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Hal: Well, let's say since you were little and you always dreamed of some day getting a lion? And you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait, and the lion doesn't come. Then along comes a giraffe. You can be alone, or you can be with the giraffe.
Oliver: I'd wait for the lion.
Hal: That's why I worry about you.
-Mike Mills, Beginners 2010
Thanks, Giving
In kindergarten, we were asked, the day before Thanksgiving, to outline our tiny palms on orange construction paper. I remember removing my hand and seeing what my teacher promised would be a turkey and what a turkey it was! We were instructed to color in the lines of our fingers to represent the turkey's plumage and to give the turkey a face and legs. Carefully with a brown crayon, I drew a wing, a crooked smile, and spindly turkey legs. With a black crayon, I gave it beady-eyed sight. A rudimentary leering bird: a child's take on a symbol of gratitude.
That was the easy part, not necessarily the art.
On the back there were printed words followed by blank lines: "I am thankful for...."
Gratitude as a concept was rather foreign to me. As a four year old with strong opinions and a sense of self (which would sadly, come and go), I thought I grasped how the world worked. My relationships were simple and so was my life. School, Chinese school, screaming and yelling with my cousins took up the bulk of my time, along with the occasional spanking which resulted in more screaming and yelling.
I doubt I propped my elbows up on my preschool desk and twirled my black crayon in a thoughtful way. I doubt I asked myself: "What am I thankful for? A very good question indeed."
What happened, (despite my memory being notoriously poor, I am certain this is 99% accurate) is I simply looked around to what my classmates were so furiously scribbling and saw the words, "Mommy", "Daddy," "Brother," "Dog" and other generic words that compose a child's world being scrawled out in illegible child's script.
So I followed suit. Not because I was a lemming, but because my classmates reminded me then that "Hey, these bozos have the right idea! I am kinda grateful for my dad, my mother (even though she uses the belt) and my brother, (who saves me from the belt). These people/things are to be grateful for."
An early lesson in gratitude.
Now two decades later I don't have to think about it anymore because they are always on my mind. Give me the blank lines again and I'll give you a book.
I am thankful for......
Family.
Friends.
My job and the smiling faces (and kind-hearted reprimands) that come with it, and all the other jobs I've had, never for the paycheck (because for many years there was never a paycheck) but for the stories.
Life in general, for more stories.
And most importantly, because this medium commands it, I am grateful for you literate and "very highbrow" people who make time in your busy days to read my blog. Because writing a blog no one reads is like dancing alone - which on certain days can be just the right amount of fun - but usually, it is better with company.
Happy Thanksgiving.
That was the easy part, not necessarily the art.
On the back there were printed words followed by blank lines: "I am thankful for...."
Gratitude as a concept was rather foreign to me. As a four year old with strong opinions and a sense of self (which would sadly, come and go), I thought I grasped how the world worked. My relationships were simple and so was my life. School, Chinese school, screaming and yelling with my cousins took up the bulk of my time, along with the occasional spanking which resulted in more screaming and yelling.
I doubt I propped my elbows up on my preschool desk and twirled my black crayon in a thoughtful way. I doubt I asked myself: "What am I thankful for? A very good question indeed."
What happened, (despite my memory being notoriously poor, I am certain this is 99% accurate) is I simply looked around to what my classmates were so furiously scribbling and saw the words, "Mommy", "Daddy," "Brother," "Dog" and other generic words that compose a child's world being scrawled out in illegible child's script.
So I followed suit. Not because I was a lemming, but because my classmates reminded me then that "Hey, these bozos have the right idea! I am kinda grateful for my dad, my mother (even though she uses the belt) and my brother, (who saves me from the belt). These people/things are to be grateful for."
An early lesson in gratitude.
 |
| Normal Rockwell Freedom from Want 1943 The Normal Rockwell Museum |
Now two decades later I don't have to think about it anymore because they are always on my mind. Give me the blank lines again and I'll give you a book.
I am thankful for......
Family.
Friends.
My job and the smiling faces (and kind-hearted reprimands) that come with it, and all the other jobs I've had, never for the paycheck (because for many years there was never a paycheck) but for the stories.
Life in general, for more stories.
And most importantly, because this medium commands it, I am grateful for you literate and "very highbrow" people who make time in your busy days to read my blog. Because writing a blog no one reads is like dancing alone - which on certain days can be just the right amount of fun - but usually, it is better with company.
Happy Thanksgiving.
All of the Lights
Across the street, my neighbors have already put up their Christmas lights. Yesterday, as I was backing out of the driveway on my way to a family dinner, I saw two young men standing on their front lawn, an intimidating tangle of Christmas lights at their feet.
One of them had his hands on his hips, a concerned look on his face. The other was texting someone - it didn't seem like they would get the job done anytime soon, but then again, they were professionals. I wished them a silent good luck and drove off. This morning, the "icicles" are up and dripping rainwater.
We used to put up Christmas lights, the only family on the block to get up on a ladder and do it ourselves. My brother, father and I would spend the morning untangling the lights, go in for lunch, and then come back out and hang them up on nails we had driven into the edge of our roof when we first moved here. At our old house we used the giant, multicolored bulbs that now, mostly evoke the 80's and early 90's, but moving here, we saw that the neighbors used the smaller white lights so we switched, too. A few years ago we stopped putting lights up. It was, as the excuse goes, "too much trouble."
And though I missed them at first, I too, was relieved when the holidays were over and there was one less thing to put away. On top of that, we live in a strange area which, once a year is assaulted by the Devil's breath, also known as the Santa Ana winds. They blow ferociously around the house, knocking over my mother's potted plants, rolling them into the swimming pool and sometimes, cracks brittle tree branches. They cause fires which is the last thing anyone needs around the holidays and make your skin dry and ashy, which is also blows (pun intended) when you are trying to look your best for friends and family and photographs. They tear the Christmas lights this way and that, and sometimes, damages the bulbs so that when we plug the lights in, half of the strand is dark. Our house then looks like a sullen face with one garish eyebrow.
But the winds can't touch what's on the inside (unless some idiot leaves a window or two open).
Except for a few outlying years where Christmas was randomly held at my cousin's or aunt's house, the party is at our house. Those exceptions however, occurred three years in a row and burned themselves in my father's brain - he began to think that perhaps Christmas would never be at our house again.
Somewhere in the middle of this, we remodeled our house. During, my father took stock of all the things we had in the garage and made the decision to clear out our junk. He informed me of his decision, and I applauded him. He, my mother and the rest of the Asian immigrants from their generation are notorious pack rats, so it was nice to see that he was making an attempt to be otherwise. And for a while, it did seem like we had more room in the garage. Except when the holidays rolled around and it was decided that our house, newly remodeled, would once again be the place to have the annual family Christmas party, I couldn't find the Christmas decorations.
To be more specific, I couldn't find our ornaments - none of which were particularly expensive, but they had great sentimental value - at least to me. There were ornaments my mother and aunts had made for their first Christmas here in the United States and a few others that solely by being manufactured three decades ago, were simply of better quality than ornaments today. Lastly, there were the half-dozen or so handcrafted popsicle stick ornaments my brother and I had made in preschool and elementary school - rudimentary but completely original creations with our childhood photographs in them. We wrote things like, "Merry Christmas Mom and Dad," in our child's script on the back of them, and even though they were meant for our parents, I would have been happy to take them with me to my future home.
Inexplicably, my father saw the ornaments as "junk" and kept instead the dozens of empty jars, boxes, paper bags, unused yet outdated appliances and suitcases - all utterly replaceable.
When I discovered that the ornaments were gone, glittering lonesomely in some distant landfill, I berated my father. What a Grinch he was, I cried (though I do not think there is a Chinese word for "Grinch," and instead must have used the Chinese word for "shitty person"), how could he throw away things with so much history and keep all the junk?
"We stopped putting up lights so many years ago and haven't had the party here for three years," my father said, "I imagined it was only a matter of time before we stopped putting up the tree too."
I was old enough then to accept that what was done was done and I said so.
"What's done is done," I said, "but we are going to put up a tree for as long as I live at home. That's something I don't ever want to give up."
My father nodded, "Yes." His face was thoughtful, but he did not seem particularly sorry.
A few days later however, he accompanied me to buy the tree, and when we had stationed it in the corner of our newly remodeled living room, he stood back and said, "It is quite nice to have a tree, whether we have a party here or not, isn't it?"
I nodded.
"Will you go and buy more ornaments?" he asked.
I nodded again, though my heart winced to think of our old ornaments.
"Buy some nice ones you really like," he said, then with a sigh, "I didn't know you'd want to put the tree up again."
I looked at him then and realized he must have been feeling a subtle but supreme regret. He had had the best intentions when he was clearing out the clutter, but erred in his judgement.
It didn't matter. It was Christmas and in a few days the family would be gathered at our house again, There would be presents and people around the tree; good food, rowdy laughter and fond memories. The ornaments, no matter how old or handcrafted, had never been the focal point of our gathering.
"Thanks Bah," I said, "I'll get them tomorrow. It'll still be a beautiful tree."
One of them had his hands on his hips, a concerned look on his face. The other was texting someone - it didn't seem like they would get the job done anytime soon, but then again, they were professionals. I wished them a silent good luck and drove off. This morning, the "icicles" are up and dripping rainwater.
