Tag: family

A Story of Glass, a Family, and Murder

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“Mom,” said a little boy startled. “They’re back again.”

“I know honey,” she replied.

“Mom,” said a little boy startled. “They’re watching us again.”

“I know honey,” she replied.

“I’m scared,” said the little boy. “I don’t want to be here mama”

“Someday baby, someday we’ll get out of here. Your father will come for us.”

And so they waited, and waited, and waited some more. But he never came and he never would.

Years went by. The boy was no longer little, the mother was no longer strong, and both of them were no longer hopeful.

“Mom,” said a no longer little boy, “we can’t wait any longer, we need to get out of here.”

“No,” she said, “it’s too dangerous. Your father will come for us.”

But the no longer little boy watched his mom’s once shiny black hair turn to grey and he knew that he could wait for his father no longer.

That day, while his mother lay quietly in the grass resting her tired eyes, he grabbed a rock and walked to the glass.

Bang.

Children began to scream.

Bang.

Parents grabbed their kin and began to run away.

Bang.

The mother of the no longer little boy ran after her son but it was too late.

Bang.

Three guards rushed toward the scene.

Bang.

The glass finally began to break.

Bang…

A bullet went through the no longer little boy’s chest.

Bang…

A bullet went through the mother’s chest as she ran towards where her son’s body lay.

Two weeks later the glass was fixed, the zookeepers removed all movable rocks, and two new gorillas filled the place of the deceased mother and son.

Photo credit: cincinnatizoo.org

Wandering

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Let me be your beacon,

let me be your guiding light.

I know you’re scared, tired, and broken,

but I’m here to hold you tight.

I know you hide your fears from me,

you get ashamed when you let them show,

but babe,

I’ve cried in your arms many times,

so please just let me know

what’s going on in that beautiful mind of yours,

your wicked, twisted, brain

filled with lies and awful times,

but babe let me be your change.

I just want to love you,

you’ve been through so god damn much,

your beautiful soul deserves the world you know,

I wish you thought the same.

I’m sorry for everyone who hurt you,

you’re scared to let me in because you fear I’ll do the same.

Everyone you’ve loved has done you wrong,

but darling I’m not the same.

So let me be your beacon,

let me be your guiding light.

I know you’re scared, tired, and broken,

but I’m here to hold you tight.

Photo via: searchengineland.com

Your Vegan Thanksgiving is still a Celebration of Violence!

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Photo via Pinterest.com

A vegan Thanksgiving is more sustainable and animal cruelty free. Supporting semen being sucked out with a straw from 46 million male turkeys’ anuses each year is cruel.  But having Thanksgiving at all is not necessarily cruelty free. The only ethical way to celebrate Thanksgiving is to spend it educating yourself on indigenous rights. 

“Happy Thanksgiving” I am so thankful for the Native Americans who continue to fight for their rights, their lands, refuse to abide by the societal expectations of pretending nothing terrible happened to their ancestors on this holiday. 

As we are having a beautiful Thanksgiving feast with our families and friends, remember that today is a national day of mourning for native Americans across the country. So while you’re thinking, “wow, this holiday is so incredible and based upon gratefulness and love between humans,” please don’t forget that thousands upon thousands of Native Americans have been brutally murdered in cold blood (partly) for their lands by white colonizers. 

And this question shocks me… but how many people across the country will celebrate Thanksgiving today having never even engaged with or met a native person, can’t name five tribes, can’t name the tribe whose lands they occupy or even can’t name a living native person? 

So… why not celebrate gratitude daily? It is one of the most important self-care practices a person can do. Daily practices rather than on just one day covered by blood which is just another white supremacist holiday. I’m not saying we should completely cut Thanksgiving from our yearly tradition but being less arrogant and realizing what this holiday truly represents. Being “woke” can be very emotionally taxing and difficult to talk about; but it’s worth doing the right thing rather than taking the easy way out and staying silent. 

