Catholicism

Soul Searcher

Hubby & Me on our Hawai­ian Hon­ey­moon in 1996

An unex­pected trip to Chicago this past week­end had Hubby & me enjoy­ing the nice warm weather mostly in the com­forts of our car. But that was okay, since we had good tunes to lis­ten to … and even bet­ter conversations.

Oh, and not to men­tion, a great din­ner in Buck­town Sat­ur­day night fol­lowed by some deli­cious Dim Sum in Chi­na­town the next morn­ing as we left the city.

The week­end wrapped up with a movie; a per­fect way to keep cool on an unsea­son­ably warm Spring Day. I had wanted to see some­thing uplift­ing and inspi­ra­tional, so Hubby & I decided to go see “Soul Surfer.”

Okay, so the inspi­ra­tional part was more sec­ondary to the fact that I just really wanted to see surf­ing. And Hawaii. I just love any movies with Hawaii as the back­drop. And it’s all because it brings back some incred­i­ble Hon­ey­moon mem­o­ries, oh so long ago. So yeah, a movie filmed in Hawaii would make a very happy Emily.

Bethany Hamil­ton still surfs

So yeah, uplift­ing and inspi­ra­tional. And boy … did I get both.

For those that haven’t seen trail­ers or haven’t heard about this movie, it’s based on the true story of Bethany Hamil­ton. If the name doesn’t sound famil­iar, then this prob­a­bly will: Bethany was the 13-​​year old girl who, in 2003 was bit by a shark while surf­ing in Hawaii. She had lost her arm to the shark, but had gone on to con­tinue to surf even after that incident.

I won’t give much of the movie away here, but what I will say is that within 15-​​minutes of the movie I was cry­ing. And I con­tin­ued to cry (inter­mit­tently, that is) through­out the entire movie. It was that good.**

One par­tic­u­lar part of the movie had seri­ously got­ten under my skin. After sus­tain­ing her injury, Bethany obvi­ously began to ques­tion her­self; ques­tion what her big­ger pic­ture in life was. After all, surf­ing was her life … and what could she do now that she no longer could do it well enough to suc­cess­fully com­pete? She had gone to her church’s youth group leader, Sarah Hill (played by Car­rie Under­wood, BTW) and asked her, “Why?” If she had been given this incred­i­ble gift, why would God do this to her?

In the midst of cry­ing, Sarah told her exactly what I thought she would her: That there must be a big­ger plan out there for her. And that only God knows what that plan is.

Yes, I can see all my IF friends rolling their eyes and say­ing, “Yep. Heard that one before.”

And I can tell you that, in the midst of tears, even *I* rolled my eyes. But it’s what Sarah said after­wards that had me cry­ing even more:

First, she said “I don’t know what that plan is.” This always gets bonus points for me, since my expe­ri­ence with the “God must have a big­ger plan” state­ment has always ended with just that one phrase.

If only one time, I could’ve heard the added phrase, “I don’t know what the plan is” from any well-​​intentioned fam­ily or friends … that would’ve less­ened the bur­den in which I felt *I* had to carry this bur­den on my own. That one added piece would have given me the com­fort of know­ing that I wasn’t crazy for being so angry and so con­fused over some­thing that no one (not even an IF Doc­tor) had con­trol over.

Then Sarah goes on to say, “I don’t know why ter­ri­ble things hap­pen to us some­times.  But I have to believe that some­thing good is gonna come out of this.” And that’s the state­ment that had me weeping.

See … that’s the one thing that had been miss­ing once Hubby and I stopped all treat­ments for Infer­til­ity: The belief that there’s some­thing bet­ter wait­ing around the cor­ner for me. That there was some­thing else I could look for­ward to.

In the midst of decid­ing what Hubby & my next steps would be after stop­ping treat­ments, I was too close – too involved – with the smaller pic­ture, that I couldn’t see what the big­ger pic­ture was for me and Hubby. At first I couldn’t see past the anger and pain of being bar­ren to see what else was in my “big­ger pic­ture.”  But even­tu­ally, as the storm clouds pum­meled through and the dust finally set­tled, we both took a step back and decided that liv­ing child-​​free was part of that big­ger picture.

But now, almost two years later … I feel like I’m lost once again. If I can’t be a Mom, then what will I be? What can I do? How am I now going to be able to mea­sure my “suc­cesses” in life … espe­cially since other women and cou­ples can mea­sure there’s by the suc­cess of their children? ***

Hon­ey­moon Sun­set in Hawaii

It’s no mys­tery that I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing an ongo­ing iden­tity cri­sis. And that Infer­til­ity has played the biggest part into ques­tion­ing who I am … or who I could become. I know that, as this movie por­trays, I should have faith that God knows what my big­ger plan is for my life. I just wish I had the strength and con­vic­tion that Bethany – despite being so young – has that some­thing … any­thing good will come out of some­thing like infertility.

I just wish I could, at the very least, get a glimpse of that big picture.

So with that said … go see “Soul Surfer.” Not only will you see beau­ti­ful shots of Hawaii (Kauai, in fact … my favorite of the islands we’ve visted) … but you will see an incred­i­ble story of a girl who over­came her fears to do some­thing that was within her soul.