We used to put up Christmas lights, the only family on the block to get up on a ladder and do it ourselves. My brother, father and I would spend the morning untangling the lights, go in for lunch, and then come back out and hang them up on nails we had driven into the edge of our roof when we first moved here. At our old house we used the giant, multicolored bulbs that now, mostly evoke the 80's and early 90's, but moving here, we saw that the neighbors used the smaller white lights so we switched, too. A few years ago we stopped putting lights up. It was, as the excuse goes, "too much trouble."
 |
| Too much trouble. Photo from digsdigs.com. |
And though I missed them at first, I too, was relieved when the holidays were over and there was one less thing to put away. On top of that, we live in a strange area which, once a year is assaulted by the Devil's breath, also known as the Santa Ana winds. They blow ferociously around the house, knocking over my mother's potted plants, rolling them into the swimming pool and sometimes, cracks brittle tree branches. They cause fires which is the last thing anyone needs around the holidays and make your skin dry and ashy, which is also blows (pun intended) when you are trying to look your best for friends and family and photographs. They tear the Christmas lights this way and that, and sometimes, damages the bulbs so that when we plug the lights in, half of the strand is dark. Our house then looks like a sullen face with one garish eyebrow.
But the winds can't touch what's on the inside (unless some idiot leaves a window or two open).
-----------------
Except for a few outlying years where Christmas was randomly held at my cousin's or aunt's house, the party is at our house. Those exceptions however, occurred three years in a row and burned themselves in my father's brain - he began to think that perhaps Christmas would never be at our house again.
Somewhere in the middle of this, we remodeled our house. During, my father took stock of all the things we had in the garage and made the decision to clear out our junk. He informed me of his decision, and I applauded him. He, my mother and the rest of the Asian immigrants from their generation are notorious pack rats, so it was nice to see that he was making an attempt to be otherwise. And for a while, it did seem like we had more room in the garage. Except when the holidays rolled around and it was decided that our house, newly remodeled, would once again be the place to have the annual family Christmas party, I couldn't find the Christmas decorations.
To be more specific, I couldn't find our ornaments - none of which were particularly expensive, but they had great sentimental value - at least to me. There were ornaments my mother and aunts had made for their first Christmas here in the United States and a few others that solely by being manufactured three decades ago, were simply of better quality than ornaments today. Lastly, there were the half-dozen or so handcrafted popsicle stick ornaments my brother and I had made in preschool and elementary school - rudimentary but completely original creations with our childhood photographs in them. We wrote things like, "Merry Christmas Mom and Dad," in our child's script on the back of them, and even though they were meant for our parents, I would have been happy to take them with me to my future home.
Inexplicably, my father saw the ornaments as "junk" and kept instead the dozens of empty jars, boxes, paper bags, unused yet outdated appliances and suitcases - all utterly replaceable.
When I discovered that the ornaments were gone, glittering lonesomely in some distant landfill, I berated my father. What a Grinch he was, I cried (though I do not think there is a Chinese word for "Grinch," and instead must have used the Chinese word for "shitty person"), how could he throw away things with so much history and keep all the junk?
"We stopped putting up lights so many years ago and haven't had the party here for three years," my father said, "I imagined it was only a matter of time before we stopped putting up the tree too."
I was old enough then to accept that what was done was done and I said so.
"What's done is done," I said, "but we are going to put up a tree for as long as I live at home. That's something I don't ever want to give up."
My father nodded, "Yes." His face was thoughtful, but he did not seem particularly sorry.
A few days later however, he accompanied me to buy the tree, and when we had stationed it in the corner of our newly remodeled living room, he stood back and said, "It is quite nice to have a tree, whether we have a party here or not, isn't it?"
I nodded.
"Will you go and buy more ornaments?" he asked.
I nodded again, though my heart winced to think of our old ornaments.
"Buy some nice ones you really like," he said, then with a sigh, "I didn't know you'd want to put the tree up again."
I looked at him then and realized he must have been feeling a subtle but supreme regret. He had had the best intentions when he was clearing out the clutter, but erred in his judgement.
It didn't matter. It was Christmas and in a few days the family would be gathered at our house again, There would be presents and people around the tree; good food, rowdy laughter and fond memories. The ornaments, no matter how old or handcrafted, had never been the focal point of our gathering.
"Thanks Bah," I said, "I'll get them tomorrow. It'll still be a beautiful tree."
Letters
I spent the morning writing a letter to George, an old friend from high school who for one reason or other, became a pen pal after we both went off to college - he to Edinburgh and I to NYU. It's clear now we were both trying to leave something behind - carrying our true selves to new places, his thousands of miles further than mine.
Three months later, I flew my true self back to California and sent George a few letters from home before relocating to Taipei. George adjusted the postage accordingly and our letters continued. Regardless of where I lived, George's arriving steadily from small towns on the big Continent and mine trickled to him from Villa Park, Taipei, Berkeley, and now, Villa Park again.
Sometimes we do not correspond for months at a time, but I have at least two letters from George for every year since 2004, when we graduated from high school. Slowly, they are filling up a box at the bottom of my desk.
In Berkeley, where I felt my most writerly self thanks to the plethora of quaint cafes with shaky wooden tables and the soothing hum of students studying and espresso machines hissing, I received some of George's best work, not that his best work is behind him. He is a generous correspondent, stuffing his envelopes with not only his Jamesian letters, but postcards, bookmarks, and other flat trinkets he things I might "fancy," a favorite word of his. And the best part of George the letter writer: when he says he will write, he writes. As a pen-pal, he is the most constant with both his word and the medium. A rarity in this day and age. I can always expect in the mail the fat, blue and red edged envelope with interesting postage.
I am less thoughtful, though I do sign with a flourish, with both my first and last name.
"Why do you do that," someone once asked, "I only know one Betty."
In truth, I do not know how to sign my name otherwise.
Our letters are long, often with pages numbering in the double digits. George prefers to write on graph paper, front and back, and I prefer horizontally lined pages - alternating between thick sumptuous paper from Japanese stationers or the translucent airmail specific sheets that come in a pad of fifty, light as a feather. Another friend with whom I often correspond via Snail Mail, Julia, prefers no lines at all. I marvel at her self control. I tried to write once on a blank page and found myself staring at an avalanche of words.
I use only one side and number the pages in case George is reading while walking and a breeze carries my pages away. George does not number his pages, and once, reading his letter on my walk home from school, a breeze did indeed come and blow the pages out of my hands. Gingerly, I rescued them from bushes and dewy grass, which smeared some of his words - it took me a while, but I put them back in order and made a mental note to, in my next letter, remind George to number his pages.
We both write in cursive. George's words touch the bottom line. Mine do not - in a book on penmanship, I learned this is an indication of vanity. I neither agree nor disagree.
We write about our days, our studies, new friends we've made and people we are interested in but perhaps too shy to talk to. We read widely, but extremely differently - he writes sometimes about Marxist theories and his debates with friends regarding other things I know little about. I tell him about life in various Asian cities, and he paints portraits of the denizens of quaint German university towns, where he pursued graduate studies. We take great care to describe the cafes we are sitting in, the people we are sitting next to, and even if I am not in a cafe while I am reading one of George's letters, I can almost smell the coffee.
Three months later, I flew my true self back to California and sent George a few letters from home before relocating to Taipei. George adjusted the postage accordingly and our letters continued. Regardless of where I lived, George's arriving steadily from small towns on the big Continent and mine trickled to him from Villa Park, Taipei, Berkeley, and now, Villa Park again.
Sometimes we do not correspond for months at a time, but I have at least two letters from George for every year since 2004, when we graduated from high school. Slowly, they are filling up a box at the bottom of my desk.
 |
| Letter from George, 2008 |
In Berkeley, where I felt my most writerly self thanks to the plethora of quaint cafes with shaky wooden tables and the soothing hum of students studying and espresso machines hissing, I received some of George's best work, not that his best work is behind him. He is a generous correspondent, stuffing his envelopes with not only his Jamesian letters, but postcards, bookmarks, and other flat trinkets he things I might "fancy," a favorite word of his. And the best part of George the letter writer: when he says he will write, he writes. As a pen-pal, he is the most constant with both his word and the medium. A rarity in this day and age. I can always expect in the mail the fat, blue and red edged envelope with interesting postage.
I am less thoughtful, though I do sign with a flourish, with both my first and last name.
"Why do you do that," someone once asked, "I only know one Betty."
In truth, I do not know how to sign my name otherwise.
Our letters are long, often with pages numbering in the double digits. George prefers to write on graph paper, front and back, and I prefer horizontally lined pages - alternating between thick sumptuous paper from Japanese stationers or the translucent airmail specific sheets that come in a pad of fifty, light as a feather. Another friend with whom I often correspond via Snail Mail, Julia, prefers no lines at all. I marvel at her self control. I tried to write once on a blank page and found myself staring at an avalanche of words.
I use only one side and number the pages in case George is reading while walking and a breeze carries my pages away. George does not number his pages, and once, reading his letter on my walk home from school, a breeze did indeed come and blow the pages out of my hands. Gingerly, I rescued them from bushes and dewy grass, which smeared some of his words - it took me a while, but I put them back in order and made a mental note to, in my next letter, remind George to number his pages.
We both write in cursive. George's words touch the bottom line. Mine do not - in a book on penmanship, I learned this is an indication of vanity. I neither agree nor disagree.
We write about our days, our studies, new friends we've made and people we are interested in but perhaps too shy to talk to. We read widely, but extremely differently - he writes sometimes about Marxist theories and his debates with friends regarding other things I know little about. I tell him about life in various Asian cities, and he paints portraits of the denizens of quaint German university towns, where he pursued graduate studies. We take great care to describe the cafes we are sitting in, the people we are sitting next to, and even if I am not in a cafe while I am reading one of George's letters, I can almost smell the coffee.