Ignorance is not bliss. Even though it would be much easier not to post about these topics and just pretend today is a wonderful day of giving thanks…like everyone else does… so I don’t hurt any proud Americans’ feelings. If you’re not speaking the truth, you’re part of the problem. 

So bon appétit, but don’t forget!  As we celebrate thanks, for Native Americans Thanksgiving is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the assault on their culture and history of colonial violence.

for her.

djrendezvous3Leave a comment

As I have grown older, I have danced around with my faith in God. My extended family is very Catholic. Like, so Catholic that my great grandparents had fifteen children. 

Both my mother and father grew up in the church. With families that wholeheartedly believe in God and Catholic values, there was little room to be different and your own person with different values and morals. My parents saw flaws in this system and didn’t raise my brother and me in the church. 

Now, as my relationship with God is pretty non-existent, I wonder about the strength in religion and the power of spirituality. Around the world, there are all these varying forms of praying to a higher power(s) in order to feel something like happiness, clarity, or reassurance. 

My aunt is currently sick.  And I am waiting for a miracle. 

My family has urged people to pray to keep her alive and healthy. But, is that legit and enough?

We have been praying for months. 

We have been watching the sickness take over her. 

We have watched the weight drop off her like the tears that run off our faces when thinking about her future.

We are putting our hopes and prayers on one person and what is He doing to save her? 

But, I pull myself back from this cycle of negativity and think about her, just her. I think about her needs, what she wants right now. 

She lived and lives a beautiful life. 

She is surrounded by people who love her and will be for eternity. 

She has made hundreds of people smile. 

My sentiments on prayer and putting all your hopes on one figure can be pushed out the window. For now, I will pray because I know that is what she believes in.

photo credit: pinterest.com

Remember

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By no standards are my Chinese skills any more than proficient. After moving away at the age of 12, things started to fade for me very quickly. After six months I forgot how to write; after a year, my reading; then finally, my identity.

By the time I entered the eighth grade, I had been thoroughly white-washed. Granted, I am only half Chinese, but I was raised to embrace my Chinese background, to be proud of my heritage. But it was slipping away.

I went back to China the summer before I entered my Freshman year of High School. I wasn’t able to handle the street-food, my 8-year-old cousin was speaking better than I was, and I had lost a connection with the country that raised me.

Before I left my Grandmother repeated something to me that she had told me before I moved away. “Remember,” she said simply, “Remember where you come from.” When she said this, I realized it was a plea for me to clasp onto my cultural identity that was on the cusp of being extinguished. I had a life in China, friends, family, and a part of myself that never seems to board the flight to LAX when my visits end.

So I listened to her, I pushed myself to retain the identity I found in being Chinese, I acknowledged the comments of being only half, being unable to communicate, but they don’t bother me. When I listen to songs from my childhood, when I go back to visit, when I speak my native tongue, no matter how poor it is, I feel like myself again.

There are certain things in everyone’s life that hold invaluable, unspeakable significance to their sense of self, to their state of being, that without it, they feel like a bulb without its filament. To me that is the ability to speak in Chinese. As soon as the words escape me, I feel that connection again, I remember the people, taste the food, experience the culture. I am eternally grateful to my Grandmother for what she instilled in me because I know that at my lowest moments I always have something to lean on.

Happy Birthday Derek

The story of kale, tangerines, and the realizations I made.

faithfulomnivoreLeave a comment

I ate a piece of kale the other day.

It was growing in a garden box at school, so I pulled a leaf off of the plant and ate it.

It was a nice, sturdy piece of kale. It tasted pretty good. I continued munching on it as I walked over to the baseball field.

Photo Credit: Pinterest.com

Kale can be a nice snack, if you’re into dark leafy greens. But, as many experienced plant-eaters know, raw kale is quite tough to chew.

My jaws were getting a little bit tired, so I switched over to eating a different leaf that I had also picked from the garden box. I’m not sure what plant this was, but it was softer and sweeter than the kale.

As I was chewing, I twirled the piece between my thumb and my pointer finger.

I started to study the leaves. The kale was dark and rough. It was much more aggressively textured than the other leaf.

