I See You (Avatar)

People will always assume things about you that isn't quite congruent with your character, no matter how many years you've known them. Some people could have known you in your best years and have watched you up close for the last 10 years and still at the most crucial moment assume the worst conclusion. They won't even give you the benefit of doubt to ask you about it and allow you to explain yourself, they just make their decision on one moment you stumble into some bad lighting and that boat drifts away. It's the "avoid the drama" mentality or "I don't want to deal with it" attitude that will eventually break you in separate paths and all over a unexplained inconsistency in you. Or maybe we are all waiting for our friends to disappoint us and once they do, we congratulate ourselves for "seeing that coming." Perhaps they haven't had the best view of you in the first place and what they were looking for is the confirmation for their sneaking suspicion about your shady character. Perhaps they expected perfection that no one could live up to, and the time came to prove your human frailty, they reject you just as you are criminal.

Then, there are people who see you, truly see you and even when you are at your base, at the degenerate, broken place they still see the God in you. This is because the God in them sees the God in me. There is mutual understanding that our intentions and heart is pure, there is no hiding and there is no skirting, you are all honest because they will see you with the knowledge love. Misspoken words are covered by their true intentions and not the semantics, their vacancy ascribed to busyness and not neglect, you will always know that the person you call friend is not easily turned away by one misstep, one misunderstanding, one mistake. I'm thankful I have people I call friends who are just like this and would believe me and fight for me till the end. No, not when I'm genuinely wrong but I am just genuinely misrepresented by my carelessness and no so polished PR for myself.

Once, I wrote an angry letter to my pastor when I had a mild melt down one summer. It was directed at him and at the church, at the job I was at and I'm pretty certain I remember writing down some nasty language peppered with profanity that could not be contained if I was writing the Pope himself. I mean, Jesus already knew I was thinking them in my head, why not express them for emphasis sake and let him know I really mean it. After he read my letter, he thought to himself, "now why would my friend Susie, who I know very well through and through write such a letter?" He took me at my position and how I was feeling and not the words that described them. Those words he knew were the intensity I felt in my being and not so much to offend him personally. He knew to take me at moments of weakness and know that when I was pulled together and slapped out of my furious state, I would regret those words and wish I could unsay every word I wrote.  He didn't talk about the letter, but he talked about the issues that made me write that letter, which I appreciate till this day, because he Saw me.

Many times in most of my relationships, there is just no room for error.

I see you

(riding in the car back home from a meeting)
H: You tired?

S: No...I'm alright, just thinking about Jude

H: What's he doing?

S: He's toddling around...

(On Thursday morning we both woke up at 4 am just minutes from each other.)
S: Why are we awake?

H: I don't know...

S: Maybe God woke us up to pray for Jude

H: Why? You think he fell down?

S: No, he always falls down...

Why can I see you and know what you're doing? Can you sense me too and know that your parents are somewhere waiting for you? Or are you already so attached to your foster family you are content? I held Judah last night. He's a 14 month old boy who is walking already and saying things like "candle," "light" and "umbrella." He was pushing me away as I held him and I got sad imagining how it's going to be in the beginning between you and me.  I'm nervous and anxious to think that minutes, days, weeks and months are going by and you're growing, learning and meeting milestones that I'll miss. But you wait and see, you'll be at home here, we'll love you here. 

Play Buddies

Dear Hanuel,

I have already promised a dozen little boys that they will be your buddy.  Well, I have promised a dozen mommies with boys your age that you will be their little buddy. There are so many people who are expecting your arrival. Your emo (auntie) Mia wakes up and the first things she thinks of some mornings is how happy she is to have you come home soon. There are far away aunties like Megan and Jenna who have already purchased you your first baby gifts. I make baby registries for you and I half don't know what you even need when you get here because I don't exactly know how old you'd be at gotcha time. Regardless, I don't can't help but to look out for all the things I want to give you and not just material things, but buddies, activities, us time, love, food, things I can't even conceive of yet, but I know I'd want to give them to you.

