My Children,
When I was younger I had orange hair. Actually, at different times I had pink hair, purple hair, black hair, red and green hair, blue hair, and pretty much every color under the sun. I got most of my clothes at Good Will as a matter of principle and thought nothing of wearing clothes with cigarette burn holes and sweat rings. I almost never wore shoes, and I didn't shave for 3 years. I drove my mom's old Pontiac 6000 covered in vintage 1960s flower stickers, affectionately nicknamed, Bertha. I loved the Beatles and 311...and carried a secret torch for bad 80's ballads, which I sang alone in my car where none of my friends could see me.
I was eager to be a grown up. I dropped out of high school at 16 and moved into my own place when I was 17. My roommates and I had all-night keggers...constantly, and I worked up to 4 jobs to pay the bills. When I was 13, I marched on Washington to protest the 1st Gulf War, and I once stumped for Jesse Jackson with my friend D and her dad. I thought I would join the Peace Corps and spend my life working to make the world a better place. I never dreamed I would join the military much less make a career of it.
Now I have Mom hair. Cut into an "acceptable for the office" style and dyed a sensible color. On the rare occasions I buy clothes for myself, I shop on eBay or at the sale racks, but I am always conscious of the brand. My handbag is big enough to fit a small dog, and contains just about anything you could ever want or need: crayons, Angry Birds bandaids, iPhone and iPad loaded with apps for kids (none for moms), wipes, tissue, snacks. I work for the State Department (aka "the man"), and I do think that all my life's work has been to make the world a better place. And, I am exceedingly proud of that...and I still sing bad 80's ballads but now it's with pride with my friends at karaoke night.
Sometimes I feel that when I became a Mom, I lost a part of myself. Most of the time I don’t miss her, knowing that along with the slimmer waist and greater freedom, was also the inherent ignorance and selfishness that comes with youth. The ignorance and selfishness that makes youth so much fun, I might add. Is being a Mom always fun? Not on your life. Is being a Mom worth all the sacrifices we make? I deeply, deeply believe so.
To you I will forever be the person who puts bandaids on your boo-boos, makes sure you get the correct lunch at school, and that you brush your teeth at least twice a day. I am the one who helps with your homework, who drops you off at volleyball practice, and who nags you about finishing that same homework. I am sure you will love that person, but will you really know who I am?
I never truly understood or appreciated my mother until I became one myself. As a teenager it never occurred to me to investigate her beyond the surface level. She was my mom. A teacher, a cook, a cleaner, a sewer. She worked, she baked, she made our clothes (and sometimes matching ones for dolls, or in my sister's case, for small unicorns). She was my mom, but she wasn’t a person with a history, a dream, a set of beliefs.
Of course, I appreciate her now.
More than these mere words can ever hope to express, I truly appreciate my Mom. I can look back and see what she sacrificed for us. And this is not to say that my Dad didn’t make sacrifices for us, because I know he did. But I am a Mom, and I can see the path ahead for me. I can see myself through your eyes, and I realize it will be some time before you see me as a person with an identity above and beyond your Mom.
And I can wait. But sometimes I wish I could show you my life before, show you who I was when I was younger, before there was you, when I was only myself.
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Saturday, April 06, 2013
Happy to be Back or Miss Being on Vacation?
The kids are most definitely the former, while I am decidedly the latter!
Just got back from our family vacation to Vietnam and it.was.freaking.amazing! I fell in love with Saigon from the moment we drove from the airport to our hotel, and my love affair has not abated. Saigon is one of the coolest cities I've been to in a very long time. Being there among the mix of old and new reminded me of why I fell in love with Asia in the first place. The neon lights and the smells of street food cooking in the hot summer night, the public parks (well maintained and brightly lit with lovely bushes trimmed into various animals and other objects) teeming with people enjoying their evening meals, taking a stroll, or doing some tai chi. The streets filled with motorbikes, taxis, and pedestrians, yet actual traffic jams are few because everyone follow the basic rules of the road. And the food. Oh the food! I gained 8 pounds in a week (no joke!) gorging myself on bread (Banh Mi is my new most favorite food ever!) and rice noodles (our guide delighted in taking us to local, off the beaten path places once he discovered our penchant for adventurous eating) like Pho Bo and Bun Bo Hue. And then, of course, there's the coffee. Even the shitty coffee in Vietnam is still pretty fucking good. The French influence in the food is astounding. A delicious mix of East meets West with a little cafe culture thrown in. It was so incredibly exhilarating. It was everything I had hoped Manila would be. I knew from the minute we touched down that this was a place I could live. So, yeah...I fucking loved it. :)
Besides just getting to hang out in Vietnam for 8 days, the other half of our vacation awesomeness was hanging out with my little sister and her husband and my little niece, L, who is about 1 1/2 now. It's always difficult vacationing with others, especially when you're doing it as an entire family, since everyone has their own needs and desires, but I think we managed ok. And I was thrilled to have the chance to hang with them a bit and really get to know my niece since we hardly ever get to see them thanks to our crazy lifestyles (we live in Asia, they live in Europe, and we all have family in the US that we also need to allot time and money to seeing), and I don't think we'll be seeing them again in person until Christmas 2014. So that was really, really great.