It was at that moment when I stopped chewing, for I noticed dozens of very tiny, white bugs all along the sides of the leaves.

I swallowed my bite, then tossed the remnants of my half-eaten leaves aside. I decided not to dwell on it too much, because I didn’t want the thought of the bugs to take away from the otherwise positive experience I had eating them.

(I would like to apologize to the innocent lives I took that day. I didn’t thoroughly inspect the leaves before eating them, and that was selfish of me. To the bugs that once inhabited the kale: I am sorry.)

On a completely unrelated note, this morning my parents and I went out to our tangerine trees. It was time to prune them. After about an hour of picking fruit and chopping branches, my dad said to me: “This is a chore that very few other people your age have to do, but you have to remember that it just makes you more cosmopolitan.”

Though I didn’t really enjoy being outside when it was 40 degrees, I did find comfort in the fact that our work would provide more fruit for us next season.

I never realized it before, but I am so thankful that I know how to take care of citrus trees.

I live in a place where I am fortunate enough to grow my own food. I take that for granted.

I hope that I will always have this luxury, bugs and all.

febuary 14th’s epiphany

underwaterismyflyzoneLeave a comment

IMG_1437.jpg.jpegwow! we are lucky lucky to be alive. i know sometimes we get sad or angry or embarrassed or even feel all those silly human things at once, but have you ever thought about just how lucky we are to be alive at all?!

appreciate everything! soak in as much as you can as often as you can! talk to people you don’t usually and ask them about their day or about their dreams! confess your love to someone! get rejected and get over it, just to say you did it! get a shitty tattoo! make a change in the world! make your friend your valentine or your mom! stand up for someone! kiss your dog! love yourself the most! hug your friends or a stranger! tell your family you love them! make up with the people you got in a fight with! reach out to someone you miss! make the first move! tell your parents how much you appreciate them even if they make you angry! live in the moment! go out! surf! manifest positivity! go, go, go live. who cares? woohoo, we are so lucky!!

LIVE BY THIS: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” -alfred tennyson

we make our own waves.

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photo credit: images.fineartamerica.com

He told me this:
“I make my own waves.

I make my own waves when
I don’t need to.
I make myself angry when I don’t need to be!
And it’s not good for me,
not good for my health.

I see you do the same thing to yourself.
I think it’s something you inherited,
like it’s genetic, maybe. And I’m sorry.

It has taken me my whole life,
fifty-some years to realize that
I am the only one who can control how I feel,
that it is me, and not other people, who changes
the way I feel.

I see you do this to yourself,
you expect people to think the same way,
and to care and to try the same way that you do.

It’s taken me my whole life
to realize that, and I still
don’t know how to fix it.

If you could learn this now,
so early on in your life,
you’ll be so much better for it.

You’ll be just fine.”

I make my own waves too, sometimes.

But the thing about waves, is that even though they can be destructive, they can also be spectacular.

So, I think that it’s okay to make waves in our lives, but we have to decide which kind they will be.

 

Not if, but When

mypetlobster1Leave a comment

Loralee was born on April 28, 1970. Loralee died on June 3rd 1970.

My mom never met her sister; I never met my aunt. She spent her thirty-six days in a hospital. Loralee wasn’t born lucky.

Due to her cleft pallet, she was unable to swallow. The hospital put a tube down her throat to feed her. Instead of going into her esophagus, the tube was misplaced and put into her lungs. After a month and three days, her lungs were filled from the tube’s givings and she died from suffocation.

Loralee Myra French never came home. My mom never got to see her sister. My mother was less than two years old. I wonder what my grandmother told her. How could you explain that to an innocent child?

My mom learned the full story when she was older.

I learned the full story a week ago.

Recently, my great aunt died. I wasn’t close to her. She was an awful person. She put her son through absolute shit, abused my grandmother, and put my mom’s side of the family through living hell.

Even though she was a cruel human being, it hit me hard when she died. As bad as it sounds, it wasn’t hard for me because I cared about her a lot, it was harder for another reason.