Old Habits, Don't Die
Many of the things I used to do, I don't do so much anymore:
Even after college, when everyone said, "Oh you're not gonna have time to do that stuff anymore," I found the time to watch a movie, visit the library and read a book at least once a week. Twice a week, I would bake hearty oatmeal cookies and banana bread to give to my relatives.
I had no idea these were all indicators of unemployment or poorly defined internships.
There are women at work who can do all of the above and their jobs quite well, but they were blessed with enviable energy reserves. Or perhaps not reserves at all, but energy. After a normal week at work I spend weekend mornings zoned out, putting from room to room in my pajamas and standing in front of my bookshelf, wondering if I should attempt to read something longer than a NY Times column. Though I do light up briefly in the evenings - just long enough for me to drive to LA, dance for two hours max (before my feet hurt), and drive back, only to spend the next day in an exhausted daze. On Sunday nights, I often go to bed at 8PM to prepare for the following week.
"You need to exercise," my mother said, and like a good daughter, I recommenced hot yoga - but that is a false remedy. For some people, exercise is taxing. I feel better in theory; walking out of the studio, I think, "Ah, I am more energetic," and for two hours following the class, I am - but when I really need to be energetic is at work, between the hours of 8:30AM to 5:30PM, when things need to be done with clarity and precision.
Instead, I smile as brightly as possible; say everyone's name in a sing-song voice to mask my fatigue, and let my tired tail show anyway, by doing things like making coffee for my boss without that vital element.
This morning he walked into his office and then out again, holding his mug.
"Get me some coffee from the Keurig," he said, handing me the mug filled with water tinged with brown. It seemed more like a weak earl grey than bold Sumatra roast coffee. "Look at this coffee. What's the matter with it."
I stared at the water, wondering why the coffee had turned out so impressively weak. Painstakingly, I retraced my steps. I had filled the pot, poured the water in, closed the lid, pressed the button...
Damn.
"I forgot the coffee."
"Yeah, the coffee," my boss said, then he tapped his head and pointed at mine, "You need to put some beans in here."
- Read books. (As opposed to the constant stream of news and magazine articles I half-read at work).
- Watch movies. ("Drive" was the last film I saw and sitting in the dark room with a large screen felt almost foreign.)
- Go to the library, which, I suppose, goes along with reading, though more and more I find myself missing the quiet atmosphere and smell. Ah, musty paper.
- Cook/bake. (We had our Thanksgiving potluck at work today, something I had thought for a long time I would certainly bake something for, but the week rolled by and the only thing I contributed was my appetite).
- Clean my room. (Not that I ever needed to do this before; from ages 6-25, I had the energy to keep my room neat as a pin on a daily basis. I made my bed every morning, fluffing the pillows and tucking my sheets in just so - I liked that I could come back to a room that seemed like a freshly turned hotel room. In college, my roommates stared at my half of the room which seemed like a set from a stark, war-time barracks where everything was rationed. They wondered if I had perhaps spent some time at some women's boot camp. When my roommate's father visited, he whistled and said, "You could bounce a quarter off your sheets. That was the test back when I was in the army." I merely shrugged, "I like things neat.")
Even after college, when everyone said, "Oh you're not gonna have time to do that stuff anymore," I found the time to watch a movie, visit the library and read a book at least once a week. Twice a week, I would bake hearty oatmeal cookies and banana bread to give to my relatives.
I had no idea these were all indicators of unemployment or poorly defined internships.
There are women at work who can do all of the above and their jobs quite well, but they were blessed with enviable energy reserves. Or perhaps not reserves at all, but energy. After a normal week at work I spend weekend mornings zoned out, putting from room to room in my pajamas and standing in front of my bookshelf, wondering if I should attempt to read something longer than a NY Times column. Though I do light up briefly in the evenings - just long enough for me to drive to LA, dance for two hours max (before my feet hurt), and drive back, only to spend the next day in an exhausted daze. On Sunday nights, I often go to bed at 8PM to prepare for the following week.
"You need to exercise," my mother said, and like a good daughter, I recommenced hot yoga - but that is a false remedy. For some people, exercise is taxing. I feel better in theory; walking out of the studio, I think, "Ah, I am more energetic," and for two hours following the class, I am - but when I really need to be energetic is at work, between the hours of 8:30AM to 5:30PM, when things need to be done with clarity and precision.
Instead, I smile as brightly as possible; say everyone's name in a sing-song voice to mask my fatigue, and let my tired tail show anyway, by doing things like making coffee for my boss without that vital element.
This morning he walked into his office and then out again, holding his mug.
"Get me some coffee from the Keurig," he said, handing me the mug filled with water tinged with brown. It seemed more like a weak earl grey than bold Sumatra roast coffee. "Look at this coffee. What's the matter with it."
I stared at the water, wondering why the coffee had turned out so impressively weak. Painstakingly, I retraced my steps. I had filled the pot, poured the water in, closed the lid, pressed the button...
Damn.
"I forgot the coffee."
"Yeah, the coffee," my boss said, then he tapped his head and pointed at mine, "You need to put some beans in here."
Generic Death
A few weeks ago my boss emerged from his office with his hair combed, wearing a suit and tie.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I told you," he said, "A funeral."
It wasn't on his calendar but I remembered him texting me the night before, saying that he'd be gone briefly to attend a funeral but to keep the meetings he had in the afternoon.
"I won't be long," he said, and walked out.
It was lunch and as I sat, eating at my desk, my computer pinged again and again as my boss checked email at the funeral. I imagined him sitting impatiently behind a row of sobbing women and stoic men, shaking his leg (even though I have never seen him do this), and scrolling through his Blackberry. Who's funeral was it? Whomever lay in the casket wasn't close enough to elicit any show of feeling from my boss other than a sense of obligation to be present. I wondered if he was thinking about his mortality - it's hard not to, is my experience, when there is a casket right before you, but my mailbox pinged once again and I put down my fork (and the thought) to answer his emails.
When he returned a few hours later, he had already loosened his tie and unbuttoned his top collar in the car.
"Everything fine?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said, then awkwardly and a little too brightly, "How was the uh, funeral?"
He shrugged, "It was one of my parents' friends."
"Old age?"
"I guess," he shrugged again, indicating he hadn't given it much thought and then asked, "So my afternoon meetings still on?"
I nodded - the funeral was already a faint memory to him. There was work to be done.
Some days later, an email floated my way from the business planning team. The subject line simply said, "Sad News," and when I opened it, the news was indeed sad.
The wife of one of our suppliers had passed away from cancer, the email said, would the company send flowers? Being attached on the email I assumed the responsibility fell to me, and I wrote back, "Yes, I'll take care of it."
I stared at the email for a minute, wondering if I should include a note of sympathy, but the supplier himself was not on the email, and if he had been, I'm not sure I would have said anything. It was strange to think that I had never met the man; only heard his name on occasion or seen it in emails - and yet - I clicked on the attachment - I was now staring at the invitation to his wife's memorial service and pondering what florist to use.
Whomever had designed the invitation misspelled two words: Honor and Chapel. I pictured the supplier sobbing onto his keyboard, his eyes too blurred with tears to see the squiggly red line MS Word provides when you misspell something. The lines were set against a white shuttlecock - a strange image to have on a memorial notice, but I had heard somewhere that the supplier and his wife were avid badminton players.
I used Google maps. I typed in the name of the cemetery and clicked "search nearby," and links to a half dozen local florists popped up. Eerily, they all connected to the same-looking websites, just with different phone numbers. The prices were the same too - and I wondered if I had stumbled upon some Bay Area Florist scam, but the numbers connected me to real women with soft voices and, I assumed, a way with stems and blossoms. Arrangements were categorized thus: "Birthday" "Romantic" "Get Well" "Sympathy" and "Arrangements under $35". I clicked on "Sympathy" and saw that none of the arrangements looked remotely sympathetic - they were too colorful, too cheerful, and too prettily arranged to communicate death. A few of the sprays seemed more wedding appropriate. There were standing sprays, standing wreaths, and bouquets with vases included, in case you wanted to place them upon an altar. I thought about the hundreds of white lily's at my grandfather's funeral and searched for something all white, of which there was only one choice. The supplier was Asian - he'd appreciate the company being culturally aware.
Next came payment information. For nearly fifty dollars more one could upgrade the bouquet to mimic standing floral fireworks. Mindful or perhaps just unaware of the company budget for these types of things, I clicked "No, Thanks."
I was allotted four lines for the message, about as many characters as a tweet. A friendly looking question mark stood off to the side of these lines and if you hovered the cursor over it, a message appeared: "Need help with your message? Select one of our thoughtful, ready to send messages."
Around me, my coworkers typed away on their keyboards. Someone in accounting laughed. The CFO shouted something about numbers, then stomped around, telling nobody and everybody that he was alive. Below me, the business planning team rushed around from meeting to meeting, with other suppliers whose wives were, hopefully, cancer-free.
I furrowed my brow and thought to compose an original message. I felt the seconds ticking by - the cursor blinked. I blinked. Finally, I clicked on the question mark. I had work to do. My cursor selected "Our thoughts are with you during your time of need."
Click.
Confirm payment.