You'll never be lonely or be short of love here. We're all waiting.

Momma

What you'll get into

Dear Haneul,

While your dad and I were sitting out on the balcony last night because it was 41 degrees and foggy after a snowfall, we wondered if you would be athletic. And if you were athletic, if you'd enjoy playing baseball or soccer, because as it were, baseball is a spring sport, so you can play soccer in the fall. We think you would have some kind of swag and you'd be able to hang with the kind of cool kids who play baseball or soccer.

We then thought about, "What if he's not athletic at all?" What if you were like Ethan, our little 3 year old buddy who plays guitar and promises that he will become a rock star one day. He has swag too and when he rocks out, he has a certain dirty grunge rock and roll style, with his guitar down low and his pants down low with it. He nods his head just only slightly to feel the flow and he has such a cool air about him and I wonder if you'd be just like that.

I wonder what kinds of things you'd get into, I had pinned up some crafts that we can do together while we're home together and your dad says they're too girly. He'd like to see me build a toy gun out of wood rather than have you make coffee filter flowers and egg carton wreaths, but I think those are plenty manly if you ask me. Craft has no gender! Then it led to me to think that you'd be an artist or maybe a writer just like your mom and your grandfather, who writes like Hemingway but way too busy and underestimates himself to do any serious writing. Maybe when he retires...

Whatever you get into, I hope you do it with freedom and passion, not letting others dictate what you love to do. You do your thang!

Momma

Good Grief

You know those people you were fettered to? Those people you tolerated because of a higher cause? It's a great burden to keep peace and seek reconciliation for the sake of your love for another. Then, there is great release, great freedom when they themselves break off ties with you. It's when that boyfriend or girlfriend that you've been wanting to break up  but don't want to hurt finally breaks up with you. You sigh a sigh of relief when they do and you are free from he ball and chain that has imprisoned you for far too long.

Although she has broken off ties with you and still feels as though she has wronged you, you feel cavalier and breathing in clean air refreshed. You suddenly feel brave and throw shit into the air because there is no one that can touch you no longer. It's just words, words that have been twisted and deranged in their diluted mind that concocted murky confusion of stories that just don't add up. You feel strangely effervescent that she is no longer our responsibility. Let her go, let it run it's course and whoever falls into her lies, let them. First you try to save them and dispel the lies she's poisoned their soul with, but if they don't follow the light, if they don't recognise what's right then you must let hem find out in time.

Jealousy is a venomous bitter drink that the consumer doesn't realize they drink. Once they've had their first sip, it leads into a gulp, then they will eventually and inevitably be drunk with it's venom. The venom will course into their bloodstream and soon, they will not know what they say, what they hear, what they see, and only thing they believe will be what they dream up in their wake. Spinning their web of lies and spin their web bigger and bigger, trapping the innocent and the seemingly loyal. Cut yourself from them and brush the dirt off your shoulder, climbing higher and more righteous, no longer in their realm of feeding ground.

You're out.

Day Dreams

Dear Haneul,

There are numerous moments in my day where I am day dreaming about you. A transparent silhouette of you runs with reluctant steps around the house, waving around a small Tupperware I would have given you to play with.  I picture you at restaurants and sitting aside me coloring a print out of a Degas painting (because I think Sponge Bob is too shallow for you), with a box full of crayons at Starbucks. When I wait in line for coffee, you would grapple at the juice and point to cookies you'd like to eat as a snack. I'd calculate for a moment of how much sugar you had that day, and half-heartily share one with you because I want to give you want you want, but still be a good mom.

