cindy's world

When I was a sophomore at UCLA, my cousin’s then-boyfriend Johnny was a freshman there and we were good friends. Johnny had this little Korean girl (also a freshman) who used to be his shadow. People would come up to me and ask what was up with Johnny and this girl, and I’d tell them nothing, they were just friends and they studied together a lot. I did personally suspect that at least one of them had other intentions about the other, tho. One day, Johnny and I were walking back to our respective apartments after class, and he seemed a bit down. Since I can’t remember that girl’s name, I’ll just call her Susie. “Susie told me today that she likes me,” Johnny said. We walked a few more paces. “That sucks, because now we can’t hang out anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked.
He looked at me in surprise. “Because! I have a girlfriend! I’m not going to be hanging out with a girl who has a crush on me, that’s just ASKING for trouble.”
At the time, I had never had a boyfriend before, and was unable to fully appreciate what Johnny was doing. I sensed that he was making a morally sound decision that did not serve him hedonistically, but that to him, it wasn’t even a matter of making a decision. It was one of those natural, common sense things to him; even tho it made him sad that he was losing a friend, he respected my cousin’s feelings and his relationship above all else. And my cousin didn’t even have to fight for or force this loyalty.
I often think about that conversation, less than a minute in its occurrence, and its enormous impact on me now. Now that my eyes have been darkened a bit more by life and experience, that moment with Johnny glows all the more ethereally in contrast.

At my first American Christmas, age 6 after having immigrated from Taiwan to California, I was given my first American stationery set. Each of the cousins (the kids) were given a white and red plastic Snoopy pencil box shaped like a large round crayon. The red top unscrewed to become a pencil sharpener. The real prize to me was a pad of stationery paper. The background on each pale green half-sheet size page of the booklet was a misty faded photograph of a deep green blade of grass, spotted with small round jewels of dew, and at the tip of the blade clung a large reflective tear-shaped drop. There was something magical about that image. It stirred in my young consciousness some association to a veiled memory that I could no longer identify.

It wasn’t until years later when I learned English that I could read the anonymously authored haiku, printed in white on the bottom right corner of each page:

Dewdrop, let me cleanse
In your brief, sweet waters
These dark hands of life

I skipped jujitsu today because my wrist and knee aren’t feeling up to par and I don’t want to risk further injury, and because my family has relatives visiting from Taiwan and their tour group put them in a local hotel tonight. So I had dinner w/many relatives I hadn’t seen since November, 1998.

I was a bit pensive going to dinner and took care to look presentable because Asian relatives like to make physical observations and commentary. “Your head’s unproportionately big for your body.” “You Americans must like the unruly hair look. We proper Chinese prefer the neatly groomed student look.” And because I threw my clear contacts away and am wearing out my gray ones before I throw these away, “I’ve noticed you American-grown Chinese kids like to pretend you’re white.” But it turned out that no one made any such commentary at me. Instead, my mother said to her cousin (in front of his wife and kids and everyone else) “You’re a lot fatter now than the last time I saw you.” “That’s rude,” I told her under my breath. She looked surprised.

I remember that cousin of my mom’s fondly. When I was 4 or 5, he let me run ahead of him while he followed me on his bike, then when I got to the finish line first, he panted and said to me how impressed he was that I beat him. It was years before I realized he had let me win. For years I claimed to be able to outrun a bicycle, and everyone thought I was a conceited liar. (And by “years,” I mean until I almost finished junior high.) Then, on 11-13-98, I stayed with this same cousin’s family (him, his wife plus 2 young sons) in their apartment when vacationing with my mother in Taiwan. That evening’s journal entry reads:

As the kids were being annoying & violent to each other yesterday morning, their dad suddenly said, “Hey, I just thought of a great game!” That stopped them from fighting over their stupid water balloons. “Wanna play?” he asked them. Of course they wanted to play. He said, “You two run downstairs & stand under the balcony outside.” (We’re on the 7th floor.) “…I’ll throw the water balloons down and you try to catch them.” I had to bite my tongue, but the kids’ mom said to her sons, “You think you’ll catch them? Don’t let Daddy trick you!” So they didn’t go for it.

Later, I told my mom about how my coworkers think I’m getting too skinny and how I think I could still stand to lose a few more pounds, and she readily agreed, without any malice aforethought, said “I think so, too. You should lose at least another 15 lbs.”

I watched Jim Carrey’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” this afternoon on HBO. The movie triggered some things in me that started the waterworks again. What I will always remember:
Me, on the second stair, suddenly collapsing internally as my world folded inward. Him, leaving his anger, resentment, hurt on the sofa where he was sitting and rushing over to me, catching me in his arms in a protective hug. As I sobbed incoherent things and my mind started shutting down in a spiraling loss of everything except for the pain, he pulled me up, forced me to stand against him, still surrounding me with his arms and chest, covered my hair with kisses as he said over and over, “No, no, come back, I’m not going to lose you to this. Come back, come out of it.” It was all very What Dreams May Come.
*sniffle*

I’m supposed to be packing and otherwise getting ready for my trip tomorrow, and what am I doing? This:


Disney’s Mulan in traditional Asian garb… Cindy in traditional Asian garb (2nd from left).
Okay, so maybe there are SOME similarities between me and Mulan. (For new readers, refer to 6-27-05 post, “Cindy the Cartoon“.)