A screen popped up to notify me that payment confirmation would be emailed to me. The following message, at the bottom, made me saddest of all:
"Thank you for your order! Your satisfaction is guaranteed, but please be aware that on occasion due to demand and seasonal availabilities, your exact arrangement may not be available in which case we will try our best to substitute an arrangement of equal or similar value."
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I told you," he said, "A funeral."
It wasn't on his calendar but I remembered him texting me the night before, saying that he'd be gone briefly to attend a funeral but to keep the meetings he had in the afternoon.
"I won't be long," he said, and walked out.
 |
| Manet's Balcony Rene Magritte, 1950 |
It was lunch and as I sat, eating at my desk, my computer pinged again and again as my boss checked email at the funeral. I imagined him sitting impatiently behind a row of sobbing women and stoic men, shaking his leg (even though I have never seen him do this), and scrolling through his Blackberry. Who's funeral was it? Whomever lay in the casket wasn't close enough to elicit any show of feeling from my boss other than a sense of obligation to be present. I wondered if he was thinking about his mortality - it's hard not to, is my experience, when there is a casket right before you, but my mailbox pinged once again and I put down my fork (and the thought) to answer his emails.
When he returned a few hours later, he had already loosened his tie and unbuttoned his top collar in the car.
"Everything fine?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said, then awkwardly and a little too brightly, "How was the uh, funeral?"
He shrugged, "It was one of my parents' friends."
"Old age?"
"I guess," he shrugged again, indicating he hadn't given it much thought and then asked, "So my afternoon meetings still on?"
I nodded - the funeral was already a faint memory to him. There was work to be done.
Some days later, an email floated my way from the business planning team. The subject line simply said, "Sad News," and when I opened it, the news was indeed sad.
The wife of one of our suppliers had passed away from cancer, the email said, would the company send flowers? Being attached on the email I assumed the responsibility fell to me, and I wrote back, "Yes, I'll take care of it."
I stared at the email for a minute, wondering if I should include a note of sympathy, but the supplier himself was not on the email, and if he had been, I'm not sure I would have said anything. It was strange to think that I had never met the man; only heard his name on occasion or seen it in emails - and yet - I clicked on the attachment - I was now staring at the invitation to his wife's memorial service and pondering what florist to use.
Whomever had designed the invitation misspelled two words: Honor and Chapel. I pictured the supplier sobbing onto his keyboard, his eyes too blurred with tears to see the squiggly red line MS Word provides when you misspell something. The lines were set against a white shuttlecock - a strange image to have on a memorial notice, but I had heard somewhere that the supplier and his wife were avid badminton players.
I used Google maps. I typed in the name of the cemetery and clicked "search nearby," and links to a half dozen local florists popped up. Eerily, they all connected to the same-looking websites, just with different phone numbers. The prices were the same too - and I wondered if I had stumbled upon some Bay Area Florist scam, but the numbers connected me to real women with soft voices and, I assumed, a way with stems and blossoms. Arrangements were categorized thus: "Birthday" "Romantic" "Get Well" "Sympathy" and "Arrangements under $35". I clicked on "Sympathy" and saw that none of the arrangements looked remotely sympathetic - they were too colorful, too cheerful, and too prettily arranged to communicate death. A few of the sprays seemed more wedding appropriate. There were standing sprays, standing wreaths, and bouquets with vases included, in case you wanted to place them upon an altar. I thought about the hundreds of white lily's at my grandfather's funeral and searched for something all white, of which there was only one choice. The supplier was Asian - he'd appreciate the company being culturally aware.
Next came payment information. For nearly fifty dollars more one could upgrade the bouquet to mimic standing floral fireworks. Mindful or perhaps just unaware of the company budget for these types of things, I clicked "No, Thanks."
I was allotted four lines for the message, about as many characters as a tweet. A friendly looking question mark stood off to the side of these lines and if you hovered the cursor over it, a message appeared: "Need help with your message? Select one of our thoughtful, ready to send messages."
Around me, my coworkers typed away on their keyboards. Someone in accounting laughed. The CFO shouted something about numbers, then stomped around, telling nobody and everybody that he was alive. Below me, the business planning team rushed around from meeting to meeting, with other suppliers whose wives were, hopefully, cancer-free.
I furrowed my brow and thought to compose an original message. I felt the seconds ticking by - the cursor blinked. I blinked. Finally, I clicked on the question mark. I had work to do. My cursor selected "Our thoughts are with you during your time of need."
Click.
Confirm payment.
A screen popped up to notify me that payment confirmation would be emailed to me. The following message, at the bottom, made me saddest of all:
"Thank you for your order! Your satisfaction is guaranteed, but please be aware that on occasion due to demand and seasonal availabilities, your exact arrangement may not be available in which case we will try our best to substitute an arrangement of equal or similar value."
The Elite (1).
"I'm going on a double date tonight," Jane said, "Jake's friend has a new-ish girlfriend and she's ready for her debut."
"You went to Cal?" she asked a little to brightly, using the uber-annoying handle we Bears use to signify to people who've gone to lesser UC's that Berkeley was and remains, the first and best of the bunch. When I first enrolled at Berkeley, I was confused when people talked about Cal. "What's Cal?" I once asked, "I thought we were at UC Berkeley." It was around the same time I went to my first football game (Cal v. Oregon) and sat on the wrong side, in a sea of green, and asked, "So, what color are we?"
I nodded in a non-threatening way, "Yup, 2010."
"How do these things work?" I asked, "She goes to the bathroom and then you guys have a discussion? 'Is she a keeper?' Kinda like that?"
She scoffed. We were chatting online and I could not see Jane's reaction, but I imagined it, "He's pretty much sold on her. She's one of the elite."
"Elite?" This piqued my interest more than a conversation on the girl's physical appearance would have, "What does that mean?"
"She's Harvard educated, comes from family money, that sort of thing."
"And Jake's friend...is he 'elite' as well?"
"Hmm...in a way. He went to Michigan, not Harvard, but he worked his way up there. He did a few years at Bain and now works for Groupon, which is kinda like Google, meaning their employees are all wildly happy with matching t-shirts and a multi-billion dollar IPO."
I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant.
"There's a distinction," she said airily. I pictured her waving her hand with jaded authority, "There's the "work-for-it" elite and then there's the "silver spoon" elite."
I had never heard it put so succinctly. It was perfect. Immediately, I began to classify the people I knew, beginning with friends, none of whom were silver spoon elite though it was still too early to say if their children might be. It was interesting to see people classified this way; it is no longer accurate or applicable to talk about old and new money - how/where do you draw the line anyway? New money eventually becomes old money - and if you spread new money around so that your grandparents can enjoy the wealth, that's sort of like old money, no?
I thought about notions of elite more readily observable: the people at my company, which compared to Google or Groupon, pedigree wise at least, was noticeably less "elite." I'd done enough rounds around the building to know that some of the business's key players weren't highly educated, which isn't to say they aren't smart, and along the way, learned that some of the people with silver-spoon pedigrees had the emotional intelligence of a dead possum. My boss himself came from a middle-class background - or perhaps "upper-middle" class, to be more generous. Upon immigrating to the U.S., his mother had taken his father's steady engineering paychecks and wisely invested them in some real estate, from which she collected rent. They made enough to buy all three of their children shiny new BMW 3-series for their first cars, and then send them driving off to USC, which, due to one too many admissions of people like my boss and his siblings, also stands for the "University of Spoiled Chinese."
But elitist our company is not. And judging my boss's pedigree, why should it be? During my first week I cleaned out my filing cabinet and discovered his college transcripts, which were filled with D's and C's. Lackluster grades from any college, (never mind that USC isn't even an ivy - though say that around the OC and you'll likely subject yourself to proud, hot-headed Trojan backlash), do not an elitist make. But my boss worked his way up and eventually, in to what any person with two eyes might see as an elite group of uber wealthy business leaders. If not a silver spoon he certainly had a bronze one (in the shape of BMW and an expensive diploma), but spoons be damned. He put in his time at companies larger than his, starting down in the sludge of customer service and slowly negotiated his way up. Then, seeing a golden opportunity where others only saw risk, he borrowed money from his parents to start his own company. Made millions. Lost millions. Then thick-skinned, borrowed more money from his parents (who, warier, gave a little less this time) and a few other friends, and started the company I work at now, which hires based more upon experience and personality (at least from what I've seen so far) than on schooling.
Within days of starting here I met a few people who had never gone to college at all, among them a Vice President who had simply worked with my boss from a very young age and dogged by nature, never quit. "She is like a sponge," my boss said, "I saw huge potential in her. She was so curious and she wasn't lazy."
Other executives were also old friends my boss had culled from his past business dealings. He lured them away from their old companies with the dreams of starting something big together, and amazingly, they did. The president of the company came to work here in this way, and one day, admitted almost sheepishly, that he was poorly educated. Perhaps it had somehow rubbed off on his children?
Other executives were also old friends my boss had culled from his past business dealings. He lured them away from their old companies with the dreams of starting something big together, and amazingly, they did. The president of the company came to work here in this way, and one day, admitted almost sheepishly, that he was poorly educated. Perhaps it had somehow rubbed off on his children?
"My kids don't like to study. And they don't study hard enough," he said. He was impressed that I'd gone to Berkeley and I did not imagine the sudden if subtle regard he had for me, "I guess they take on after their old man."
"Ah, school's overrated." I said, "And you've done quite well for yourself. You think you'd be much better off if you'd gone to a "good" school?"
He pondered this for a moment, "Probably not," he said, "But I still want my kids to go to good schools."