I walk through the mall and nothing quite catches my eye any more but  the small graphic tee shirts for boys and tiny jeans that I would put you in. Friends and family were afraid we would be put in the poor house from all the shopping I would do for a little girl, and they were relieved that I had been matched with a little boy instead. I don't know if that helped because I still want to acquire every cute thing that I see for a little boy. The desire to give you everything is still the same, no matter if you were a girl or a boy. I had wanted a little girl thinking I would be a better mom, a better counselor, a better friend down the line, and it wasn't a secret that I had wished for a girl. When I heard that I was given a boy, I was surprised I didn't even grieve for a second, but I celebrated and all the wish for a girl went right out the window. Now, I think to myself, "what would I do with a little girl?"But I'm sure that would change if I do have a baby girl some day.

I pick up little boys at church carrying them around to see how heavy you would be when you come to me. I ask, "how old is your little boy?" guestimating how big and how long you would be, if you would be talking or walking, eating solid foods or still drinking formula. I don't know what to feed you when you get here...but I'm still trying to figure it out. Don't worry, you won't go hungry. 

Thinking of you always and seeing you in my day dreams...

Momma

Moneyball (watch it)

I watch sports and it's mildly entertaining when I care about the sport and something is riding on the game personally. School pride, city pride or your irrational love for lovable losers who disappoint you every single year no matter how much you believe in them. I normally don't get too emotionally invested nor do I completely understand what's going on, but I get baseball. Growing up in a baseball family, it must be in the blood. My grandfather played baseball when it was the grand old American past time and it was glamorous to play. It has deep seeded history, magic and romance that no other sport quite invokes. My father courted my mother in the stadium where the Seoul Tigers played their inadequate baseball that mildly resembled the teams played in the West. My brother was pruned by the two generations and started playing catch, pitched a perfect game in his little league travel team and had the hopes of my father on his shoulders to play professional baseball.

It gets in your blood after a while and soon, the rules, the stats, the player names and teams are wandering aimlessly in your subconscious and it eventually morphs into a love for the game. There is magical nostalgia when i think about baseball and loving the game means falling in ranks with the great legends and you belong to the deep history of Americana. Baseball seems simple to the naked eye and this is probably the reason why pee wee boys can join in the legacy at their tender age. There are simple rules you can recite, hit round ball with round stick and run from base to base. As pee wees mature into little league players and each base you get on begin to weigh in on your stats. Batting Average, Bases on balls, strikeouts, stolen bases, total bases, sacrifices, and those are the ones I know of. The starting line up, starting pitchers, the closers, all bring a team to a win or to a lose. There's more than just physicality that each player invests into the game, thus all the extra weight in the middle parts of some players and some junk in the trunk, but there is head game and strategy. Many accuse baseball of being dependent on the individual athleticism, but it's the combination of each part of the whole.

Besides the heady and technical aspects of the game, there is something mystical about baseball, something to day dream about. "If you build it, they will come," whispers into the ears of baseball dreams and baseball superstitions run so deep in the legacy of the team, it becomes their identity and curse. Grown men who are awarded millions of dollars will abide by the field gods not to anger them and engage in series of religious hocus pocus to ward off their wrath. Not talking about the outcome of a 7 game series before it is over, not shaving after a first post season win, chewing only one wad of gum per game, and tapping one's bat on home plate before an at-bat. If by chance you have angered the baseball ghosts, you end up a long running curse long as 100 years. This is exactly why our lovable Cubbies have not won a world series since 1908, when someone angered a goat. As the story goes, Billy Sianis owned a goat and when tried to bring him in during the 1945 world series between the Cubs and the Tigers, he was denied by the Wrigley Field security. Billy, and apparently the goat were angered and he put a curse on the Cubs that they would never win another pennant or play in a World Series at Wrigley Field again.

I'm not a baseball junky and I don't watch a random game of baseball with teams that have nothing to do with me, because I do agree it's not as fast paced as a speedy hockey game at the cusp of a fist fight at any moment, nor is it as glamorous as football with dancing showboats in shiny hip huggers, but I love the game. Baseball is culture, nostalgia, history and magic.

"It's hard not to be romantic about baseball" - Moneyball