We started out our tour in Saigon for a few days, taking in the sights and sounds, and visiting the various war monuments and museums.* We even took the kids to a traditional Vietnamese water-puppet theater, which I was worried they might be bored with, but turned out to be highly entertaining. All of them were entranced! Then we left Saigon for a two day tour of the Mekong River. We cruised up the river stopping at various tourist-y sites (here's where the indigenous people make rice paper, here are some local fisherman making their daily catch, and here's a traditional song performance while we serve you hot tea in the sun with no aircon while it's 37 degrees out, etc. etc.). It was soul-suckingly hot, but everything we saw was interesting and I really felt no pressure to buy things (even though we did) as we left. We bought a crap ton of the coconut candy we saw being made (we got to try the fresh out of the pot stuff - it was soooo yummy!).
Then we stayed overnight in Can Tho and left very early the next morning to see the floating market where we had one of the best cups of coffee I've ever had ladled to us from the side of the boat by a floating mini-market dude. Crazy. We also crammed in a whole buncha Buddhist pagodas, although my sis and I were both surprised to find that most of these had been built within the last few hundred years. Not a lot of old stuff seems to be left in South Vietnam.
After that we were off to Mui Ne for a few days of beach relaxation, which we managed to turn into another marathon of activity by packing on the tours. First we went to the red sand dunes and fairy stream, which was a 2km hike through some truly gorgeous countryside. This was by far the kids' favorite tour. A got so dirty he practically blended in with the dunes, which made it difficult to pick him out when they went sand sledding! Bizarrely, this is also where the kids had the opportunity to ride an ostrich.** C's favorite part of the whole vacation? Getting to ride and then eat an ostrich all in one day.*** The Pu foodie genes run deep in that one!
Our second tour took us to an 8th century Hindu temple of the Champa people (the indigenous peoples of that region), which satisfied our need to see old stuff. I find the incredible mix of religions and cultures in Vietnam to be fascinating. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity sit side by side, along with a good amount of old Chinese beliefs like ancestor worship. I never realized what a veritable mixing pot it is. We also saw local fisherman, a fish market, and a temple to the whale god with a 500yr old whale skeleton, along with other local markets in the area where we stopped to haggle over some rubies and jade.
To top it all off, the 4 girls all took a cooking class and learned how to make Pho Bo. It's a bit time intensive but actually pretty simple to make. It was really fun for the girls to make their own food and then slurp it down! Best of all? They videotaped the whole thing for a promotional tool for their hotel, so we'll get a copy when it's all done.
Our final day was spent traveling back to Saigon from Mui Ne where we said goodbye to my sis and her family (they were headed on to Hanoi for another week of holiday). We hooked back up with our old tour guide Alex, who took us back out for some intense market shopping (and a stop at a Hello Kitty store!) and a hearty meal of Bun Bo Hue, which I thought was even better than Pho Bo.
It says a lot about the Vietnamese people that Alex not only offered, but happily came along for our last few hours of tour. He did it solely out of the kindness of his heart and his desire to show us more of his city ( and his food - he's from the Hue region!). We tipped him anyway since it meant a lot to us, but this was just one of several things that struck me about the Vietnamese people. Everyone was so kind, and they love children (as in most Asian cultures). There was one restaurant in particular in Mui Ne where we stopped for dinner (fresh fish and scallops on the grill for sis & I!), J was upset about something and crying when we walked in. The elderly owner fussed over her for a while, fixing her hair into a traditional bun, showing her the restaurant's puppy, Lucky, who hung around under our table throughout the meal (much to J's delight), and even painting her nails! It just blew me away.
Anyway, since no one will ever read all the way through this anyway. I guess what it boils down to is, we had an awesome time and had to come home way too soon. I absolutely fell in love with Vietnam, and Saigon in particular. The vibrance, color, and culture of the city just sung to me in a way I haven't felt since the first time I went to China. I would live there in a heartbeat! Too bad Vietnamese is even harder to learn than Chinese!!
*Pu review: very depressing, and totally worth seeing, but naturally a bit one-sided. It's much like seeing WWII historical sites in Japan.
** A: Nooooo, I don't want to. Get me off, get me off! *ten seconds later* THIS IS AWESOME!!!! Buy me an ostrich, mama!!!
