Monday, June 3, 2013

Akemi met up with “wintry mix” her freshman year in Boston.  For all the wonderful aspects she was enjoying about living for the first time where the weather changed, “wintry mix” was not making the hit parade.  One miserable day when she arrived at NEC soaking wet cold from the freezing wind, sleet, and damp snow, she texted me that “this is how pilgrims died.”

So when she opened up her computer in the NEC cafeteria on another wintry mix day this  March, nothing dispelled the gray gloom better than my e-mail to her with the subject line “Big Island!”  On the recommendation of the Bradfords and in a carpe diem mood, I decisively had booked a vacation rental home outside of Hilo and a few days at the Mauna Lani Bay resort in Kohala for as soon as I could get out of Dodge after USC Commencement.   The promise of aloha everything – the weather, the scenery, the activities, the food – kept us both going through the rest of our respective spring semesters.

The amazing feature of the place where we stayed in the Kapoho tidepool area was the ability to swam and snorkel in our own lava pool with volcanically-warmed water.  This house served as our home base as we hiked through the Akaka Falls and volcano areas, bought our apple bananas, pineapple, and vegetables at the Hilo Farmers Market, and toured the nearby Mauna Loa macadamia farms and candy factory.  At night we traded our new ‘ukelele between us and read our pile of books. 

In retrospect, a lot of what drove our Hilo-area agenda was food:  banana-mac nut-chocolate chip pancakes and a green-onion-and-Portuguese sausage omelette at Ken’s House of Pancakes, loco moco and bento at Café 100, and “house cake noodle” at Leung’s Chop Suey House.  A couple of local folk insisted we try Leung’s – I thought this place which looked frozen in time from the 1960s would be dubious, like Bing’s Cathay Kitchen in Riverside we just had to visit one night when Bing was in his residency in Loma Linda.  Let’s just say it was entertaining. . .very entertaining.

Mostly we loved the constant warm trade winds.  Songs are rightfully written about this caressing sea breeze.  It flowed through the house, along with the loud croaking of the coqui frogs and chirping of the geckos.  It brought late afternoon and evening rain and rosy sunrises.  And it constantly reminded us that we were far, far away in body and spirit from wintry mix and our regular routine.  

P.S. Here's Akemi in photographic action as we hiked the Kilauea Iki Crater trail.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Usually I get to USC Norris Cancer Hospital a little harried.  Inevitably, I stayed late at the office the night before, trying to clear the deck to be out for a few days.  When I get home, I tackle every possible household chore, so that when I come home from the hospital, I’m not looking at any task that compels me into action – look, I just know myself.  I stock the frig with soups and sparkling water, and try to remind myself to keep drinking water, so that my veins are well-hydrated in the morning for all the poking to come.  I decide which book I’m going to bring along, recognizing that I’ll be drowsy or asleep most of the day from the meds and won’t read much of it.  All too soon, it is early morning, and Karen arrives to drop me off at the hospital on her way to work.  Once the IV starts, I’ve come to be glad for the excuse to sit still and veg out.

Going into this Tuesday’s treatment was way different, and definitely the way to go.  The morning after USC Commencement, Akemi and I jumped on an airplane to the Big Island of Hawaii for a fabulous eight-day vacation.  She had not been to that island before, and I had only been once before with my family 44 years ago.  Throughout the trip, I tried to match up my memories of our family’s 1969 visit with today’s reality.  This photo is of the sunrise over Mauna Lani Bay.  More posts on our adventures to come.

We returned on Memorial Day Monday to the construction zone that has been our house.  The guest bath remodel that started in February and stalled for a couple of months got a lot of contractor attention while we were away.  Although we came home to everything covered in drywall and tile dust, the work was mostly done.  I had the holiday to put the house back in order and get ready for the Rituxan run.

For the first time in the three years I’ve been doing this routine, Akemi was home to be able to go to the hospital with me, reprieving my Relief Society friends from worrying about rides and meals.  Later that evening, she came into my room to suggest we watch a movie.  We decided on an entirely silly one, “Down Periscope,” which had been a favorite of Bing’s to watch with Akemi when she was little.  No matter how many times we have watched that movie, it always makes us laugh, and Akemi was successful in completely distracting me from feeling crummy.   

The WM story is more of the same: the bad immunoglobulin number continues to crawl downward, but the good IG numbers continue to be suppressed and platelets and white cells are not nearly as happy as before.  We’re just playing this out as the returns diminish. 

