternoon. My grandfather made sure my pockets were flush with cash (and my brother's even more so) while grandma kept our appetites sated and our stomachs bursting from the endless buffets we ate in Taipei's fanciest hotels. There were years, when my grandpa was still in his eighties, in which he traveled with all the children to Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. My memory, being poor, is fed by the photographs from those trips - here's grandpa posing with a monkey on his knee; here my cousins and I are, screaming with glee as an elephant lifts us with its trunk; here our hair is braided and our faces sunburnt; here my brother, Grandpa, and cousin Larry (before he was called Larry) are, standing in a row wearing their Japanese style bathrobes, arms crossed, faces unsmiling yet comical.

My clearest memories however, are those in which we stayed in Taipei, for that city alone meant vacation to me. Far away from my California home, yet familiar because it too, was home. Even my Taiwanese cousins felt like they were on vacation when my brother and I arrived, for it meant more opportunities to get out of the house and less supervision from their parents. They continued to attend cram schools and piano lessons, but there were movies and games and shopping with their American cousins to look forward to afterward. As we grew however, so did their responsibilities. Our vacation time shortened to two or three weeks rather than the month and a half we used to stay. We aged into our late teens and early twenties with high school and college flashing by and suddenly, my cousins were moving out of the country to pursue master degrees. I still took trips - to Shanghai, London and even Paris - with my cousin Karen, she on vacation from her masters programs and I just along for the ride, but even amidst all the fun we were having, the larger responsibility of the "real world" loomed over us. We could no longer enjoy ourselves as freely as we had in our younger years.

My grandfather's death only affirmed this. His last few years were a golden era for the children. As long as grandpa was around, we would always be "the grandkids," which gave us the special glow of youth, even though we were undeniably adult. And though he never intended to, he took to the grave our childhoods, our days of indolence and excess and irresponsibility for anything or anyone but the afternoon and ourselves. His death meant a shift up the ladder for our parents and for us, and rather than a family of three generations we have become a family stalled at two - the younger set sprawled out across three continents, moving forward, but also, and now I can only speak for myself, paralyzed about what to do next. I had paused beneath my grandfather's 100-year-old shadow for so long that now, squinting into the sun of the "real world," I'm uncertain of where to go.

Not to Taiwan, not this summer, anyhow. The thought of not being in Taiwan at this time was strange, but the physicality of it, of staying put in Villa Park, regardless of where my parents are, feels right. My family in Taiwan is doing a bit of their own reshuffling - my cousins are abroad except for one, who is knee deep in her own graduation anxieties and planning to fly the coop in less than half a year. My aunts and uncles are nearing retirement and planning on taking a few trips of their own - some to visit their children abroad, some to go out and see the places they had always wanted to see, but could never bring themselves to be away for that long. They had dinner to cook, clothes to wash, money to earn.

Not too long after my grandfather passed, my grandma began the monumental task of moving out of their bedroom. The building in which I had spent so many summers and winters was to be hollowed out and stripped down for a long overdue refurbishment. My uncles had decided to put the remodeling on hold until Grandpa had passed away. In the weeks leading up to the funeral I saw my grandma, her face stony with grief, taking down bits and pieces of their life together. Faded photographs she had taped to the mini-fridge, invitations to a hundred weddings, birthday parties and company dinners - being one-hundred years old in Asia makes you quite the lucky charm and an oft-requested presence at such events - paintings, a hundred ticking clocks, and many hundreds more of other little doodads that caught my grandpa's eye at one time or other and made it into his collection of things-that-make-him-happy. Their room, with its giant bed and massage chair draped with an assortment of blankets stolen from airlines and stuffed animals, stuffed with memories both tangible and not, was disappearing before my eyes. I did not stay to see it go completely.

After the funeral my brother and I were the first to leave; our cousin was getting married the next day in California. Next to go were my parents, and not too long after them, my cousins left one by one, each to pursue their own futures in other countries. Would they come back? Certainly, but not to this home. To the address, to a new home, but not this one. The house emptied until at last, there seemed to be no one left but my grandmother - he had left her an island, unconnected by blood and separated by vast oceans.

