last minute wishes

'Twas the night before Christmas and in spite of myself
Not a creature was stirring, except for me, Mama Elf.
The stockings were hung, but have yet to be filled --
The kids won't get coal, so they should be pretty thrilled.
There are still presents to wrap ... some hidden away
I need to find them quick, since it's almost Christmas Day!

When all of a sudden, I heard a great roaring!
I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize it's just my husband snoring.
It's been a long, fun day, filled with good food and cheer,
A little hosting and toasting, with friends and family from far and near.
So now as I attempt to finish my list
(I have to admit, I am procrastinating a bit)
I want to take a minute to say just one thing more --
Wishing you peace, love and happiness
shared with those you adore

cake boss

We decided several years ago that we would stop having "kid" birthday parties at age 10. My son has been fine with that, but for various reasons, I have not held the line as much with my daughter. This year, my daughter became a teenager, and that seems to be a big deal. For me, I always thought of turning 12 as the "big" birthday, since that was the year that you celebrated your -- in my case -- Japanese zodiac sign. It only happens every 12 years, so I was raised to think that that was a pretty big deal. In Japanese (and Japanese American) culture, you get a big celebration after you've traveled around the zodiac wheel five times, on your sixtieth birthday.
My husband, however, did not grow up with that same consciousness about the zodiac years -- even though he will be the first to point out that it is the Chinese zodiac which the Japanese stole and used as their own. Since my daughter was with all of us on a family trip to China on her 12th birthday, she did not get a typical "party," so letting her have a 13th birthday party seemed like it was not caving in too much.
In any case, my daughter usually has big plans for her birthday, even though they tend to evolve during the course of the year. She starts thinking about the next one almost as soon as her birthday is over. Looking back, it's a little sad that we can't remember all of them -- none of us can remember what happened at the 3 or 5 year birthdays. For the others, we've been to Build-a-Bear, learned gymnastics at Golden Bear, gone ice skating at the Oakland Ice Rink, had a virtual + reality party at our house with Webkinz, scaled fake rocks at Ironworks, watched a show and had tea at American Girl Place (just with me, a couple aunties, and my mom), had ice cream at Fenton's and extended family and friends parties at home.
"What do you want to do for your birthday, Mika?" I asked a little over a week ago.
"Uhhhh ... I want to go to Homeroom Mac+Cheese, and then maybe a sleepover."
"Okay, you realize you can only invite a few friends, especially if it's a sleepover. Who do you want to invite?"
"Oh. Hmmmm. That's sooooo hard," my daughter groaned. It was hard. Not wanting to offend anybody, yet knowing there was no way she could invite everybody she wanted to, we made a very short list and went from there. We were already very late, sending out an electronic invitation on Monday for the party on Friday. Fortunately, everybody was able to make it for at least the cake & ice cream portion of the evening, and most could even spend the night.
Since Homeroom does not take reservations, and standing out on the corner with a bunch of girls for an hour to wait for a table was not my idea of a good party, I was relieved to discover that the restaurant made party portions to go. I ordered the Gilroy Garlic and the Mack the Goat macaroni & cheese dishes, plus an order of Minty, Buttery Peas, at my daughter's request. (She is not a person who likes peas, but she loves these peas. As she says, "They must put fairy dust on them. Or nicotine. They are so addictive.")
With a phone call, dinner was taken care of. Now came the tricky part. My daughter had been asking for a Funfetti cake for months now. For those of you not familiar with Funfetti, it is a boxed cake mix that has little "confetti" sprinkles in the white cake. She also wanted chocolate frosting. This didn't sound too hard, but I was not entirely sure how I was going to execute this birthday request. Messing up on the birthday cake would be pretty bad. Okay, worse than pretty bad: it would be a birthday disaster. I decided to attempt making chocolate frosting from scratch -- I'm not sure why I thought this would be a good idea, but it seemed like one at the time.
Grocery shopping done, I unboxed my newly-released-from-the-storage-unit stand mixer and got it ready for battle. First, the cake mix. I felt like a TV chef with my barely broken-in stand mixer, adding ingredients as it mixed away. It was like magic. I poured the batter into the dusted pan and set the timer.
I cleaned frantically while the cake baked, then came running when the timer beckoned. Stuck a toothpick in it to check for doneness and let it cool. After a while, I decided to flip it onto my foil-covered cutting board so I could get ready to frost it. Oops. A large crack opened up, and then I suddenly had two pieces of birthday cake. I jigsaw puzzled them together and stared. Maybe if I looked at it long enough, the cake would miraculously heal itself. Heal thyself! Sigh. It wasn't working. Besides, the cake was not only broken, it was very flat. I decided to add a layer of cake, but realized I had no other cake mix. I thought about making a brownie layer, since I have six different boxes of brownie mix, but then had an inspiration: ice cream cake. Ice cream, check. M&Ms, check. Now, a little melting time to soften up the ice cream, a little muscle to spread it around in the cake pan, a sprinkling of M&Ms, and then ... a little bit of luck in getting the cake layer back into the pan ... and into the freezer it went.
Now it was time to make the frosting. I fired up the mixer again, and threw in lots of butter, some cocoa, a splash of vanilla, and some milk, and suddenly I had chocolate frosting! I had never used frosting that I hadn't bought at the grocery store, so it was a revelation to me that it was actually not that difficult to make. While I had been mixing, girls were arriving and I couldn't hear the doorbell, the dog barking, or the daughter opening the door. They eventually all arrived and sat down for dinner, eating far less food than I had planned for, and sounding happy the whole time. The bits and pieces of conversation I heard had to do with teachers, school, and times when they had heard other students fart at school. After they finished eating, they scurried away to the family room, where I had put twelve bottles of Hello Kitty nail polish out, and the girls paired up and did to do each other's nails.
Dinner was past history, and it was time for me to work on the cake again.
I filled a large roasting pan with hot water and dipped the ice cream cake pan into it for a short time. Then, imitating the motion my mother uses when plating a pan of gyoza, I flipped the cake onto my foil covered cutting board and ... exhaled when I took off the pan and discovered that the cake actually looked pretty good! The ice cream had molded itself into what looked like a layer of vanilla ice cream ganache, smooth and seamless, nearly encasing the broken Funfetti cake inside of it. Back to the freezer it went. When the final party guest arrived, I set to work frosting the cake. I had no pastry bag, so I clipped a Ziplock bag and went for it. Why, oh why, did I not take classes at Cake Dec like my sister did? What the heck am I doing? I shoved the words of doubt down to where I could barely hear them, and starting piping a ribbon of chocolate frosting along the edge, hiding the glimpses of cake from view. I was doing pretty well until the cake started melting. "It's almost cake time!" I shouted to the girls and my husband. I needed some help, now. "What do you need?" asked my husband. "Can you put the candles on the cake? They are right here, on this counter ... buried in this vicinity somewhere ..." I motioned in a vague circle next to the stand mixer, and run off to find the plastic Japanese letters I had found during some recent unpacking; my kids never used them much, and I knew they would be the perfect finish to personalize the cake with my daughter's name. I dumped the box of plastic letters on the guest bed, fumbling through until I found both a み and a か. There. I ran back to the kitchen, announcing as I ran, "O-kaaay -- cake time! Hurry because it's melting!"
My husband had arranged the HAPPY BIRTHDAY candles perfectly, and I finished off the decorations with the Japanese letters.