I wanted to point out that for every person who was successful and had gone to a good school, there were more than a handful who were not successful, who had squandered their opportunities or had paradoxically denied themselves the chance to do something great because they felt, somehow, it was beneath them. I saw a lot of this at Berkeley - kids who rejected certain job opportunities or even romantic relationships because they felt their diploma meant they were entitled to something better if not equivalent.
But as an Asian father, the president could hardly help himself. Nor could anyone else to whom where you go to school constitutes half your character.
In the first week I learned who cared and who didn't. I will say up front: I care; as an Asian girl with Asian parents with Asian friends, it is futile and false to deny it. But the extent to and the purpose for which I care, are in part, sociological. Let me damn myself first and say I am an elitist at heart, and, if it makes any sense, a distant elitist. But for purposes of copy than anything else.
It is interesting to see how people react when I tell them where I was educated - and unsurprisingly it's something I can control by saying the whole story (NYU followed by dropping out, followed by a string of community colleges followed by a tortuous slog through Berkeley, from where I eventually graduated) or just the result ("I graduated from Berkeley.") Thanks to all our Nobel Prize Winners, Berkeley is one of those lucky schools that's regarded to be on par with the ivies, though if you sit in any of the overstuffed classes you'll see that mediocrity presides -not that it's different at the Ivies. Of brilliant students there are but a handful and sometimes they are reading the professor more closely than they are the text. Ahem.
It is interesting to see how people react when I tell them where I was educated - and unsurprisingly it's something I can control by saying the whole story (NYU followed by dropping out, followed by a string of community colleges followed by a tortuous slog through Berkeley, from where I eventually graduated) or just the result ("I graduated from Berkeley.") Thanks to all our Nobel Prize Winners, Berkeley is one of those lucky schools that's regarded to be on par with the ivies, though if you sit in any of the overstuffed classes you'll see that mediocrity presides -not that it's different at the Ivies. Of brilliant students there are but a handful and sometimes they are reading the professor more closely than they are the text. Ahem.
At work there was Rebecca in the legal department, who I learned quickly, had a penchant for eavesdropping and an insatiable desire to let people know where she was educated. In my first week she had not been particularly warm to me, until she overheard me say to a coworker that I was spending the weekend hanging out with friends from Berkeley. At this her ears perked up and she turned towards me, her face more friendly than it had ever been in my first days here. It was the look of smug recognition ("Ah, so you're one of us") mixed with acknowledgement of possible competition. ("But was your GPA as high?" Probably not. "Were you a Regent's Scholar like I was?" Definitely not.)
"You went to Cal?" she asked a little to brightly, using the uber-annoying handle we Bears use to signify to people who've gone to lesser UC's that Berkeley was and remains, the first and best of the bunch. When I first enrolled at Berkeley, I was confused when people talked about Cal. "What's Cal?" I once asked, "I thought we were at UC Berkeley." It was around the same time I went to my first football game (Cal v. Oregon) and sat on the wrong side, in a sea of green, and asked, "So, what color are we?"
I nodded in a non-threatening way, "Yup, 2010."
"Oh you're young," she said, "I'm 2004."
"Cool," I said and waited for her to ask the inevitable next question:
"What'd you study?"
"English. Really applicable to real life, I know," (And honestly, I have always known.)
"Oh don't even start," she said, rolling her eyes dramatically, and I began to dread what I had actually started. "I was a double major - she paused, giving me time to nod along - History and Italian."
"So you speak Italian?"
She nodded, "And French too, though I'd be more fluent if I hadn't just minored in it."
So she was one of those. The kind who pursued her "passion" in undergrad knowing that studying something more lucrative in grad school was also a given. I half admire and half find them barely tolerable, but I nodded and said what she wanted me to say, "Wow, that's so cool. I wish I could speak French."
I had sufficiently stroked her ego and she shrugged, sliding off her competitive edge, "It's not hard," she said, "I'm losing my French but I refuse to let my Italian slip away. I love Italy. I spent a year studying abroad there and learned how to cook and...."
I tuned out, wondering if she could sense my disinterest.
Apparently not. As the weeks passed she would refer to places on campus or things she thought were "so ridiculously geeky/nerdy/Berkeley," and expect me to join in on the fun. "Oh my god, my friends and I would have competitions to see who could memorize the most phrases in ten minutes," or "We'd pull all-nighters studying, but really just end up having marathon history debates - it was awesome."
I'm sure.
As she sees it, we are a two-person club, representative of all that was wonderful about Cal. Bosom bears. Quelle drole.
To make matters worse, she misunderstands or maybe just ignores the "to the CEO" part of my title and thinks I am somehow, her personal convenience store. Her requests began to roll in shortly after I began, starting with little things like Kleenex and my badge, which we needed to go through certain doors. At first I did not mind so much - it is in my nature and in my title to be helpful - but she incorrectly interpreted my initial helpfulness as an invitation to ask me for anything.
Her requests grew more specific and more strange and my expression changed from one of amiable compliance to dourness to downright bewilderment.
"Betty," she would say, in a tone I have hence labelled as, Oh-God-what-does-she-want-now, "Do you happen to have...(insert ridiculous object here)"
In no particular order, she has asked me for:
"Salt"
"Sugar"
"No, I mean sugar packets"
"Tabasco sauce"
"Cholula Sauce"
"Soy sauce"
"Granola Bars,"
"Coffee mix." (Sometimes she just doesn't feel like our Keurig selection).
"Nuts"
"Fruit"
"Gummy candy"
"What about gummy vitamins?" (Blank stare.)
"Chocolate"
"No, I only eat dark chocolate."
"Napkins"
"Forks"
"Bottled water"
"Bowls"
"Plates"
A sandwich someone offered me, but which I passed on, but which she overheard someone offering to me and asked for.
"A knife please, to cut the sandwich" that I gave her, begrudgingly.
I was beginning to fear that I came to work dressed like a grocery store until she asked me one day for nail clippers. The first time she asked, I remembered that the assistant before had left nail clippers in my drawer. The second time she asked, I forgot and said, my voice tinged with irritation, "I don't have nail clippers." There was a strange chill in the air and I looked up from my computer screen. She was looking at me with her eyes narrowed, "Yes you do." It was frightening.
And la creme de la creme, the strangest request of all, right before Halloween: "Do you have a fedora?" A fedora? What about my person suggests that I might have such a thing?
"No," she said, "I meant at home."
She might have majored in history and Italian and she may speak the language of love (her boyfriend is from Mexico and they talk in Spanish, which she also speaks with painful accuracy (at least to my non-Spanish speaking ears), but she is glaringly illiterate in the most important language of all: emotional intelligence. Or self-awareness. Or body language - all things that, had she studied them as diligently as she studied the law, would make her infinitely more attractive to me as a human being. I marvel and wonder about the people she calls friends - are they deaf and dumb? Or perhaps they live very far away... there is, after all, nothing blatantly evil about her, but her personality as a whole just grates upon my nerves. But perhaps it means something that she seems to have made it some sort of personal goal for us to "hang out" and have "girl talk." Trust me, I am far from flattered; in fact, I flee. (Sorry, couldn't help the alliteration - just, snort, so nerdy of me, I know)...
I'm sure.
As she sees it, we are a two-person club, representative of all that was wonderful about Cal. Bosom bears. Quelle drole.
To make matters worse, she misunderstands or maybe just ignores the "to the CEO" part of my title and thinks I am somehow, her personal convenience store. Her requests began to roll in shortly after I began, starting with little things like Kleenex and my badge, which we needed to go through certain doors. At first I did not mind so much - it is in my nature and in my title to be helpful - but she incorrectly interpreted my initial helpfulness as an invitation to ask me for anything.
Her requests grew more specific and more strange and my expression changed from one of amiable compliance to dourness to downright bewilderment.
"Betty," she would say, in a tone I have hence labelled as, Oh-God-what-does-she-want-now, "Do you happen to have...(insert ridiculous object here)"
In no particular order, she has asked me for:
"Salt"
"Sugar"
"No, I mean sugar packets"
"Tabasco sauce"
"Cholula Sauce"
"Soy sauce"
"Granola Bars,"
"Coffee mix." (Sometimes she just doesn't feel like our Keurig selection).
"Nuts"
"Fruit"
"Gummy candy"
"What about gummy vitamins?" (Blank stare.)
"Chocolate"
"No, I only eat dark chocolate."
"Napkins"
"Forks"
"Bottled water"
"Bowls"
"Plates"
A sandwich someone offered me, but which I passed on, but which she overheard someone offering to me and asked for.
"A knife please, to cut the sandwich" that I gave her, begrudgingly.
I was beginning to fear that I came to work dressed like a grocery store until she asked me one day for nail clippers. The first time she asked, I remembered that the assistant before had left nail clippers in my drawer. The second time she asked, I forgot and said, my voice tinged with irritation, "I don't have nail clippers." There was a strange chill in the air and I looked up from my computer screen. She was looking at me with her eyes narrowed, "Yes you do." It was frightening.
And la creme de la creme, the strangest request of all, right before Halloween: "Do you have a fedora?" A fedora? What about my person suggests that I might have such a thing?
"No," she said, "I meant at home."