She was the last one to leave. A few months ago she moved into a new apartment on the outskirts of Taipei to begin her new life as a widow. My cousin Karen talks to her most out of all the grandkids, but being in London also limits their communications. The last time Karen was back however, she told me she had seen grandma driving down Ren Ai Road. "She drove by so quickly she didn't see me wave," Karen said, "I wonder who she was taking out to lunch." Grandma kept in contact with all of Grandpa's old friends - they had become her friends too, so we weren't the only reason she'd come back to the city center - but it was strange to hear my cousin describe it thus, as though she had sighted a ghost haunting its old grounds.

The last time I spoke with grandma was over three months ago. She said, "You can stay with me this summer. I have an extra room for you."

I feared that she would hear my voice break, but I wanted her to know that I wouldn't be going back to Taipei this summer, that I had to find a job...

"Oh that's right," she said, "It's time for that now, isn't it." She was disappointed, but supportive. I feared that she would think I didn't see the need to go to Taipei as often anymore because grandpa was no longer there, but there was nothing I could say at that moment to put her heart at ease. I was terrified of losing it.

But as we continued speaking, I realized I wasn't alone in acknowledging that a golden era of childhood fun had passed. I had forgotten that we had grown up before her eyes - and that while her husband had passed away, she was still there, and she wanted us to become the responsible, caring adults our parents were, the adult she had been for us. It was time, in a sense, to return the favor.

"Study hard. Get a job," she said sternly, "Then come back and buy me dinner."
She was a widow, but never a ghost. My grandmother was alive and well and so was I. We had a million new memories to look ahead to, but now I was no longer a child.
"I'll buy you a hundred dinners," I said, "It's about time I treated you to something."
She was silent for a moment, then, "Don't worry about that," she said, "It's your heart that counts. Do what you have to do, and come back in the winter when you've graduated."

I smiled into the receiver, "I will, Grandma."

New York 1

Earlier this month I took a trip to New York.
"Unnecessary," my father said, "What business do you have in New York?"
"Absolutely necessary," I replied, "Grace will be there, and besides, I'll have two free places to stay."

The first place was with J, the son of a family friend who I had imagined to be some sort of shipping magnate. J's mother is an artist, a generous woman with flowing hair and luscious lips. She travels all over the world in expensive linen outfits, renting beautiful houses for months at a time. Sometimes she takes art classes from local masters to improve her technique. One Christmas she presented my parents with a painting of an enormous sunflower.

"It's in the impressionist style," she said with an artist's authoritative air.

Standing behind my parents, I heard some of my relatives snicker.
My father, not known for tact, laughed heartily and said, "Whatever the style, the frame will probably cost more than the painting will ever be worth."

J's mom, luckily, is extremely thick skinned and slapped my father playfully on the arm.

"Thank you anyway," my father said, "We will hang it right here, above the fireplace."

Her generosity however, extended far beyond her willingness to give away her art. She was also quite generous with her timeshare. She took me and my parents to Paris in the spring of 2006. Her husband, the shipping magnate, came along as well, and contributed to what was a most memorable trip because there were two middle-aged, moderately wealthy men with nothing better to do but fight to pay for every meal. I sat quietly to the side and ordered escargot and steak frites.

Last summer, J's mom (I'll call her L), took me, my brother and mother to Venice. J couldn't go because he had just started working for his father, who also couldn't make it.
L petitioned heavily for her husband to let J take a vacation, but the shipping magnate was adamant, "I can't just let him go on vacations with you whenever you want. He's my son, but he's an employee now. I have to treat him like one."

Tough love, I thought, when L told me the story. Sitting in St. Mark's square with the sun on my back, I popped another Baci into my mouth.

A year later, I ran into J at my cousin's wedding and asked why he went to work for his father.

"Well, it's hard to go out there and start something on your own."

No duh, J.

He smiled, "So might as well do some shipping."

He chose the New York office because it was in New York. His parents still lived in Southern California along with his older brother W, who also worked for their father. I asked W why he didn't also move to New York to live and work with J.

"J seems to be having a lot of fun," I said.
"He is," W said, "But honestly, I'm old enough to know now. I need supervision."

W is 27.

As J and I spoke, his mother came up to us.
"Betty! J has a great apartment in New York. You can stay there if you ever go to New York."

My eyes grew wide and calculating.

"How big is it?"

"Five bedrooms," J said.

That was all I needed to hear. It sounded like a mansion by NYC standards, and I was sure, as J's father was a shipping magnate and as his mother traveled in high style and as J, in his designer tie, watch and everything else, the apartment could be nothing but spacious, clean and luxurious.