"It's Funfetti cake!" my daughter announced to her friends.
"... and it's ice cream cake, too!" I chime in, to explain why I had been running around saying the cake would melt.
The girls watch in anticipation as my husband lights the candles. "Now ... everybody sing, really fast."
Girls sing. A wish is made. Candles are blown out. Cake is served. Girls eat.
"Ooooh, this cake is good!"
"Wait, is this an M&M in here?"
"Whoa, it's an ice cream cake!"
"This is delicious."
Whew! Sigh of relief. I have averted a birthday cake disaster.
But wait, there's more -- my husband breaks out the Ben & Jerry's Schweddy Balls, which he has driven all over town to find, just for this occasion. Schweddy Balls are eaten. My daughter tries to explain the SNL Schweddy Balls skit. Girls chatter amongst themselves.
I look around the table and marvel at all of them. I've known one of the girls since she was 3 years old, and the rest since they were between 5 and 8 years old -- and now, with my daughter passing this milestone, they are all teenagers.
I take a picture, knowing that I will probably forget this birthday party otherwise, even though I really do hope that I always remember this day.
Happy birthday, baby girl.

not quite undercover

 "Mom," my son reported, "I have to bring Chinese doughnuts and soy milk to Mandarin class on Tuesday."

"Oh -- okay. I know what Chinese doughnuts are, I think, but what kind of soy milk is it? Just the regular kind I can get at the grocery store?"

"Uhhhhm, I don't know."

"I'll send the teacher an email," I say, letting him off the hook.

"Okay. Thanks, Mom."