Our Hawaii good times prevailed over the construction clean-up and the day at the hospital.  Nothing like a paradisiacal vacation to help make the medicine go down, in the most delightful way. 

Sunday, May 12, 2013

I almost didn’t get to be a mother, the consequential damages of the subdural hematoma sustained when I was 28.  I didn’t know until four years ago that the real culprit probably was my platelet bleeding disorder.  Whatever the reason or multiplicity of reasons, including timing which was not my own, I endured years of Mother’s Days at church, trying to be game (we all have our own mothers to celebrate, after all), and remain nonchalant with the inevitable comments in the vein of “well, what are you waiting for?” and “next year for you!”

In my infertility pain, I was somewhat startled to learn from my contemporaries who already were mothers that Mother’s Day wasn’t necessarily a favorite day for them, either.  For some, the attention made them uncomfortable in their insecurity that they didn’t think they were as good at mothering as they thought they should or could be.  Others felt guilty that they thought this mothering business isn’t all that it is cracked up to be.  More and more, I heard variations of what I’d call my mother’s philosophy, which is “every day should be Mother’s Day,” meaning “I just want you to be good and happy.” My mother generally expressed this as “mind me and get good grades.” 

Then there’s the whole present/”do something for Mom” thing.  Wash the car? Who were we kidding that we could wash the car as well as the 25-cent car wash?  Egg shells in the scrambled eggs?  Then there was the Mother’s Day in the Downey house when I fell off the kitchen counter reaching up to a high shelf, crashing to the floor with her second-best plates slipping from my hands.  In true mother response, she was only concerned that I wasn’t hurt as I cried, mortified, amid the broken plates.  I think the next year, my dad made a preemptive suggestion that we get doughnuts, which was popular with us, if not Mom. 

For my first Mother’s Day after Akemi was born, Weeder left a large floral arrangement by our side door, with the note “’Cuz it’s your first.”  During Akemi’s early Colburn years, her big orchestra concert always was scheduled on Mother’s Day.  We’d dress for church and make an appearance at Sacrament meeting in Pasadena, change and drive an hour out to Anaheim for lunch with my parents, change back into dressier clothes and put Akemi in her concert dress, and drive another hour to LA, breathless and stressed to make her call time.  Did we remember the extension cord for the video camera?  Did we put her music in her case?  Of course I loved every occasion to hear her play, but that was really crazy, and I can assure you that none of the other orchestra moms liked spending Mother’s Day that way any more than I did. 

This Mother’s Day I’m remembering her second solo recital when she was 11.  It was July 14, 2001 – not Mother’s Day at all – but I’m thinking of it as a most favorite mother’s memory, because it was her first recital at Colburn, I got to play with her, and it turned out to be the only occasion when all four of her grandparents and her dad were together to hear her play.  Her dress was hand-painted French silk, a present from my mother, and she’s carrying flowers sent or given to her from Leigh, Linda, Janice, and other women who have been generous and important to her in her life. 

Fortunately for me, when you have a daughter as hard-working and talented as Akemi with her head on her shoulders, I have a precious bank of mother’s memories of special and celebratory times, with the promise of many more to come.  Whenever I am congratulated on having been such a good mother to have raised such a wonderful daughter, really I demur – she makes me look good.  When Akemi was young, the Parkins gave us a book Mr. and Mrs. Smith Have Only One Child, But What a Child!  If you only get one, she’s been the one to have, and that is certainly gift abundant.  She’s texted and we will “celebrate” in a few days when she comes home for a visit from Boston. 

Now for my mother this Mother’s Day, I am quite proud of what I’ve gotten her.  She has always loved wisteria, a very Japanese thing – the first kanzashi she gave me for my hair featured wisteria blossoms.  For years, she has admired the wisteria that Bing planted to trail across the front of the garage, combined with complaining that she always wanted my dad to plant her one, and he never did.  I hesitated from getting her one, because she’d have to have a trellis or some kind of structure built for it.

Then a couple of months ago, we were at a Japanese restaurant with her which had a wisteria plant trellised in a pot, large enough to get the effect but small enough to be contained.  More admiring/complaining, but now I had the idea.  So I am about to pack a five-foot trellised wisteria plant into my car, with a large (plastic) pot, and a large bag of potting soil.  I’ll assemble it at her house, and then drive over to my brother John’s with her for the afternoon with the local-area grandkids.  She knows about it and is excited about it; it’s nice to make her happy with a tangible present outside of the “get good grades” category. 