She might have majored in history and Italian and she may speak the language of love (her boyfriend is from Mexico and they talk in Spanish, which she also speaks with painful accuracy (at least to my non-Spanish speaking ears), but she is glaringly illiterate in the most important language of all: emotional intelligence. Or self-awareness. Or body language - all things that, had she studied them as diligently as she studied the law, would make her infinitely more attractive to me as a human being. I marvel and wonder about the people she calls friends - are they deaf and dumb? Or perhaps they live very far away... there is, after all, nothing blatantly evil about her, but her personality as a whole just grates upon my nerves. But perhaps it means something that she seems to have made it some sort of personal goal for us to "hang out" and have "girl talk." Trust me, I am far from flattered; in fact, I flee. (Sorry, couldn't help the alliteration - just, snort, so nerdy of me, I know)...
Housekeeping
My boss called me from Taiwan today, 4:30AM his time, which meant he was in a chauffeured car en route to the airport, where he'd board a small plane to Hong Kong and then from there, a larger plane to Melbourne where he is scheduled to play a few holes of golf with Tiger Woods, the world's most famous philanderer.
Planning his trip, I asked him what else he'd like to do, should gambling or Tiger turn out to be rather uneventful. I imagined my boss tuning out as Tiger tried to show him the right way to grip a golf club. ("See here, you put your thumb here...the strippers love that.")
"I've never been to Australia before," my boss said, "I'd like to see the coastline."
The words themselves were strangely romantic and he delivered them in an almost thoughtful way. I wondered if he would arrive at Lorne or Sorrento, kick off his shoes and run to the water. Calm, tiny waves (depending on the location of the moon), would lap at his toes as he stood with hands on hips, belly thrust forward, salty sea air whipping through his short hair. Perhaps he would wear a crisp white shirt. The collar, normally stiff, would bend and sway and eventually flip up and out, seduced by the sea. Perhaps he'd experience true quiet for a few moments - he would be in the land down under, surrounded by nothing but the sea and unfamiliar territory. There, he could be truly anonymous. As long as he put his phone on silent.
But I know my boss. He is half a dreamer, which means, give him enough time and he will inevitably retract the dream and replace it with something more immediate. A few days before he left he said, "Scratch the coastline. I don't have much time. I think I'll just walk around the city."
I tried to picture my boss as flaneur, walking with his hands in his pockets, alone in a foreign city whose denizens were all uniformly tall, blonde, tanned, and great with wild animals (such is my stereotype of Australians). But this picture faded quickly; by now my boss was accustomed to being driven around. Perhaps his Australian chauffeur would be a washed-up ex-surfer who had been injured on the great barrier reef and who had tried his hand unsuccessfully at a string of jobs before discovering his love for the road. It was somehow comforting to drive powerful men around. The driver would be unusually chatty, intrigued by this portly Asian man with the furrowed brow and bulbous nose - who was he and why was he so important that he was playing golf with the world's most famous philanderer? It didn't matter. The driver would impress him with his knowledge of Australia. Why didn't he want to see the coast? It was Australia's crowning glory - a gift from nature, surely, but they did a better job than the Americans of keeping it clean. My boss would chuckle deeply in that misleading way of his, "Sure, sure," and lean back, close his eyes, and remind whomever to change his driver tomorrow. This one was too chatty.
When the call came, I tensed up for a millisecond, the way I always do when he calls. He is, by all means, a low-maintenance sort of boss. He prefers me to email him, though not incessantly. I learned this on my first day, when the bubbly HR girl walked me up the stairs and said in a low voice, "Don't ever, under any circumstances, just forward him things. He HATES that."
I nodded solemnly. Of course. My job was to trim the fat - take away the million stupid little things that would irritate or worry him. So far, I think I have done alright, though in the beginning it seemed to be sort of a gamble: do I just copy and paste this message and pawn it off as my own? Does he want me to reply and then cc him? I did everything with bated breath and when all was quiet on his end, I accepted the possibility that my system, whatever it was, was acceptable.
So the call. On his last trip to Asia, his first since hiring me, he had warned me that there would be times when he would have to call me at odd hours.
"Just be prepared," he wrote to me before boarding the plane, "I'll try not to bother you, but sometimes, shit happens."
I giggled, both endeared to the fact that he had said, "I'll try not to bother you," and that he had used such coarse language. If he was exercising the powers of reverse psychology, it worked.
"Don't worry, Boss," I typed back, "I read the job description."
He was gone for a little over a week, and aside from the emails that pinged during the night, he never did call. People at the office who had seen the past two assistants slowly unravel were incredulous.
"You mean he hasn't woken you up in the middle of the night?"
"Nope. Not once."
"He never called."
"Nope."
"Not even when you didn't respond to his emails right away."
"No." by then, I was wondering if we were still talking about the same person. Apparently not.
"Sounds like he's changed a lot," one of them said, "The last assistant always looked like a zombie whenever your boss went to Asia. She said the phone would ring nonstop sometimes."
That's horrible, I thought, and truly, every night when he was away I braced myself, wondering if I should just turn the phone off and feign to be a deep sleeper. But I left it on in case he were to call. I had read the job description. It said 24/7. But he never called.
Apparently, everything went smoothly. Before I knew it he was back in the office and certain executives stopped storming around my desk asking impatiently, "When is he coming back? Is he on vacation?"
But he called at 1:30PM this afternoon, which meant it was 4:30AM in Taipei. My heart constricted, so adept am I at handling stress. Did his driver not show up? Did the plane break down? Did he want to see the coastline after all?
I answered, my voice reminiscent of a strangled altar boy.
"Hello?"
"Betty?"
"Yes," (ah, voice back to normal), "Hey Boss, what's up? How are you? Is everything okay?"
"Haha," his laugh sounded hollow and far away, not least because he was very far away, "I'm still alive."
"Oh good."
"So about my awards ceremony at the university."
"Yes, yes, about that."
I blanked out for two seconds before I remembered that he was being presented with an Entrepreneur of the Year Award at a local university's school of business. Before he left he had mentioned buying a table and filling it with executives and VPs, as per usual.
"I want to do something a little different," he said.
"Okay..."
"I think we can send out an invite to the executives, but if they want to come, they can buy their own tickets."
"Got it. But do you still want to buy a table?"
"Yes, but I want to invite some younger people. We need to mix it up a bit." he paused for a moment and I imagined him rubbing the sleep off his face, "Ask around. We have some younger employees with entrepreneurial spirit. I want them to come out to this event to represent our company. They can hear my story if they haven't heard it before, and it'll be nice for them to mix with the MBA students."
"Got it."
There was an awkward pause as I thought of something else to say.
"So... anything new?" He asked, "everything okay?"
I wondered if he really wanted me to fill him in on whatever was happening in addition to the emails he was sending me. Of course not.
"Everything's fine," I said, "Just housekeeping. Your uh, ice maker has been refreshed and the wireless HDMI kit is being installed. Everything should be ready when you return."
"Ok," he said. "that's all?"
"That's all."
"Okay. I just thought I'd call about the Awards thing rather than write it out. Well, don't worry. I'll talk to you later."
"Have a safe flight, Boss."
"Thanks, thanks," he said.
We hung up and I looked around the office. A few coworkers were staring at me expectantly.
"Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," I said, "He was just checking in, I guess."
"How nice of him to call during your regular working hours."
"Yeah," I said, thinking that maybe he would go see the coastline, "He's cool like that."
Planning his trip, I asked him what else he'd like to do, should gambling or Tiger turn out to be rather uneventful. I imagined my boss tuning out as Tiger tried to show him the right way to grip a golf club. ("See here, you put your thumb here...the strippers love that.")
"I've never been to Australia before," my boss said, "I'd like to see the coastline."
The words themselves were strangely romantic and he delivered them in an almost thoughtful way. I wondered if he would arrive at Lorne or Sorrento, kick off his shoes and run to the water. Calm, tiny waves (depending on the location of the moon), would lap at his toes as he stood with hands on hips, belly thrust forward, salty sea air whipping through his short hair. Perhaps he would wear a crisp white shirt. The collar, normally stiff, would bend and sway and eventually flip up and out, seduced by the sea. Perhaps he'd experience true quiet for a few moments - he would be in the land down under, surrounded by nothing but the sea and unfamiliar territory. There, he could be truly anonymous. As long as he put his phone on silent.
But I know my boss. He is half a dreamer, which means, give him enough time and he will inevitably retract the dream and replace it with something more immediate. A few days before he left he said, "Scratch the coastline. I don't have much time. I think I'll just walk around the city."
I tried to picture my boss as flaneur, walking with his hands in his pockets, alone in a foreign city whose denizens were all uniformly tall, blonde, tanned, and great with wild animals (such is my stereotype of Australians). But this picture faded quickly; by now my boss was accustomed to being driven around. Perhaps his Australian chauffeur would be a washed-up ex-surfer who had been injured on the great barrier reef and who had tried his hand unsuccessfully at a string of jobs before discovering his love for the road. It was somehow comforting to drive powerful men around. The driver would be unusually chatty, intrigued by this portly Asian man with the furrowed brow and bulbous nose - who was he and why was he so important that he was playing golf with the world's most famous philanderer? It didn't matter. The driver would impress him with his knowledge of Australia. Why didn't he want to see the coast? It was Australia's crowning glory - a gift from nature, surely, but they did a better job than the Americans of keeping it clean. My boss would chuckle deeply in that misleading way of his, "Sure, sure," and lean back, close his eyes, and remind whomever to change his driver tomorrow. This one was too chatty.
When the call came, I tensed up for a millisecond, the way I always do when he calls. He is, by all means, a low-maintenance sort of boss. He prefers me to email him, though not incessantly. I learned this on my first day, when the bubbly HR girl walked me up the stairs and said in a low voice, "Don't ever, under any circumstances, just forward him things. He HATES that."