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 ** Okay, so the act­ing wasn’t exactly stel­lar, but the story was.

 *** And when I mean suc­cess, I mean those mile­stones in their kids’ lives. First word, first step, first day of school, first date … it can go on and on and on. Grad­u­a­tion, wed­ding, grand­chil­dren … need I go on more?

Forty Days of Night

Forty days ago, my Dad past away. Today, amongst our Filipino-​​Catholic fam­ily and friends, we will be cel­e­brat­ing the 40th day of remembrance.

For those of you that aren’t famil­iar (or haven’t read this pre­vi­ous post), the 40th day is believed to be the day that a loved one has “fin­ished” vis­it­ing his/​her loved ones on earth and is ready to ascend into the heavens.

I won’t lie … it has been an incred­i­bly emo­tional and phys­i­cally exhaust­ing cou­ple of months. Throw the hol­i­days into the mix and … well, yeah. Let’s just say the ham­ster on the wheel inside my head has been work­ing overtime.

As I had expected, there are those days where I’m so busy that I don’t have time to think about the loss of my Dad. And then there are those times … usu­ally dur­ing the most ran­dom moment … where it hits me square in the chest.

My cousin and I, dur­ing the ini­tial 9-​​day Novena period, started to refer to those moments as “Melt­downs.” Some­thing, typ­i­cally some off-​​the-​​wall mem­ory of my Dad, would trans­form me into a blub­ber­ing mess. And although these “melt­downs” don’t hap­pen as read­ily as they did in the first few weeks, I still won­der when I’ll start to feel a bit better.

I have many sto­ries to share … some of them involv­ing sto­ries of “vis­its” from my Dad over the past 40 days … yet I feel I’ve got lit­tle strength to write by the end of the day. This is obvi­ous, as I haven’t had the incli­na­tion to blog over the past few months.

So yeah … this is my sad attempt to start writ­ing again. And maybe when those every-​​day mem­o­ries of my Dad don’t hurt so much, I’ll be able to tell you some of those stories.

But for now, just know that I’m around. And I’m read­ing. And I’m hop­ing to get back into some sort of “nor­mal” again soon.

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Related Posts:

Emily Prays for Nine Days

Emily Hits a Pre­vi­ous 40-​​Day Mark

My New Life Eggsamined

Easter is another one of those holidays.

No, I don’t mean to belit­tle Catholi­cism; because I know that today is the most impor­tant Holy Day in the Catholic Faith. And, like Christ­mas, I do under­stand the “rea­son for the sea­son.” I do real­ize that both are more than just hol­i­days that brings out “fic­tional” char­ac­ters (like a Bunny who “lays” eggs or a jolly rotund man dressed up in a red suit** ) that bring about candy and gifts.

What I mean to say is that Easter has become one of those hol­i­days like Christ­mas and Mother’s/Father’s Day that, to an infer­tile cou­ple, can be a dif­fi­cult one. It’s a reminder of what we cur­rently don’t have in our lives; the chil­dren who enjoy the won­der­ment of Easter and the joy that hope­fully all par­ents have when they see the look in their kids eyes. It’s a reminder of all the new life that Springs brings into the world.

Per­haps some infer­tile cou­ples go on to hav­ing chil­dren nat­u­rally or through other assis­tive mea­sures. Oth­ers have braved the waters and opened their homes and hearts to adopt chil­dren. And then there are those that have taken the less explored road of liv­ing child-​​free.

While I can relate very much to those cou­ples that are cur­rently expe­ri­enc­ing infer­til­ity; I find it more and more dif­fi­cult to relate to those infer­tile cou­ples that have crossed over to parenthood.

Please don’t get me wrong … I’m incred­i­bly happy that those who have “sur­vived” infer­til­ity have gone on to live their dreams of hav­ing a fam­ily. And I’m proud of the strength that they con­tinue to have as they raise their chil­dren after all the strug­gles they went through to have them.

For those cou­ples that have decided to live child-​​free, it wasn’t a deci­sion that came lightly. It wasn’t some­thing that came to us as if to say, “Well, we’ve already been liv­ing child-​​free; so why shake things up now?” And it’s cer­tainly not a deci­sion that we made based on selfishness.

Hubby & Me as Easter Eggs

No … it’s a deci­sion that came after a long strug­gling road of peaks and val­leys; of unnerv­ing anx­i­ety and unwanted stress. And when there was sim­ply not enough energy, not enough finances; not enough mir­a­cles left from up above … the only option was to pick up the pieces of the already shat­tered dream and start a new life.

So per­haps this Easter; the first year that Hubby & I have offi­cially decided to live child-​​free … it will be this Easter in which we cel­e­brate the next phase in our mar­riage; we’ll begin our new life.

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Happy Easter to all of you out in Blog­land! I hope that this Easter brings about a New Life in all of you. And now for the sec­ond to last Lenten Daily for the season.

Daily Good Deed: What bet­ter way to cel­e­brate the arrival of my niece and nephew this evening by putting together a cou­ple of Easter bas­kets? Noth­ing fancy, but a lit­tle some­thing to let them know that they are loved by their Uncle & Auntie.