My son is at a distinct disadvantage in Mandarin class, all because his mother is ... Japanese. Most of the kids whose parents aren't immigrants at least have a mother of Chinese ancestry. Except for my son. I think it is a source of amusement for the teacher, since my son has a Chinese surname, and she seems to appreciate my effort to get the food assignments right. She is always careful to try to give us food assignments that we can handle, and explains things to my son as much as possible. This time, I was familiar with half the assignment -- the Chinese doughnuts, which I learned to enjoy because of my love of jook, that savory, soupy, comforting concoction that my roommate, Alice Wong, introduced me to the day after Thanksgiving back in college. Turkey jook. That's what turkey leftovers become in a Chinese American household. And Chinese doughnuts are the perfect partner to a bowl of jook.

The soy milk, though, had me confused. My cousin (actually, my husband's cousin, but I have adopted all of his relatives as my own) told me that there is actually a soy soup that is commonly eaten with the doughnuts, and it is different from the standard soy milk I might buy at Trader Joe's. I emailed the teacher and asked her to send me the name of the type of soy milk, with the Chinese characters, just in case I needed it. 

Okay, who am I kidding? I knew I would need to go straight to the email when I went shopping for this. I walked into the market in Chinatown this morning, holding my phone up tentatively and asking, "Excuse me ... do you have soy milk? Dou Jiang?" I say, in my best invented Mandarin pronunciation. I point at my phone to the characters: 豆浆. The clerk nods her understanding. "Ohhh ... yes, dou jiang. I'm sorry but the delivery is not here yet from San Francisco. They make it fresh everyday. I'm sorry. You can come back later."

I have to explain that I cannot come back later, because I need it by 9:30 am for my son's Mandarin class. Plus, I need Chinese doughnuts, which they will dip into the soy milk. Does she have the kind of soy milk I would dip a Chinese doughnut into?

"Doughnut? In soy milk? Hmmm. Doughnut is very sweet. You don't want sweet soy milk," she gestures as if eating a round, American doughnut.

"Oh -- no, not that kind of doughnut. Chinese doughnut --" I gesture what I think indicates a long, tubular object, "-- like you eat with jook."

"Ahhhh! Okay. Soy milk. Uhmmm, this kind is good."

She directs me to a vacuum sealed box of soy milk with pictures of black beans on it. 

Okay, looks good to me. I scan the nearby shelves to see what else I might want to buy, as long as I'm here, since I don't come to the Chinatown markets very often.

The clerk notices my gaze, and apparently has noticed something else about me, too. "Do you want anything else?" she asks, pointing to the shrink-wrapped confections on the counter, "Do you want some mochi?" she says with a smile, "It's good." 

Of course, mochi. The only Japanese thing around. Try as I might to blend and at least come close to seeming ABC (American Born Chinese), my cover was apparently blown, no need to perpetrate. How did she know? Do I just look Japanese? Whatever the case, I found it amusing. I very politely say, "No, thank you, but they look very good," and make my purchase, thanking her and bowing my head slightly as I leave.

cars that go boom

"It's so embarrassing when Dad drives around with his music blasting," bemoaned my teenaged son. I chuckled and said, "He's been doing that your whole life, and you just noticed it now?"
"No, I noticed it before."
"Oh, okay. He's been doing that your whole life, and you were just never embarrassed by it before."
My son nods, then gives my husband a little credit, "At least he plays the right kind of music most of the time. It's usually some rap song. But sometimes he's like blasting something else --"
"-- yeah, like NPR!" chimes in my tweenaged daughter.
"Yeah! But most of the time, he's, like, this middle-aged Asian man in a suit driving his car boomin' some rap song ..."
I want to say something reassuring, to make them feel a little better about their dad, but all I can manage is this: "Well, he's been doing that pretty much since the day I met him. Although back then, he was a twenty-something year old Asian guy with his car boomin'. At least he's consistent."
What I really want to do is burst out into an impromptu version of Tigra & Bunny singing "We like the cars, the cars that go boom, we're Tigra and Bunny and we like The Boom ..." but since the kids are already bummed out about their embarrassing father, I decide to try to be The Less Embarrassing Parent and keep my mouth shut (and my bootie firmly planted on my chair). I think I am winning in The Less Embarrassing Parent contest; to be fair, I don't think my husband realizes there is any kind of competition going on. (Although, even if he did, I believe I would still be winning.)

fall figs

Figs. I grew up thinking a fig was something jamlike that came in a Newton, not realizing that it started out looking more like a mutant eggplant. I guess the man in the giant fig costume was a hint, but as a kid, I never gave it any thought. We ate a lot of fruit growing up, but not a single fig. But I do remember watching the Fig Newton commercials. I would be sitting in our living room with the avocado green wall to wall carved carpeting, gold upholstered sofa, and marble coffee table with the splayed legs. I can hear the Fig Newton jingle in my head and see the Big Fig Newton doing the Big Fig Newton dance. Oh, come on, you know you remember it, too. "Ooey gooey rich and chewy inside, golden flaky light and cakey outside, wrap the inside in the outside, is it good? Darn tootin'! Doing the Big Fig Newton -- here's the tricky part -- the Big Fig Newton -- one more time -- the Big Fig New-toooooon!" (Pose!)