Well.

Just because you think someone's father is a shipping magnate doesn't mean they actually are. In March I made plans to visit New York and foolishly invited myself and Grace too, to crash at J's mansion. Five bedrooms, I thought, that ought to mean he's got an empty one for guests.

Where do I get these sort of ideas? I blame television and girls named Blair and Serena.

J, as it turns out, was being sorely overworked by his father and had, since the last time we talked, rented out the last bedroom to a girl whose boyfriend had also come as part of the package. The apartment was in a nice building on 14th St, which on paper sounds like a nice address but on foot is actually a helluva walk from the nearest subway station. Five bedrooms too, sounds great, especially when you're talking about New York, but if you can build walls, anyone can turn a large studio into five small bedrooms. Six people used the one bathroom that wasn't part of the master bedroom, which was not occupied by J but by another female roommate. It is shocking, the smell of a bathroom that is used daily by six people. The gist of my story is that there were five bedrooms, two bathrooms, too many people and not enough furniture. From what I remember, J's "mansion" was furnished with two enormous futons, a dining room table, an ironing board, and a giant flat screen tv that blasted first the Laker's game, then the latest video game J's roommate had been dying to play.

"I'll only play for thirty more minutes," he said at 1 am.
"It's fine," I said, my eyes bleary from fatigue, "I'm not even sleepy."

As he shot at cowboys and slutty cowgirls, I used the only perk J's apartment (apart from being free) had to offer and signed onto Expedia.com and booked a hotel room for the next three nights.

It was expensive, so before clicking, "Confirm," I called my dad to let him know.

"Absolutely unnecessary," he said, shaking his head into the receiver.
"I know," I said, but thought, "Waaaay necessary."

The Last Summer

Even as I was applying for the gaggle of internships I wouldn't get, my mind was thinking unemployment. How nice it would be, I thought, to get rejected from everywhere and end up at home with nothing on my agenda but to wake, eat, sleep and occasionally, swim. The force of a burgeoning responsibility to "make something of myself" however, pushed this thought away and like a job-searching robot, I sent variations of my resume through more than four dozen abysmal internet portals that opened, potentially, to paid and unpaid opportunities alike. Some were to companies that you might have heard of: Pixar, Dreamworks, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Microsoft, Palm and Facebook. Other resumes went to smaller companies which I feared were actually clusters of college students squatting in their one-bedroom apartments without furniture and florescent lights, living off the fumes of fantasy. More than once I read in a job description: "We are a start-up on the verge of being the next Google!" Followed by a unapologetic: "This position is unpaid but could lead to a full-time position." What - a full-time unpaid position?

Surprisingly, the Big Companies extended the most interview offers, and I came quite close to becoming the Excel slave of a portly investment banker, but as I'm writing this on June 1st at home in Villa Park, it's apparent that summer has begun along with all the internships I applied for. In its own way, my situation appears to have played out again in my heart's favor. I did, after all, want to be at home.

Logical me spent most of last semester thinking, "I need to get an internship or my life will be O-V-E-R." At school, many of my (young, oh so young) classmates seemed to have secured some sort of full-time position or were planning on going to grad school. Those who hadn't weren't worried because well, they were still babies. They might have started turning the wheels of worry, but it was of folks back home that caused the most distress. I imagined horrific scenarios of unemployment: myself getting fat as my parents grimaced and muttered under their breaths about where they had gone wrong. I imagined my friends moving on to bigger and better things in other states, other cities: law school, pharmacy school, doctorates in the arts; they would scoop up accolades and advanced degrees and earn higher salaries while my highest achievement remained a perfect SAT II writing score and an impeccably organized sock drawer.

I felt I was doing myself a favor by entering the "rat race." At school, it didn't seem like a rate race but the inevitable and necessary road of the human race. It was lonely at the bottom, where I fed off my parents, who had established themselves successfully and sturdily enough so that no matter how often I gnawed at their branches, their extending deep down into their unconditional love, would hold fast.

"Don't worry about us," my parents tell me, "just figure out what you want to do."

As when dealing with any problem, I begin by facing the facts. And they are as follows: an internship I am without. What I do have is an entire summer and a semester to "figure it out," along with the hard-earned knowledge that "it" doesn't have to mean "my entire life," but just my next step. I have options - we all do.

So here's to a long, delicious summer at home: from the beginning, the very thing I wanted.