Daily Grate­ful Thought: We spent Easter after­noon with our friend T who invited us over to cel­e­brate Easter with his mom and brother at his brother’s place in Evanston. Oh … and did I for­get to tell you that T’s brother is a Jesuit priest?! Yes … we had an absolutely delight­ful time and am so grate­ful for such a won­der­ful Easter cel­e­bra­tion. More impor­tantly, I’m still so grate­ful for old friends.

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** Which, by the way …did you know that the North Mag­netic Pole is cur­rently located in Canada? Guess that means Santa Claus is Canadian.

The *Other* Look

Vin­tage Hello Kitty, circa 1976

I was five years old when I got caught shoplifting.

It’s one of those defin­able moments in life that a per­son never for­gets. And it’s funny that today this mem­ory would bub­ble to the sur­face of my mind.

I’m not quite sure what trig­gered this mem­ory. Per­haps it’s because I’m hang­ing out at the local Border’s on Michi­gan Ave again (free WiFi … gotta love it!) Or maybe it’s because I hap­pened to see a lit­tle kiosk in front of Macy’s that had stuff sim­i­lar to the chot­skies I stole at the ten­der age of five.

Any­way, I can remem­ber shop­ping with my mom at Oak­land Mall one Sat­ur­day after­noon when the inci­dent hap­pened. It must have been around Easter or Christ­mas, because all I could remem­ber was hav­ing to try on frilly dresses that I had no inten­tion of keep­ing clean once I wore them. Dis­tracted by the rib­bons and laces on third floor of Hudson’s, my Mom left me to my own device around the girls section.

I nat­u­rally found my way over to the lit­tle San­rio kiosk located close to the girly acces­sories. The lit­tle Asian girl in me absolutely looooved Hello Kitty and secretly wished she could be Hello Kitty’s twin sis­ter, Mimmy. As Mom con­tin­ued to be dis­tracted by poly­ester and rayon (it was the late 70’s at that time … breath­able stain-​​free fab­ric for kids still hadn’t been invented), I thought about how cool it would be to have this pocket sized col­ored pen­cil and paper set com­plete with Hello Kitty stick­ers. Because they were so small, I didn’t think twice about putting them in my pur­ple hippo Garan­i­mal pants.

Early 80’s Hello Kitty Chot­sky. Would have gone good with those mini col­ored pencils!

And because my Mom just hap­pened to call me at that moment to try on a few dresses, I quite hon­estly for­got about my new trea­sure until we got home. Which of course, when I dis­cov­ered it in my pocket, I imme­di­ately went to my bed­room and began to draw with my new mini-​​colored pen­cil set.

I prob­a­bly would have got­ten off scott free if my Mom didn’t catch me play­ing with my new “toy” the next morn­ing before Mass. In which I can remem­ber the shame I imme­di­ately felt when she asked me where I got those pen­cils. With­out my Mom hav­ing to say any more words, I broke down and sobbed; con­fess­ing that I took them from the store the day before.

Now is the time I can tell you about this par­tic­u­lar look my Mom would give Dr. Bro and me when­ever she was angry. In our teenage years, Dr. Bro and I would call it “The Eyes.”

Yes … Eyes. As in plural. Because she just wouldn’t give us the “stink eye” where one eye would squint while the other eye glared at you intensely with the cor­re­spond­ing eye­brow severely arched in an upward man­ner. No … my Mom’s look was more like two nor­mally big eyes bulging out to two times its nor­mal size. Both eye­brows would be arched to the extreme while she glared at you as if lasers would shoot from her eyes to burn every fiber of hair on our heads. Need­less to say, Dr. Bro and I would run and take cover when­ever “The Eyes” would come out.

Prob­a­bly late 90’s ver­sion of Hello Kitty

I dis­tinctly remem­ber the look in my Mom’s face when I con­fessed about steal­ing the pen­cil and pad set. Because it wasn’t “The Eyes.” Rather, it was this strange mix­ture of shock and sad­ness. As she stood speech­less in front of me for a few moments, I sud­denly felt smaller than I ever had been in the five short years of my life. I can recall feel­ing that way because I knew my shoplift­ing caused her to have that expres­sion … and I hated know­ing that I dis­ap­pointed her so badly. At that moment, I almost wished I would have got­ten “The Eyes” instead of that other look.

After she recov­ered from my con­fes­sion, I was told to go to my room where I would wait anx­iously until she returned. That’s when I got the lec­ture about steal­ing, which of course was rein­forced by the Sev­enth Com­mand­ment. Then it was off to Mass where I had to pray to God for for­give­ness. After­ward, we went straight to the mall where my Mom would make me give back what I stole and tell the store clerk that I was very sorry.

Obvi­ously it was a very good method of learn­ing from one’s mis­take, because I’ve never shoplifted again since that incident.

I’ve seen “The Eyes” many times in my life; espe­cially dur­ing those high school and col­lege years. But I had never seen that other look since my shoplift­ing inci­dent. I’ve never seen her dis­ap­pointed in me as much as she was that Sun­day morning.

To me, that is an extremely impor­tant thing to remem­ber. Because even dur­ing the worst days of my infer­til­ity jour­ney, when I felt as if I was as small as that five-​​year old ver­sion of me, she’s never me shown that “Other Look.”