John has bought the roast (his kids are big-time meat eaters), I’m bringing the fixings for a favorite Sunset magazine salad, and hopefully someone else is bringing a box of See’s candy.  However you spend this day, I wish you a happy one.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

On Tuesdays I try to remember to get away from my desk at lunchtime to walk to the tamale stand that sets up across the street on the north side of the campus.  I recommend the pork ones and corn ones, both doused with tomatillo sauce.

My brothers and I come by our tamale appreciation honorably from both sides of the family tree.   With her roots in Boyle Heights, my mom grew up eating homemade Jewish food and Mexican food.  She has told stories about having pregnancy cravings for burritos and pastrami sandwiches on rye, dispatching my father from their Downey house into LA to fetch the real things from the neighborhood stands.  I, who could not hold down water during much of my pregnancy with Akemi, have always stood in awe over the notion my embryonic self was nourished by the likes of tamales, salsa, and deli meat.  But I digress.

My dad talked about how when his family was farming in their longest-lasting Garden Grove location, they became friends with their next-farm neighbors, the Sanchezs.  The Sanchez women came over to help make the Kameis’ new year’s mochi, and my grandmother and aunts went over to the Sanchezs’ home to help them make their Christmas tamales.  I don’t know if the Sanchezs ever became fans of pounded, molded rice or not; I figured that the Kameis got the better end of the deal, coming home with ready-to-steam, secret-family-recipe tamales.  

So there was an era when my mom ambitiously tackled making her own tamales.  She made the rounds of the local Mexican mom-and-pop grocery stores to order the masa, the corn husks, and the combination of ingredients for the filling according to someone’s secret-family recipe (I’m not sure whose).  

What I am sure about is that us kids didn’t do a very uniform, high-quality job of wrapping the tamales.  Some were too stuffed; some were too skimpy; some fell apart during the handling and steaming.  No matter the aesthetics, we devoured them as they came out of the steamer.  Only because my mom made so many and imposed some discipline on us did we have enough to freeze to enjoy at later dates.  It was always a “find” to unearth some ice-caked tamales from the depths of my parent’s freezer.  A little steaming resuscitated the left-overs nicely.

It became easier to order Christmas tamales from friends and eat their secret-family versions.  Bing’s office manager’s aunt was one long-time source.  Then it became a family in our ward who sold them to make some extra Christmas money.  Their tamales were so generously sized  and their price so inexpensive that I worried about whether they really were making any money.  They swore they did, and I sensed it would have hurt their pride to have pressed more money on them, but I still worried.  I do think they really loved that we all really loved their tamales.  It was a sad day for our ward, for more reasons than just about their tamales, when that family moved.  In the meantime, the Kamei grandkids likewise developed a taste for the homemade tamale, and arriving at a family event with a batch in hand makes one very popular.

These days, though, it’s about down to the good folks who bring their coolers and steamer to the little campus farmer’s market once a week.  You’ll have to excuse me now while I finish my tamales.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Not long after I arrived at USC in the summer of 1988, my new urban planning colleagues were abuzz over the just-released plans from our regional transportation agency to develop a subway/light rail system in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Along with the buzz was the lament that LA had perfectly good "red car" and "yellow car" systems which was declined in the 1950s as cars started to dominate.  On many weekends while he was at Caltech, my dad took the red car and buses from Pasadena to Orange County to help with matters on his family's farm.  I actually remember as a child taking what must have been among the last remaining yellow streetcars with my mother, going from my grandmother's apartment in Boyle Heights into Little Tokyo as my mother ran her Saturday errands in the early 1960s.  In my five-year-old view of the world, crossing the Fourth Street bridge over the Los Angeles River was a big journey. My mother let me push the button to ring for a stop once we got to First Street.

Once my urban planning colleagues got past the red and yellow car lament, they were particularly excited that at some in the distant future, funding gods being willing, one could take the subway from Pasadena to the USC campus.  That seemed unimaginable to me.  "Really, Susan, look at the plan!" exclaimed Dowell, who had just taken up residence in neighboring Altadena.  He pointed out the kaleidoscope of colored lines representing corridors proposed to be built over, oh, the next 25 years. 