When we first moved into this house in August, my friend Nancy came over and said, "You have a fig tree! Look at all these figs!" I had no idea. The fruit was still quite green and looked more like buds than fruit, and I was so glad she told me so I could eventually pick the figs when they were ready. I waited. And waited. And waited. Then I stopped checking, and, of course, that's when they ripened and were ready to pick.

My cousin Tina noticed before I did, and came in from our backyard with a small harvest of figs yesterday. They were so pretty! Who knew? I went out again today and picked a few more that looked ready, giving ever so slightly to my squeeze, green barely visible on the deep purple body. I had to ask Tina how to eat a fig. She just bit into it. Okay, that was pretty self-explanatory. I've since decided I prefer to slice it in half and scoop out the sweet fleshy insides with a spoon. Yum.

I'm sure that these first fall figs will be an enduring memory for me, our first figs at our new house -- which reminded me of my childhood memories in my first house, watching a man dressed like a fig dance around on television -- bringing me to my present and future, building new memories in our new home.

jury duty

The court clerk called out batches of numbers -- it was almost like a reverse lottery, where you really didn't want your number to come up. It was near the end of the second day of jury selection, and there were dozens of people who had been called, questioned, and dismissed. But they still didn't have their 12. The gentleman next to me, a man I had figured out was named "Brian," leaned over and said something about how there was a chance we wouldn't get picked -- or maybe he said there was a chance we would get picked. Either way, it was right after that that his number was called. Uh oh. Somehow, I knew I was about to be picked, too. Then, with the actual 12 members of the jury sworn in and 2 alternates seated (including Brian), and less than a dozen people left in the jury selection pool, they called four new jurors. I was the last person called. Badge #6.

I knew that if I got called, there was a strong likelihood that they would keep me. The one person I most identified with -- as far as his answers to questions regarding attitudes about police misconduct and racial profiling -- was a young Asian man who reminded me of my dentist. (Well, if my dentist were about 20 years younger, had a shaved head, and one tattoed sleeve.) In any case, you could see the surprise on his face when they asked him to stand and not leave -- he would spend the next two and a half weeks in the front row of the jury box. I remember saying to myself, "If they kept Young Asian Guy, they are going to keep me if my number is called." And, they did.

Unlike many people, I am not completely opposed to jury duty. It gives me a great reason to leave the kids unattended and go out for lunch. Plus, since we actually get paid, I was making money on this. A small paycheck, but a paycheck, nonetheless. Yes, it's inconvenient. I spent many years sending in the I-need-to-care-for-my-children-so-please-excuse-me-from-jury-duty form -- but now my kids are older and I didn't have a legitimate reason to get excused. I figured this would be less disruptive to my life than it would be for many others, so if it happened, it happened.

As part of a jury, you realize that you are an important part of the justice system -- at least, if you are on the actual jury. I, on the other hand, was picked as an alternate. But not just any alternate. I was Alternate #3. The jury box only had 14 chairs. My chair was not even in the jury box. I felt so extraneous. But ... I decided to make the best of it. My outside-of-the-box chair location turned out to be a bonus: nobody in the court room gallery could see me! I could wheel my chair around within my little area so I could see the witnesses, judge and attorneys, but I could not see the people who came to watch the proceedings, and I could use the jury box step as a foot rest. My chair was the envy of the Real Jurors.

Although everybody was a little bit in shock when we were empaneled, we were all resigned to our fates by the time we reconvened the next day. The case (which I still can't talk about) was complex and interesting. Some of us took notes. Some didn't. Some asked questions, in addition to taking lots of notes. I was a note-taker, even though I knew it was unlikely I would get to deliberate. I did it to help me stay engaged and hopefully not fall asleep. I felt like I was in college again, writing frantically and trying to digest it all and stay awake at the same time. I think I was pretty successful. But the one thing about dozing off is that you don't realize you have done it until it's done. That's all I'm going to say about that.