Which, to me, means that even though *I* feel as if I’ve dis­ap­pointed both her and my Dad by not giv­ing them the grand­chil­dren they so deserve, my Mom isn’t.

Dis­ap­pointed in me, that is.

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Whew … is Easter here yet?! Oh yes, only 10 more days left of this Lenten Crusade.

Prob­a­bly my fave Hello Kitty … a Fil­ipino ver­sion! LOL!

Daily Ran­dom Act of Kind­ness: Ugh. Hav­ing a hard time remem­ber what good deed I’ve done today. Short of hold­ing ele­va­tors for com­plete strangers and hold­ing doors open for fel­low employ­ees, I can’t think of any­thing sig­nif­i­cant. Eesh … per­haps I need to make it up tomor­row with a bet­ter good deed.

Daily Thought of Grat­i­tude: Not sure if I already said this in the past 30 or so days or this exer­cise, but I’m thank­ful for mass trans­porta­tion. I love that I can get to places with­out hav­ing to drive myself (or have Hubby drive). I love that I can jump on a bus and travel down one end of Michi­gan Avenue to the other. But another unex­pected ben­e­fit of mass tran­sit is that I find myself get­ting more walk­ing time in; it forces me to be active for more than I nor­mally would have been if I was still liv­ing in Detroit.

Okay. I’m tired … and I still have another day of work in front of me before the week­end. Think I’m call­ing it a night!!

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Spare Parts

I actu­ally started writ­ing this post on my iPhone on the drive from Chicago to Detroit. Ah … The won­ders of mod­ern technology!

Click on to the pic­ture to find out about this “store front”

Typ­i­cally on the 5-​​hour drive, Hubby usu­ally gets the “honor” of being behind the wheel. And there’s some­thing about his dri­ving that usu­ally lulls me to sleep. But today, despite stay­ing up late last night and putting in a six-​​hour work day, I’m sur­pris­ingly wide awake. Maybe it’s the Real Fruit Berry Slushie from the Sonic in K-​​zoo? Nah …

In the past, when­ever we’d go on long road trips, Hubby & I would make it an event. We’d stack up the CD’s and pack some snacks and have so much fun. And in between Van Mor­ri­son and CCR songs** Hubby and I would have these incred­i­ble con­ver­sa­tions about our life together, our future, and our hopes & dreams.

Not that we still don’t have awe­some con­ver­sa­tions now on our round-​​trips between Chi-​​Town and Motown; it’s just that they don’t always hap­pen dur­ing every trip … Espe­cially with Hubby’s uncanny abil­ity to make me so nice and relaxed when he does the driving.

And because those con­ver­sa­tions were really in the ear­lier years of our rela­tion­ship, there was more to find out about one another. There was more about us, as indi­vid­u­als, to share. There were more dreams of the ideal future to discuss.

There was none of those shared wor­ries or dis­ap­point­ments. There was no shared heart­breaks for futures that weren’t real­ized. There was only hope.

It’s because of those things that these awe­some con­ver­sa­tions hap­pen less … But when they do, they are so much more excit­ing and fun.

Today, Hubby & I had one of those fun con­ver­sa­tions. Since learn­ing more web apps, he’s been dying to either a) start up and design his own blog, or b) take my blog and move it to my own domain so that he can have all the fun in play­ing around with it while design­ing it. Now I’m totally for Option B here*** but I’d also love to see Hubby write his own blog as well.

Any­way, a cou­ple days we were try­ing to come up with poten­tial names for his blog. Unfor­tu­nately, we never came up with any that would “stick.”

Today on the drive to Detroit, I came up with a name that I thought would make for a great new blog title … For me. Except when I told Hubby about it, he thought that I was talk­ing about a blog title for him.

The title? “Spare Parts” which would have been great for an infer­tile liv­ing child-​​free like me, who still has all her lady parts. Except … well, except they just don’t work. So yeah. Spare. Parts.

Hubby, on the other hand, thought that I was talk­ing about a blog name for him, where he’s just the “spare part” to me. In which  he pro­ceeded to say to me, “What does that mean? That I’m so old and bro­ken? And that I’m replace­able? For newer parts?”

He was seri­ous, and yet I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Of course not,” I told him. “I was talk­ing about myself!” and then I explained to him the rea­son I came up with the name.

But that still didn’t stop Hubby from call­ing him­self as “Spare Part” for the rest of our drive home. Or refer­ring to par­tic­u­lar Hubby behav­iors as a “Spare Part” behav­ior. Like, for instance, the fact that he has a ten­dency to ask mul­ti­ple ques­tions at one time as “Spare Part ques­tions.” Or head­ing in the wrong direc­tion towards the free­way as “Spare Part directions.”

Later on that night, as we were closer to home I told him that he was irre­place­able. That there was only one Hubby for me. And if any­thing, I was the one who was replace­able … with my bro­ken parts.

And of course he told me that *I* had no spare parts; that I was per­fect the way I am. Most impor­tantly, he told me this: The two of us sep­a­rately can be seen as “spare parts.” But together … well, that just makes us whole.