I nodded solemnly. Of course. My job was to trim the fat - take away the million stupid little things that would irritate or worry him. So far, I think I have done alright, though in the beginning it seemed to be sort of a gamble: do I just copy and paste this message and pawn it off as my own? Does he want me to reply and then cc him? I did everything with bated breath and when all was quiet on his end, I accepted the possibility that my system, whatever it was, was acceptable.
So the call. On his last trip to Asia, his first since hiring me, he had warned me that there would be times when he would have to call me at odd hours.
"Just be prepared," he wrote to me before boarding the plane, "I'll try not to bother you, but sometimes, shit happens."
I giggled, both endeared to the fact that he had said, "I'll try not to bother you," and that he had used such coarse language. If he was exercising the powers of reverse psychology, it worked.
"Don't worry, Boss," I typed back, "I read the job description."
He was gone for a little over a week, and aside from the emails that pinged during the night, he never did call. People at the office who had seen the past two assistants slowly unravel were incredulous.
"You mean he hasn't woken you up in the middle of the night?"
"Nope. Not once."
"He never called."
"Nope."
"Not even when you didn't respond to his emails right away."
"No." by then, I was wondering if we were still talking about the same person. Apparently not.
"Sounds like he's changed a lot," one of them said, "The last assistant always looked like a zombie whenever your boss went to Asia. She said the phone would ring nonstop sometimes."
That's horrible, I thought, and truly, every night when he was away I braced myself, wondering if I should just turn the phone off and feign to be a deep sleeper. But I left it on in case he were to call. I had read the job description. It said 24/7. But he never called.
Apparently, everything went smoothly. Before I knew it he was back in the office and certain executives stopped storming around my desk asking impatiently, "When is he coming back? Is he on vacation?"
But he called at 1:30PM this afternoon, which meant it was 4:30AM in Taipei. My heart constricted, so adept am I at handling stress. Did his driver not show up? Did the plane break down? Did he want to see the coastline after all?
I answered, my voice reminiscent of a strangled altar boy.
"Hello?"
"Betty?"
"Yes," (ah, voice back to normal), "Hey Boss, what's up? How are you? Is everything okay?"
"Haha," his laugh sounded hollow and far away, not least because he was very far away, "I'm still alive."
"Oh good."
"So about my awards ceremony at the university."
"Yes, yes, about that."
I blanked out for two seconds before I remembered that he was being presented with an Entrepreneur of the Year Award at a local university's school of business. Before he left he had mentioned buying a table and filling it with executives and VPs, as per usual.
"I want to do something a little different," he said.
"Okay..."
"I think we can send out an invite to the executives, but if they want to come, they can buy their own tickets."
"Got it. But do you still want to buy a table?"
"Yes, but I want to invite some younger people. We need to mix it up a bit." he paused for a moment and I imagined him rubbing the sleep off his face, "Ask around. We have some younger employees with entrepreneurial spirit. I want them to come out to this event to represent our company. They can hear my story if they haven't heard it before, and it'll be nice for them to mix with the MBA students."
"Got it."
There was an awkward pause as I thought of something else to say.
"So... anything new?" He asked, "everything okay?"
I wondered if he really wanted me to fill him in on whatever was happening in addition to the emails he was sending me. Of course not.
"Everything's fine," I said, "Just housekeeping. Your uh, ice maker has been refreshed and the wireless HDMI kit is being installed. Everything should be ready when you return."
"Ok," he said. "that's all?"
"That's all."
"Okay. I just thought I'd call about the Awards thing rather than write it out. Well, don't worry. I'll talk to you later."
"Have a safe flight, Boss."
"Thanks, thanks," he said.
We hung up and I looked around the office. A few coworkers were staring at me expectantly.
"Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," I said, "He was just checking in, I guess."
"How nice of him to call during your regular working hours."
"Yeah," I said, thinking that maybe he would go see the coastline, "He's cool like that."
Ode on a Friend Named Courage, 2
Courage could not help
herself from falling. Who can? Well some people... no, no.
Everyone falls; the difference lies in how you soften your landing. Many
of our friends are masters of
their emotions. They hold on tight to words, smiles, hugs and tears,
locking them inside that fist-sized muscle and only release them with a four letter combination. And even then, they
must be careful.
“I never say I love you
first.”
“I’ll never admit I
want him back.”
“I’d rather die than
call him first.”
Courage and I have spent enough hours
analyzing people both broken and whole to know that this is, in some twisted way,
the formula: to win someone’s love, you hold back your own. It’s a strange
game we’re both terrible at playing and which we’ve lost many times, despite all the literature. I
lost first in high school, when I asked the object of my affection point
blank: “Darling, why don’t you like me?”
“Because you’re creepy,”
he said coldly.
Lesson learned.
Disclosure invites disclosure, which is sometimes not what one wants
to hear. I haven't played since.
From that day I loved from behind the veil of friendship. There was my own Golden Boy, then The Old Professor, then The Focused Genius, my relationships with them all variations on a theme: close, but platonic. Adoring, but distant. I never took the leap. Did not dare to. Why would I, and risk losing a friendship, even if said friendship was born upon the hopes of love?
Courage agreed and we drew up a plan like two fat girls embarking on a newfangled diet. Yes, yes, everything in moderation. We would use time, gestures and looks as measuring cups and parse out our affections and affectations - what can be said and when. Too soon? Fall back, retreat. Plot. Design. Scheme. Yet a year and a half after meeting The Golden Boy, Courage forgot the rules and fell off the wagon. She had a taste of some treat - a smile, a whisper, a tantalizing hint of some greater feeling waiting to be peeled back and inflated - and released the archetype she had always embodied, even before she was Courage: ladies and gentlemen, I give to you The Romantic Idealist. And to make matters worse, at her core, the Romantic Idealist's is also, unbelievably, Truth. What, you disagree? What is truthful about projecting your ideals upon some unsuspecting other? Is it not another form of lying to yourself? But stop. Stop and think: what are we if not our hopes and dreams? Are we not the most honest with ourselves when we finally hunker down and admit what it is we truly want for ourselves, no matter how improbable or out of reach it may be? This is what I want. Whether I want it after I get it, let me decide when the time comes.
"At length the truth will out."
Two school terms, a summer, and another school term pass. They get along swimmingly. A few days ago she told The Golden Boy she loved him. Or rather, he coaxed it out of her; not to be unkind, but to feed the human need to be loved more than we are worth. I was not there, I do not know what they were discussing, only that the discussion led to this:
"Courage," he asked, "Are you falling in love with me?"
In her weakest and most beautiful moment she answered him, "I am, I am."
"Ah." he said, "I was afraid of that."
The Golden Boy did not feel the same way. He liked her as a friend. He loved the Golden Girl, and he hoped that he and Courage could remain friends.
She nodded, feeling neither surprised nor hurt, only the strange feeling of the world dropping out from beneath her feet.
We spoke on the phone a few days later, our voices hushed almost as though we were discussing a death in the family.
"I knew as soon as I said it," her voice was strong, though tinged with resignation, "I could feel it drain from me, all the power I had when I loved him but never expressed it. I showed him all my cards, and now I have nothing."
I disagree, Courage. You will always have the words, because you have always known them.
My mother came into my room shortly after and asked me what I was thinking.
I was debating, marveling, admiring. Here was a woman who feared spiders and germs and dark alleys, but who, when asked a question that would have sent anyone else bumbling and stuttering and lying down a million different paths, spoke the truth in much the same vein as my high school crush (so thank you, High School Crush, for at least being direct). The Golden Boy did not react as Courage had hoped; in fact she had known his answer long before he said it. But to hear it was akin to having it carved upon her heart. But she never stopped hoping - and while to some this may seem pitiful or obtuse or masochistic, it is this openness that will allow another to wander in and find himself at home.
But at the time I could not put it into words until my mother surprised me with her reaction, her eyes tearing up and her voice cracking.
"How brave!" she said, "How brave of Courage to admit something like that. And how wonderful of her to share it with you so that you might learn something too."
From that day I loved from behind the veil of friendship. There was my own Golden Boy, then The Old Professor, then The Focused Genius, my relationships with them all variations on a theme: close, but platonic. Adoring, but distant. I never took the leap. Did not dare to. Why would I, and risk losing a friendship, even if said friendship was born upon the hopes of love?
Courage agreed and we drew up a plan like two fat girls embarking on a newfangled diet. Yes, yes, everything in moderation. We would use time, gestures and looks as measuring cups and parse out our affections and affectations - what can be said and when. Too soon? Fall back, retreat. Plot. Design. Scheme. Yet a year and a half after meeting The Golden Boy, Courage forgot the rules and fell off the wagon. She had a taste of some treat - a smile, a whisper, a tantalizing hint of some greater feeling waiting to be peeled back and inflated - and released the archetype she had always embodied, even before she was Courage: ladies and gentlemen, I give to you The Romantic Idealist. And to make matters worse, at her core, the Romantic Idealist's is also, unbelievably, Truth. What, you disagree? What is truthful about projecting your ideals upon some unsuspecting other? Is it not another form of lying to yourself? But stop. Stop and think: what are we if not our hopes and dreams? Are we not the most honest with ourselves when we finally hunker down and admit what it is we truly want for ourselves, no matter how improbable or out of reach it may be? This is what I want. Whether I want it after I get it, let me decide when the time comes.
 |
| Eleven A.M. 1926 Edward Hopper, Oil on canvas |
"At length the truth will out."