For those of you who have not served on a criminal jury before, here is something I didn't anticipate: there is a lot of downtime in the jury room when you are just sitting and waiting for the judge to call you in. We would assemble in the jury room, push the button for the buzzer to signal that we were all there, and wait. Most days, the clerk would come in and tell us it would be a few more minutes. Sometimes that meant 15 - 30 minutes, and you can't leave the room once the buzzer is buzzed! So, we all actually got to know each other a bit, which was really nice. As I looked around the room, it was amazing that this jury was such a cross-section of society -- which is exactly what it is supposed to be. We were all isolated in this little room together, like a very abbreviated version of Gilligan's Island sans shipwreck. I wouldn't characterize anybody as the Skipper or the Movie Star, but we did have the Tall Guy who spoke Arabic, the Latina who lived within walking distance of the courthouse, the Sephora Lady who had a cute purse, the Scientist with the name that I actually learned to pronounce but cannot spell, the Cocoa Nibs lady, the Asian Man with the nut-allergic son, the Woman with the Short Hair whose ex-husband is from Hawaii, the Woman with the Long Hair who used to run a daycare, the African American woman whose phone announced to all of us who was calling her, the Young Asian Man with the sleeve, the Filipina who got a speeding ticket one day, the Artist who has a "real job" at a nonprofit, and the alternates, Brian, Woman with the Camaro, and me. I learned most of their names by the second week, but we did refer to each other by badge number and description a lot. Given that we are sworn to secrecy and couldn't talk about the case even to each other, it felt like we should remain anonymous, like we were secret agents or something. It is awkward to refer to each other by number or description when you are out eating lunch together, though, so we did eventually break the ice and start referring to people by name. At least at lunchtime.

I learned some interesting things during this trial. The Sephora Lady told us that the Disney "documentary" about lemmings uses footage of lemmings being pushed off the cliff by the Disney people. I discovered that there are quite a few people who have chickens as pets, and there were a few of them on the jury. Even more have dogs, and I would say half of us had dogs. A few of the jurors have cats. Young Asian Guy is afraid of cats, but likes comic book superheroes. Artist and Filipina also like comic book superheroes. The Sephora Lady was very kind, telling me I didn't really have dark circles under my eyes when I asked her for a recommendation about some products for that purpose. Tina, the African American woman, is a stealth jigsaw puzzler. Jesus, the Artist, is a methodical jigsaw puzzler. I realized that both styles are effective and it was fun to see progress being made on the puzzles, either way. I love jigsaw puzzles, and was happy to help out.

Unfortunately, my jigsaw puzzling days were numbered. At the end of the first two and half weeks, I was dismissed due to an upcoming family vacation (which I had told them about during jury selection), and had to leave without even finding out what the verdict was. Hopefully, I'll find out when the case is resolved, and maybe even run into some of my fellow jurors someday :-)

UPDATE: The case went one week over what was projected, with a verdict coming down a couple days ago. The defendant was found guilty of murder in the second degree.

our house

Boxes, boxes, everywhere! Sorting and packing. Not sorting and packing. We bought a new house! Well, not exactly new, but new to us. We can't move into the new house yet, but we are getting this house -- our house -- ready to go on the market, so it can become somebody else's house. Suddenly, I am very sentimental about our house, even as I envision what the future will be in our next one.

Our "old" house, one city over in Oakland, was where our family was born. We were a young couple there ... then parents of one baby ... then parents of a toddler and a baby ... then parents of a toddler and a pre-schooler, when we moved to this house. This house, our current house, is where our babies grew into children, young people who have memories of this house, and virtually no memory of the Oakland house.

I remember walking the kids to school, up the hill in the Sit-n-Stand Stroller -- my daughter, sucking her thumb in the front seat, my son, the train-obsessed Big Boy, standing on the back platform. As we got to the steepest part of the block, I would chant, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can ..." as we powered up the hill. When they got to be a little bit bigger, my son would get off the back and push the stroller with me, saying, "Super power boost, Mom!!!"

This weekend, that same son -- now taller and stronger than me -- was carrying furniture with my husband, taking over that spot at the other end of the furniture that would normally have been mine. My daughter had made a Mothers' Day breakfast for me, all on her own, complete with custom Mothers' Day artwork on the wall of the breakfast nook. They really are all grown up. And it's all happened here, in this house.

We'll look back on this house with some very good memories, and I am tearing up right now, thinking about it. It's been more than a house, it's been our home. But it's time to move on -- literally -- and build more memories in the next house. And this house will be somebody else's new house. I hope they fill it with many years of good memories, too.