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Now … for my daily Lenten activities:

Today’s Good Deed: At work, I had sched­uled a ven­dor meet­ing for my entire team (not my first choice of days dur­ing the week). This, unfor­tu­nately meant that my telecom­muters had to come in to the office for the day. Hubby gave me the bril­liant idea of bring­ing in some treats for the team. So we stopped off at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way to the office and picked up a dozen donuts; for no other rea­son other than to cel­e­brate that it was Fri­day and that we were all together in the office. The best part? As I stepped out of the ele­va­tor, three of my team mem­bers were wait­ing to climb on to go down for a morn­ing snack. And guess what they were going to buy? That’s right peeps … donuts! Hubby obvi­ously had a sixth sense about stop­ping for this par­tic­u­lar snack.

Today’s Grat­i­tude: Every time we go back to Metro-​​Detroit, we make it a rit­ual to meet up with our friend, J. And of course, we try to meet up at our favorite local tav­ern for some good burg­ers. Tonight was no excep­tion to our meet-​​up, but … being a (ques­tion­ably) good Catholic, I refrained from eat­ing meat on a Fri­day dur­ing Lent. (I know! What restraint!!) I may have men­tioned in pre­vi­ous posts that we con­sider J one of our clos­est friends; so today I’m grate­ful for this friend­ship and the incred­i­ble con­ver­sa­tions we have when­ever we get together.

So that’s it for today … it’s actu­ally quite late as I’m fin­ish­ing up this post. Truth be told, it’s already Sat­ur­day early morn­ing … but since I tech­ni­cally didn’t sleep yet … this is still Friday’s post. And that’s how I’m going to date it.

So there. <sticks tongue out>

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** Because there’s some­thing about those clas­sic rock songs that just make you wanna sing them at the top of our lungs while dri­ving long distances …

*** Hey, why not?! It’d be rel­a­tively free for me!

Protected: Finding the Peace Train

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Keeping the Momentum

There’s a part of me that real­izes I’ve changed since com­ing to a res­o­lu­tion with my infer­til­ity; since mov­ing to Chicago. It’s been a grad­ual change; mostly based on the increas­ing con­fi­dence and strength I’ve gar­nered over the past year.

And this past month, with all the writ­ing I’ve been doing … I real­ize that my posts have def­i­nitely taken a dif­fer­ent tone.  Specif­i­cally, I’ve noticed that I’ve taken a break from the sad, depress­ing — and even angry — parts of my life.

I have always loved mak­ing obser­va­tions about myself and of the world. My mom always told me that I was both very per­cep­tive and inquis­i­tive, so I guess it comes nat­u­rally to me. The only prob­lem I’ve encoun­tered (espe­cially more recently) is that I often for­get what an impact some of these obser­va­tions have on me. And if I don’t write them down … well, then my “light­bulb moment” gets lost in the dim recess of my mind.

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Speak­ing of obser­va­tions … yes­ter­day was the “observed” Catholic Holy Day of Ash Wednes­day. Ask me if I went to mass … and I’m sure you’d already know the answer. But we’ve already had many a con­ver­sa­tion about my actual “prac­tice” of my Catholic faith.

Regard­less, there are cer­tain things … tra­di­tions, really … that I like to fol­low. (Coin­ci­den­tally, a blog­gie friend recently talked about how tra­di­tions in reli­gion is some­thing she enjoys … read about it here.) One of them is the prac­tice of “giv­ing up” some­thing dur­ing Lent.

I debated for a few days as to what I would give up this year. In the past, I’ve typ­i­cally given up things that I really, really enjoy … know­ing that I’d really only be prac­tic­ing the art of self-​​restraint.  One year it was chocolate-​​covered pret­zels, and another year was caramel apple suck­ers. Come Easter after both years, I was so good at exer­cis­ing self-​​restraint that I no longer had those “crav­ings” to con­sume them as I had done before Ash Wednesday.

This year I thought about giv­ing up Coca-​​Cola (I’m addicted) or even any form of choco­late (detri­men­tal to *anyone’s* san­ity). And as I told my co-​​worker this, she told me what she decided to do dif­fer­ent for Lent this year.

Since she was already pretty adept at giv­ing up things for Lent, my co-​​worker chose to “pay it for­ward” this Lenten sea­son. Mean­ing that she would decide to do one ran­dom act of kind­ness every day for the 40 days before Easter.

The more she talked about her plans, the more she had me sold on doing the same thing. Even though I under­stand the con­cept of “giv­ing up” some­thing for Lent as being able to exer­cise absti­nence and to “purify the soul” before the day of Res­ur­rec­tion … the “rebel” Catholic in me thinks that this con­cept in this cen­tury is self-​​defeating, rather than self-​​appreciating.

If this sounds mud­dled, let me explain it with this train of thought: If I decide to give up choco­late for Lent this year and I’m not suc­cess­ful, I know I’d feel guilty. Even worse is that the mere thought of hav­ing choco­late before Easter would already elicit those feel­ings of guilt … even if I didn’t have any .

Yeah, self-​​defeating.

But … let’s say that instead of “giv­ing up” some­thing, I decide to “give” some­thing to some­one else … like an extra sand­wich from my catered lunch meet­ing today to the home­less per­son out­side of the Star­bucks by work … well, it would make me feel as if I’ve helped some­one else and it would make me feel good about myself. And in the end, it would boost my confidence.