Slowly, almost unbelievably, the LA subway lines have been built, and have worked up ridership.  The Gold Line which opened in 2003 changed our view of the world, linking Pasadena to downtown LA.  Take the Gold Line from Pasadena into Chinatown for dim sum!  Pasadena area USC students and employees started taking the Gold Line to Union Station and university shuttles to campus.  Then the Exposition Line opened last summer with stops at the main USC campus, 24 years after Dowell showed me the draft regional plan.  One could say LA beat projections.  So it truly is now possible to go from Pasadena on Gold Line, to the Red Line, to the Purple Line, to the Expo Line to campus.  Got all that?

Last summer with the opening of the Expo Line, I resolved to give LA public transit a chance.  The weak link, though, was getting from my house to a Gold Line station car-free.  I tried walking to a Pasadena shuttle bus stop; I tried buses to various Gold Line stations.  I gave up when it was averaging two hours one way, no matter what.

I've just regrouped on this resolve, deciding just to drive to the Del Mar station.  In peak hours, I've gotten the timing down to one hour each way, door-to-door.  Considering it takes 45 - 50 minutes door-to-door to drive, the time trade-off now doesn't seem so bad. I figure I am actually gaining an hour a day to read or do e-mails which I wouldn't have driving.

I'm trying to "go Metro" at least one day a week, two or three days if I can, when I don't have to stay on campus into the evenings with my MLS program.  It's a start.  And if anything, it feels great to be living the transportation dream that seemed fantastical in 1988.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Many times I have felt blessed to have a studious, cautious child, yet never more so than today to know that Akemi is concentrating on school work and following the directions of law enforcement and university officials to stay indoors while the manhunt for the second marathon bombing suspect continues in her Boston suburb on the Cambridge side of the river.

Hearing the ambulance sirens on Monday afternoon while in class at NEC, not far from the explosion sites, brought home the reality of the situation to her and her classmates at the beginning of this week.   A colleague said to me yesterday that she has been almost obsessively refreshing her web browser for the latest updates from Boston throughout this week.  I’m finding myself doing the same thing today, in between praying for a safe resolution as quickly as possible, to put to rest the trauma of this week.  

A few weeks ago, I saw these crocuses which were just making their appearances in Akemi’s Medford neighborhood, the first heralds of spring.  I imagine that by now other flowers and trees must be blooming beautifully, in the midst of a city which today is under siege.  I look at this photo now as a reminder to remain hopeful, while petitioning for tender mercies to flow to those who have been grievously afflicted, and for protection for all.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

When an e-mail starts out, "Not to alarm you, but. . .", you can be sure what follows will be alarming.

Wayne and Pam had been taking care of Figaro last week while I was first in Orlando speaking at a conference, and then in Boston for Akemi's recital.  Easter Sunday morning, as I was getting ready to fly out, I saw Pam's Saturday night e-mail in which she reported Figaro's head was "twisted" and his walking stilted.  She described seeing him as “startling” and later told me Fig looked like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist."

The entire flight home I worried about the condition in which I would find him.  A stray we took in (or rather, who insisted we take him in), we’re not really sure how old he is, but figure he must be at least 13 or 14 by now.  Although he has gotten clean bills of health in recent check-ups, we’ve noticed he’s definitely slowed down and has shown signs of being a “mature citizen.”

As I walked in the door, I was relieved when he came trotting up to greet me.  Thanks to Pam’s alert, I was prepared to be clinical.  Although it was nearly 1 am east coast time, I started Googling his symptoms. 

“Head tilt,” I learned, is not an uncommon phenomenon in older cats, but not without its underlying causes.  The good news scenario would be an ear infection; the not-so-good scenarios ranged from various metabolic, neurological, or immunological diseases.  I was hoping for an ear infection, but the way this household’s medical odds go, I was bracing for worse.  That night, it seemed we were both glad that he was curled up next to me under the covers.

He already was better by the time I got him to the vet, and she was able to quickly assess that he in fact has a bad ear infection.  After his battery of tests, the vet said I could take “my kid” home now.  A week later with some feline antibiotics and low-dose steroids in his system, he is acting much better, if not downright fine.  I’ve gotten quicker and neater at squirting the syringe of liquid amoxicillin into his mouth, and he seems none the wiser eating his tiny prednisone pill tucked into some kitty treats. 

Besides worrying about Figaro, I came home to the guest bathroom renovation underway and Herculean projects at the office to push forward.  This past week, I hardly had the chance to savor Akemi’s triumphal recital and being in springtime Boston. 

How like life, that the adrenaline of the current emergency pushes aside the good feelings to treasure.   Today, on a quiet, restful Sunday, I’m grateful that both of my “kids” have come through their gauntlets, and hope to get through this next week without any further alarming news.