Two school terms, a summer, and another school term pass. They get along swimmingly. A few days ago she told The Golden Boy she loved him. Or rather, he coaxed it out of her; not to be unkind, but to feed the human need to be loved more than we are worth. I was not there, I do not know what they were discussing, only that the discussion led to this:
"Courage," he asked, "Are you falling in love with me?"
In her weakest and most beautiful moment she answered him, "I am, I am."
"Ah." he said, "I was afraid of that."
The Golden Boy did not feel the same way. He liked her as a friend. He loved the Golden Girl, and he hoped that he and Courage could remain friends.
She nodded, feeling neither surprised nor hurt, only the strange feeling of the world dropping out from beneath her feet.
We spoke on the phone a few days later, our voices hushed almost as though we were discussing a death in the family.
"I knew as soon as I said it," her voice was strong, though tinged with resignation, "I could feel it drain from me, all the power I had when I loved him but never expressed it. I showed him all my cards, and now I have nothing."
I disagree, Courage. You will always have the words, because you have always known them.
My mother came into my room shortly after and asked me what I was thinking.
I was debating, marveling, admiring. Here was a woman who feared spiders and germs and dark alleys, but who, when asked a question that would have sent anyone else bumbling and stuttering and lying down a million different paths, spoke the truth in much the same vein as my high school crush (so thank you, High School Crush, for at least being direct). The Golden Boy did not react as Courage had hoped; in fact she had known his answer long before he said it. But to hear it was akin to having it carved upon her heart. But she never stopped hoping - and while to some this may seem pitiful or obtuse or masochistic, it is this openness that will allow another to wander in and find himself at home.
But at the time I could not put it into words until my mother surprised me with her reaction, her eyes tearing up and her voice cracking.
"How brave!" she said, "How brave of Courage to admit something like that. And how wonderful of her to share it with you so that you might learn something too."
“It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one’s life for love.”
— Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli
“There
is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath
torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” Unknown Author
"When old age shall this generation waste,
Though shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
-Keats
"When old age shall this generation waste,
Though shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
-Keats
Ode on a Friend Named Courage, 1
I have a friend I’ll
call Courage. To those who know her, this name might seem funny or ill-fitting because
Courage is actually afraid of many things, not all of which are readily visible
or even understandable. She squirms at the thought of invisible germs and
screams at tiny spiders. Once,
on the verge of tears, she called her boyfriend to drive an hour to kill a spider
crouching in the corner of her bathroom.
If I or any other of
our friends were to walk down a dark alley by Courage’s side, others would point
and say that Courage was a coward. In such places she walks with her
shoulders high like a fortress around her ears, cold hands in a tense death
grip around your arm. Regardless of whether you are a man or woman, she will
make you feel obligated to protect her. Her grip tightens with every step you
take, cutting off your blood supply so soon your fingers are turning cold too. Protect
me, her hands say. Protect me from bums, from dark places, from vicious animals
and from smelly trash bins. And if you are me, you roll your eyes and say, “Okay
Courage, don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
And yet I call her
Courage. I call her so because she is one of the bravest women I know. We cannot all fear
the same things; at what Courage fears I would not bat an eye (though this
depends, surely, on the size of the spider or vicious animal), yet of what she
is not afraid terrifies me and nearly every person I know.
Disclosure,
let’s call it.
A
year and a half ago, Courage went off to law school, which to some is a very
brave move – law school can be a scary place where the books are thicker than
the skins of those who read them – and while I would argue that Courage
actually did not – no, does not –
belong in Law School (and depending on the weather, she will nod in fervent
agreement), it is sometimes braver to see a bad decision through than to back
out, drop out, and look back years later only to say, “Oh what if.” (I know
nothing about this sort of regret).
Being first and
foremost a writer, Courage found respite from the toils of law school in a
small and intimate writing group. Composed of a handful of like-minded writer
friends who had also bravely embarked upon law school without really knowing why, the group gathered every Monday at someone’s small, messy house and shared the
creative writing they did in between legal writing: essays and short stories, some long, some short; some
true, some not. They read them aloud and voiced their thoughts, sometimes too
gingerly to be constructive. In this way, Courage grew close to the The Golden Boy, whom she had met in class and who was both an archetype and a very real
person. He was tall, blonde, athletic, needlessly handsome and to top it off, impossibly
smart. He had once been a swimmer on the cusp of Olympic stardom and had the
body to show for it, though not the medals; a fraction of a fraction of a
second, he said.
In his own way, the Golden Boy was equally brave, at least at the outset. He admired her
writing, and said so. This, I know, is a difficult thing for a writer to say to
another writer. Apart from writing, writers (especially ones who have not been
published), spend much of their time turning their noses down at other writers. Some will say it is more cutthroat than the legal profession because writers can mask their aggression behind pages and pages of florid prose.
But Courage had never shied from singing the praises of my or any of our other
friends’ work. Which raises another question, not wholly unrelated: had I done
the same for her? Her style is different, the product of a steady childhood diet
of Anne of Green Gables and other romantic, slowly unfolding coming of age
stories – bildungsroman for young girls.
As she grew into a young lady she fell
headlong into the folds of Jane Austen’s dresses, into Hemingway’s Parisian feasts and
seas, into Steinbeck’s Eden, Tolkien’s shires and into the very heart of C.S. Lewis’s God until one day, she
emerged a woman. A woman with very particular literary tastes, though this is not to say
she is narrow-minded. When Courage reads, she reads earnestly and adoringly,
peppering the margins with her illegible chicken scratch. No matter whom she
reads, if the writing speaks to her, she will read wholeheartedly. And it
is because she was open in this way that the Golden Boy was able to wander in and find himself at home.
 |
| Interior, 1925 Edward Hopper, Watercolor |
They got along
swimmingly. Slowly, the Golden Boy began to shape her days. They saw each
other in class, and then studied together afterward. They were, of their
writing group, the most serious about the “craft,” and were on occasion, the
only two to show up, the others claiming academic exhaustion. Oh well. Between them, suppressed delight ensued. Courage and the Golden Boy would share a bottle of wine, read their work aloud, shyly at first, then talk late into the night.
Slowly, in the universal way that writers do when they fall in love, Courage began to write about him, for him, to him. And we women cannot help but hear the words as well – we learn to speak before we learn to write. To speak something is almost to believe something. One could not engage Courage in a conversation without the Golden Boy creeping his way in, and it was very clear to all her friends and perhaps even to her immigrant parents that their daughter had fallen in love. Who was this young man? What could explain his hold over her? Words love, words.
Slowly, in the universal way that writers do when they fall in love, Courage began to write about him, for him, to him. And we women cannot help but hear the words as well – we learn to speak before we learn to write. To speak something is almost to believe something. One could not engage Courage in a conversation without the Golden Boy creeping his way in, and it was very clear to all her friends and perhaps even to her immigrant parents that their daughter had fallen in love. Who was this young man? What could explain his hold over her? Words love, words.
They exchanged emails,
banter, texts, chats, blogs, and long, long essays about their pasts and their hopes for the future. Like a
fish who had found a familiar undercurrent in a vast ocean, Courage felt that
paradoxical warmth and cool refreshment one feels when they believe
they have found “the one.” Emphasis on “believe.”
You see, as an archetype, the Golden Boy and all the other male archetypes that follow (The Young Professor, the Old Professor, the Focused Genius) must always be in a relationship. He is invariably married or about to propose to a wonderful, equally brilliant and beautiful girlfriend who, even if she does not share the same interests, gives the impression that she is perfect for him. And the Golden Boy had such a woman in his life. She was more than just A Golden Girl, she was The Golden Girl: a lithe, blond-haired blue-eyed beauty with beautiful teeth to match her beautiful soul. She was, of all things, a wedding photographer – a complete artiste to the Golden Boy's divided self. Was he a writer or a lawyer? It didn’t matter. He was the man. He would provide. The lawyer would do that while the writer would love and appreciate his woman’s art. After marriage he would prosecute or defend, depending on what his conscience could reconcile with his financial needs. But at night or perhaps in the early mornings, he would write. She would continue to photograph things people struggled to put into words: the adoring gazes of couples engaged, married, and later, the blank, doe-eyed stares of their round-faced children. Someday, the Golden Boy told Courage, he would meet his wife in the middle and become a full-fledged author.
You see, as an archetype, the Golden Boy and all the other male archetypes that follow (The Young Professor, the Old Professor, the Focused Genius) must always be in a relationship. He is invariably married or about to propose to a wonderful, equally brilliant and beautiful girlfriend who, even if she does not share the same interests, gives the impression that she is perfect for him. And the Golden Boy had such a woman in his life. She was more than just A Golden Girl, she was The Golden Girl: a lithe, blond-haired blue-eyed beauty with beautiful teeth to match her beautiful soul. She was, of all things, a wedding photographer – a complete artiste to the Golden Boy's divided self. Was he a writer or a lawyer? It didn’t matter. He was the man. He would provide. The lawyer would do that while the writer would love and appreciate his woman’s art. After marriage he would prosecute or defend, depending on what his conscience could reconcile with his financial needs. But at night or perhaps in the early mornings, he would write. She would continue to photograph things people struggled to put into words: the adoring gazes of couples engaged, married, and later, the blank, doe-eyed stares of their round-faced children. Someday, the Golden Boy told Courage, he would meet his wife in the middle and become a full-fledged author.
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