Kinda like how once I started to allow myself to feel “happy” again (after 12+ years of infer­til­ity), I’ve man­aged to gar­ner some momen­tum in gain­ing con­fi­dence and strength. And more impor­tantly, con­tent­ment in my over­all life. (See how it all ties together?)

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

My goal this Feb­ru­ary was to write an entry a day; and see­ing that I have only 11 days to go, I’m pretty sure I will meet this goal and gather more of that strength and confidence.

LOOVE this “work flow” chart!

SO … in order to con­tinue that for­ward momen­tum, I’ve decided to bor­row my co-worker’s Lenten promise. Start­ing today (and end­ing on Easter Mon­day … since I’m already a day behind), I am going to vow to per­form one ran­dom act of kind­ness a day and doc­u­ment that daily deed on my blog.

But not only that … I’m also going write about one thing that I’m thank­ful for every day. Because the exer­cise here is to remem­ber that oth­ers may not have the same lux­u­ries (whether mate­r­ial or other lux­u­ries) in life that I do.

And I hope this gets me closer towards feel­ing more ful­filled in this life.

Today, I am Polish-​​Filipino

If there’s one thing I love about Chicago, it’s the fact that they share a lot of the same tra­di­tions as Detroit does. Today just hap­pens to be one of those days.

I had a co-​​worker back in Michi­gan that moved from the East Coast. The first Feb­ru­ary in Detroit, she recalled how she’d be read­ing the news­pa­per and would stum­ble upon this word that she had NO idea how to pronounce.

“Pack-​​zee? Pass-​​key?” That’s how she thought the word would sound like. “And what the *heck* is ‘Pazz-​​ski Day’ anyway?”

My fel­low Detroi­ters and I laughed when we heard that state­ment. “Poonch-​​kee,” we cor­rected her. But really, we couldn’t fault her because … well, unless your Pol­ish, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t know how to pro­nounce “Paczki.”

For those of you that aren’t famil­iar with what a Paczki is, it’s a deep-​​fried piece of dough that is typ­i­cally filled with either crème or jelly. Sounds like a reg­u­lar dough­nut, doesn’t it? Except it isn’t … it’s made out of espe­cially rich dough con­tain­ing eggs, fats, sug­ars and some­times milk.  So basi­cally it’s a lot more calo­ries than your typ­i­cal filled doughnut.

Paczki Day started as a Pol­ish tra­di­tion in which a typ­i­cal Polish-​​Catholic would make batches and batches of paczki to try to purge any ingre­di­ents that might spoil dur­ing the Lenten sea­son. And, of course, what bet­ter day to get “rid” of all those extra paczki than to make Fat Tues­day the offi­cial day for these treats?

This tra­di­tion car­ried over to the US, and in par­tic­u­lar the Mid­west­ern states, where there are large com­mu­ni­ties of Polish-​​Americans. Detroit, in par­tic­u­lar, has Ham­tramck; a city of Pol­ish descen­dents within the city of Detroit. And Chicago, appar­ently also has a mul­ti­tude of Pol­ish neigh­bor­hoods; which is col­lec­tively known as Chicago Polonia.

And why do I know so much of the his­tory of Paczki Day? Well … let’s just say the Catholic Grade School I went to com­prised mostly of Polish-​​Americans. So much that this Filipino-​​American knew more about pierogi and sauer­kraut than the typ­i­cal non–Polish-​​American. 

Seri­ously … our Grade School’s Annual Fes­ti­val com­prised of your typ­i­cal Mid­way rides, a beer tent and a Polka con­test. (And no … I do  not know how to Polka. But I have been taken around the dance floor a cou­ple times!)  In fact these same co-​​workers (who helped me tease our East Coast trans­plant) have all but named me an “Hon­orary Pole” for know­ing a lit­tle too much of Pol­ish traditions!

So yes … I just thought I’d bring a lit­tle his­tory to y’all non-​​Polish peeps and any non-​​Midwesterners. Have a won­der­ful FAT TUESDAY and a Happy Paczki Day!!

All “Kidding” Aside …

Hubby & I are back in Michi­gan for the week­end. It’s kinda nice to be back, although I do believe that the weather report exag­ger­ated exactly how much snow that they sup­pos­edly got. I mean really … Chicago got a whop­ping 12.6 inches in 24hrs last week, so I was expect­ing at least 10 – 12 inches here as well. But nope; it looks like there was only about 4 inches out­side of our house.

It’s funny though, because after expe­ri­enc­ing the snow storm in Chicago last week, I real­ize how much I could actu­ally sur­vive in a city where there is a lot of walk­ing involved. Espe­cially that walk from work to the El sta­tion, and the El sta­tion to our apart­ment. Or when need­ing to take our puppy out for a walk.

Oh trust me, it was tir­ing walk­ing in a foot of snow, but it’s so dif­fer­ent from win­ter life here in Michi­gan where the longest walk would be from my car to the front door of my (pre­vi­ous) office build­ing. Or the longest amount of time I’d have to be out­side was to shovel the dri­ve­way and sidewalk.