***She also tried alligator among other local delicacies.
Just got back from our family vacation to Vietnam and it.was.freaking.amazing! I fell in love with Saigon from the moment we drove from the airport to our hotel, and my love affair has not abated. Saigon is one of the coolest cities I've been to in a very long time. Being there among the mix of old and new reminded me of why I fell in love with Asia in the first place. The neon lights and the smells of street food cooking in the hot summer night, the public parks (well maintained and brightly lit with lovely bushes trimmed into various animals and other objects) teeming with people enjoying their evening meals, taking a stroll, or doing some tai chi. The streets filled with motorbikes, taxis, and pedestrians, yet actual traffic jams are few because everyone follow the basic rules of the road. And the food. Oh the food! I gained 8 pounds in a week (no joke!) gorging myself on bread (Banh Mi is my new most favorite food ever!) and rice noodles (our guide delighted in taking us to local, off the beaten path places once he discovered our penchant for adventurous eating) like Pho Bo and Bun Bo Hue. And then, of course, there's the coffee. Even the shitty coffee in Vietnam is still pretty fucking good. The French influence in the food is astounding. A delicious mix of East meets West with a little cafe culture thrown in. It was so incredibly exhilarating. It was everything I had hoped Manila would be. I knew from the minute we touched down that this was a place I could live. So, yeah...I fucking loved it. :)
Besides just getting to hang out in Vietnam for 8 days, the other half of our vacation awesomeness was hanging out with my little sister and her husband and my little niece, L, who is about 1 1/2 now. It's always difficult vacationing with others, especially when you're doing it as an entire family, since everyone has their own needs and desires, but I think we managed ok. And I was thrilled to have the chance to hang with them a bit and really get to know my niece since we hardly ever get to see them thanks to our crazy lifestyles (we live in Asia, they live in Europe, and we all have family in the US that we also need to allot time and money to seeing), and I don't think we'll be seeing them again in person until Christmas 2014. So that was really, really great.
We started out our tour in Saigon for a few days, taking in the sights and sounds, and visiting the various war monuments and museums.* We even took the kids to a traditional Vietnamese water-puppet theater, which I was worried they might be bored with, but turned out to be highly entertaining. All of them were entranced! Then we left Saigon for a two day tour of the Mekong River. We cruised up the river stopping at various tourist-y sites (here's where the indigenous people make rice paper, here are some local fisherman making their daily catch, and here's a traditional song performance while we serve you hot tea in the sun with no aircon while it's 37 degrees out, etc. etc.). It was soul-suckingly hot, but everything we saw was interesting and I really felt no pressure to buy things (even though we did) as we left. We bought a crap ton of the coconut candy we saw being made (we got to try the fresh out of the pot stuff - it was soooo yummy!).
Then we stayed overnight in Can Tho and left very early the next morning to see the floating market where we had one of the best cups of coffee I've ever had ladled to us from the side of the boat by a floating mini-market dude. Crazy. We also crammed in a whole buncha Buddhist pagodas, although my sis and I were both surprised to find that most of these had been built within the last few hundred years. Not a lot of old stuff seems to be left in South Vietnam.
From Can Tho, we returned to Saigon for a day where our awesome guide, Alex, took us to a local joint in a different part of the city for Pho Bo. Hands down one of the best meals I've ever eaten!
Our second tour took us to an 8th century Hindu temple of the Champa people (the indigenous peoples of that region), which satisfied our need to see old stuff. I find the incredible mix of religions and cultures in Vietnam to be fascinating. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity sit side by side, along with a good amount of old Chinese beliefs like ancestor worship. I never realized what a veritable mixing pot it is. We also saw local fisherman, a fish market, and a temple to the whale god with a 500yr old whale skeleton, along with other local markets in the area where we stopped to haggle over some rubies and jade.
To top it all off, the 4 girls all took a cooking class and learned how to make Pho Bo. It's a bit time intensive but actually pretty simple to make. It was really fun for the girls to make their own food and then slurp it down! Best of all? They videotaped the whole thing for a promotional tool for their hotel, so we'll get a copy when it's all done.
Our final day was spent traveling back to Saigon from Mui Ne where we said goodbye to my sis and her family (they were headed on to Hanoi for another week of holiday). We hooked back up with our old tour guide Alex, who took us back out for some intense market shopping (and a stop at a Hello Kitty store!) and a hearty meal of Bun Bo Hue, which I thought was even better than Pho Bo.
It says a lot about the Vietnamese people that Alex not only offered, but happily came along for our last few hours of tour. He did it solely out of the kindness of his heart and his desire to show us more of his city ( and his food - he's from the Hue region!). We tipped him anyway since it meant a lot to us, but this was just one of several things that struck me about the Vietnamese people. Everyone was so kind, and they love children (as in most Asian cultures). There was one restaurant in particular in Mui Ne where we stopped for dinner (fresh fish and scallops on the grill for sis & I!), J was upset about something and crying when we walked in. The elderly owner fussed over her for a while, fixing her hair into a traditional bun, showing her the restaurant's puppy, Lucky, who hung around under our table throughout the meal (much to J's delight), and even painting her nails! It just blew me away.
Anyway, since no one will ever read all the way through this anyway. I guess what it boils down to is, we had an awesome time and had to come home way too soon. I absolutely fell in love with Vietnam, and Saigon in particular. The vibrance, color, and culture of the city just sung to me in a way I haven't felt since the first time I went to China. I would live there in a heartbeat! Too bad Vietnamese is even harder to learn than Chinese!!
*Pu review: very depressing, and totally worth seeing, but naturally a bit one-sided. It's much like seeing WWII historical sites in Japan.
** A: Nooooo, I don't want to. Get me off, get me off! *ten seconds later* THIS IS AWESOME!!!! Buy me an ostrich, mama!!!
***She also tried alligator among other local delicacies.
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