Uncle J and the Birth­day Girl

Any­way, the rea­son we are back in town this week­end was to cel­e­brate our friends’ daughter’s 1st birth­day. This par­tic­u­lar cou­ple has sur­vived the the throes of infer­til­ity and have man­aged to get a totally awe­some daugh­ter in the process. A-​​girl is such a good-​​natured girl; always smil­ing and engag­ing every­one that comes in con­tact with her. Even in the midst of her birth­day party when we could tell she was get­ting really sleepy, she still would smile and allow oth­ers to hold and carry her.

And as A-​​girl sat in our lap today, both Hubby & I couldn’t help but be amazed with her. We let her play with my iPhone and were quite sur­prised by how her lit­tle chubby fin­gers could flip through my photo album. Then we let her play Bejew­eled 2 for the phone, and were shocked when we saw how suc­cess­ful she was … espe­cially since her dad hap­pens to be the one per­son’s score I aim to beat every week on Facebook.

Also at this party was Cutie Girl; the same pre­co­cious lit­tle girl who always asks us about our dog and our cats. She is so sassy and smart  that I can’t help but be taken in by her incred­i­bly large personality.

Cutie Girl & Me

So, as usual, she spent a whole 45 min­utes or so with us, talk­ing about our pets and what we could do to get her “Daddy” to agree to get one for her. I swear, this kid … if she con­tin­ues to have that fear­less­ness and con­fi­dence about her … could very well be some­one impor­tant and/​or famous in the future. She’s just one of these kids that peo­ple just nat­u­rally grav­i­tate to!

And yes, I also got to see my beau­ti­ful niece Kairi. She is grow­ing so fast now! Except, well … since we didn’t get enough time to spend with just her, she wasn’t exactly in a “play­ful” mood with her Aun­tie & Uncle. And that kinda bummed me out.

Part of me thinks that the rea­son Kairi is like this around me is because she’s just not “used” to us … after all, she only sees us dur­ing major fam­ily gath­er­ings. But then there’s the other part of me that thinks that the events that unfolded after her birth had a part to play with my rela­tion­ship with her. It’s like … I don’t know … she uncon­sciously (or even con­sciously) knows that there was a major strain between her mom & me imme­di­ately fol­low­ing her birth.

Our Beau­ti­ful Niece, Kairi

I think there’s this incred­i­ble Catholic guilt feel­ing that feeds that train of thought. It’s the same thought I had dur­ing my SIL’s preg­nancy with Liam and his con­se­quent pass­ing: that the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Liam’s short life was a result of my feel­ings of jeal­ousy over my SIL’s preg­nancy. And sim­i­lar to that, my lack of “con­nec­tion” with Kairi is a result of the loss of con­nec­tion with her mom fol­low­ing her birth. Real­is­ti­cally I know that none of it is true, but there are those days … like today …that these thoughts are stronger that usual.

I know I haven’t talked much lately about how my rela­tion­ship with my SIL has been. It’s partly because I’ve learned from cer­tain “foot in mouth” state­ments that cer­tain things are best left off of Blog Land. But it’s mostly because things have been rather quiet and low key amongst the two of us. I’d like to think that we’ve reached a silent “truce” of sorts … that we’ve man­aged to move for­ward in fix­ing those sev­ered ties.

I don’t think things will ever be a 100% bet­ter between SIL and me; but I do know that I’ve since learned a lot about myself since then. And one of them is know­ing that I’m strong enough to move past the anger and hurt and resent­ment I felt for so long. Sure there will always be times where I might just shake my head at cer­tain activ­i­ties or actions, but I’m quite sure she prob­a­bly has those same moments when think­ing about me, as well. And I’m really, truly okay with that.

If any­thing, being in a room full of chil­dren under the age of 7 proves that I’m finally at that stage in my IF jour­ney where I can start to let things go and accept things for what they are. And it, quite remark­ably, feels good.

Hubby & The Birth­day Celebrant

PO’d">Patriotic and PO’d

I am so annoyed. And the thing is, I should know bet­ter. It’s not like I haven’t been out and about social-​​networking for years; so I can’t use the excuse that I’m igno­rant to internet-​​iquette.

Except … well, except there are cer­tain things in life that I guess I con­sider my moral com­pass in life. And one of them (amongst many oth­ers) has always been the abil­ity that we’ve been given as human beings to make our own choices in life; to reason.

So when I start see­ing Tweets or Face­book sta­tuses that are intended to show “pride” or elicit some sort of dark humor, but end up sound­ing more offen­sive than any­thing … well, that just makes think, “What the H*LL were you thinking?”

In other words, did some­one I *know* con­sciously make that deci­sion to post some­thing that might … just might be offen­sive to other people?

Don’t get me wrong … I’m the first one to admit that I’ve done things just as stu­pid as what I’m com­plain­ing about. I’ve even been called out on the car­pet for such stu­pid actions as well. While it’s not the most pleas­ant feel­ing in the world, it has taught me the les­son to think what I’m say­ing before I speak … er, I mean type.

So what exactly am I PO’d about? Well, this is the sta­tus that started it all. One post that says …

“WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Press 1 for Eng­lish. Press 2 to dis­con­nect until you learn to speak Eng­lish. And remem­ber only two defin­ing forces have ever offered to die for you, JESUS CHRIST and the AMERICAN SOLIDER. One died for your soul, the other for your free­dom. If you agree and have the guts … copy and paste in your status!”

Yeah. I *per­son­ally* felt the sting of that one. On many lev­els. First there’s the whole “You’re in Amer­ica, so you should only be speak­ing Eng­lish.” Well I hate to burst the bub­ble here, but I believe that the US is con­sid­ered a MELTING POT of dif­fer­ent nations. You know, a mix­ture of peo­ple from dif­fer­ent nations that have come to this nation in order to improve the qual­ity of their lives and their fam­i­lies’ lives?

My par­ents were one of those peo­ple. Both came from the Philip­pines in search of a bet­ter life for them­selves; a place where they could best make use of their edu­ca­tion and tal­ents and share it with the rest of the peo­ple in what has become their new “home.” While my Mom spoke flu­ent Eng­lish (a pri­mary lan­guage taught in Catholic school in the Philip­pines), my Dad learned it as a sec­ond lan­guage. And while I can’t *com­pletely* under­stand what it’s like to learn Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage,  I can cer­tainly empathize … espe­cially since I’m “once-​​removed” from being born and raised out­side the US.

And then there’s the part about hav­ing only two defin­ing forces that have ever offered to die for me. I make no bones that I’m Chris­t­ian; or more specif­i­cally, Catholic. I also fully admit that I’m not exactly a “prac­tic­ing” Catholic; mean­ing that (much to my Mom’s cha­grin) I don’t attend mass weekly. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in God or Christ. Nor does it mean that I don’t hold myself to the basic Golden Rule, of which Chris­tian­ity (and all other reli­gions) is based.

In real­ity, I believe in the spir­i­tu­al­ity of Catholi­cism. I believe that there is GOOD in the world and that if your actions reflect what you believe in your heart to be good … then that good­ness will return to you. But on the flip­side, I do believe that BAD exist much in the same way. You reap what you sow. By liv­ing *my* life under the premise that I should do unto oth­ers as I would want done unto myself … well, that’s one of the rea­sons I *stop and think* about what I say or do before I act upon them. Would what I do hurt any­one else? What are the con­se­quences of what I’m about to do?

Yeah … so to sprout the whole “Christ died for me” lec­ture in that Face­book sta­tus? Gimme a break. That is *NOT* a very “Chris­t­ian” thing to do.

And trust me … I won’t go into the whole “Amer­i­can Sol­dier” bit; other than to say that I am patri­otic enough to know that these sol­diers have given up their “free­dom” to keep Amer­ica safe and *FREE*. And I’m also patri­otic enough to know that it was a choice that they made. ‘Nuff said.

So why am I still riled up even though that Face­book sta­tus is now more than a week old? Well, it’s because of this sta­tus that was just posted on Monday:

“Shame on you Amer­ica: the only coun­try where we have home­less with­out shel­ter, chil­dren going to bed with­out eat­ing, elderly going with­out needed meds, and men­tally ill with­out treat­ment — yet we have a ben­e­fit for the peo­ple of Haiti on 12 TV sta­tions. 99% of peo­ple won’t have the guts to copy and repost this.”

Uh huh. Seriously.

Okay I get that, as a nation, we have home­less peo­ple and starv­ing chil­dren and a health care sys­tem that’s bro­ken for our elderly pop­u­la­tion /​ men­tally ill pop­u­la­tion. But there is a rea­son why we are con­sid­ered a wealthy country.

And when I mean “wealth,” I’m not strictly speak­ing about *FINANCIAL* wealth. I’m talk­ing about a nation where we have many of the smartest, most pro­gres­sive minds in the world. I’m talk­ing about a coun­try that shows their “wealth” by giv­ing *every* indi­vid­u­als the oppor­tu­nity … the choice, if you will … to improve themselves.

Do you think social­ist coun­tries afford every per­son that abil­ity to bet­ter them­selves? To move up in their sta­tion in life? More impor­tantly, do you think that THIRD WORLD coun­tries, like the Philip­pines or Haiti, are able to pro­vide those same oppor­tu­ni­ties  to every citizen?

This is when Amer­ica shines the most; when we pro­vide *our* resources and ser­vices to coun­tries that have been dev­as­tated by nat­ural dis­as­ters. This is when we show exactly how gen­er­ous a coun­try we can be.

These moments … they are the moments when the words on our Statue of Lib­erty shine the brightest:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your hud­dled masses yearn­ing to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teem­ing shore. Send these, the home­less, tempest-​​tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

As I wrap up this long and ram­bling polit­i­cally charged post … let me just remind every­one of one sim­ple fact. Unless we are 100% Native Amer­i­can … we are all “immi­grants” to this land. The same soil that has pro­vided our fore­fa­thers (and now our­selves) with the abil­ity to forge a new future; the land of oppor­tu­nity … the land of CHOICES.

So just like our par­ents /​ grand­par­ents /​ great-​​grandparents, etc who chose to come to the land of free­dom (and who may have *NOT* known how to speak Eng­lish) … choose your des­tiny (and your words/​actions) wisely.

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