As I’m getting older, death is so much more real. I understand it and am effected by it more and it takes place more in my life.  There are so many people who are going to die in my lifetime: my parents, my grandparents, my kindergarten teacher, the owners of my favorite place in the world… There are so many people who have died in my lifetime: my grandfather, my aunt, my favorite artist, my dad’s best friend.

I’m still young, but I’m old enough to understand how abruptly life can end.

I was doing driver’s ed a couple days ago. I read a story about a man who got in a car crash and killed his best friend.

One mistake, one wrong turn, one bad decision, and your life could be done.

We all know we will die one day. It’s not “if;” it’s a “when?”

When am I going to die? When are you going to die? It’s inevitable, unescapable, and, in my opinion, scary. So scary.

On the news, I read about a girl who traveled in Costa Rica, met a man at an Airbnb, and went missing. Later, she was found dead.

One misgiving of trust, one ignorant move, one second of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you could be found lifeless too.

And, then, there’s so many undeserving people who die cruel, miserable deaths. Cancer, suffering, abuse, rape. So many innocent people whose lives get taken away. Just like the young rape victim who was found dead in a suitcase behind a dumpster, just like orphan who starved to death, just like the 13,000 people who died in shootings this year, just like the young baby who only got to spend thirty six days on this earth; my aunt Loralee Mya French.

“Where are you From?”

underwaterismyflyzoneLeave a comment

He broke my heart in pieces over and over and over again.

It was a few days after my 12th birthday. My mom told me we were going to Buca di Beppo’s in Thousand Oaks for dinner with my family to celebrate. Birthdays dinners have always been something we always, ALWAYS had for one another. Every time someone in my family had a birthday, we all would meet up somewhere and celebrate over dinner. Therefore, I was not surprised we were having one for me. We took birthday dinners pretty seriously, because we rarely got to see each other. Birthdays were just an excuse to come together.

After school, I went home, took a shower, and my mom insisted on me letting her straighten my hair, which didn’t seem out of the norm because she always loved how my hair looked straight. She said everything looks cleaner when my hair is straight. When we got to Buca di Beppo’s, the host led me all the way to the back where I saw all my family, my closest friend, and all his family. I was shocked, but had a huge smile on my face. There were way more people than I expected and they were sitting at a massive table with every appetizer on the menu right in front of them. “SURPRISE,” everyone yelled. I was ecstatic; I had finally gotten the surprise party I’ve always wanted.

I was so happy, but I knew something was missing. It took me a while to realize what, or who, it was. My dad, mom, sister, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, cousins, my best friend, and his whole family were there what could it be? Then it hit me “Mom, where is Blake,” I asked, my voice cracking. Blake is my brother, at that time he was 25, and I knew was he wasn’t there. Showing up to family dinners is so important, because the time we have together is rare. So, not being there is practically a sin in my family. “I don’t know. No one knows. Sorry, Ki,” my mom said. My 12-year-old self felt so betrayed. “No one can get a hold of him,” my dad said. “He might be living on the streets, we don’t know. But, don’t worry, he’ll come back eventually.” How could I not worry? How could everyone but Blake be there? How could someone be SO selfish? At the time, Blake was in and out of rehab because he was addicted to heroine. He often lied and stole things from me and my sister. Which, at the time of the surprise party, I knew, but very vaguely. Years later, of course, I knew a lot more.

It’s as simple as that. He broke my heart in pieces over and over and over again. He smashed mine and my whole family’s. Not only did he break our hearts, he also ruined our trust. The truth of the matter, though, is he would do it again. What’s even sadder is I don’t blame him. He did it because he wanted to escape the world. That’s what drugs do; they help one escape. He wanted to run away from two families who could never meld beautifully, two families forced together with the same last name, but personalities that begged to differ. What I mean is, I don’t blame him for wanting to get out; he’d be crazy if he didn’t, but I blame him for being so incredibly selfish. Truth of the matter is, he isn’t the only guy who’s broken my heart, nor is he the first to do so.

That’s a different story for a different time ,though. In case, you were wondering, Blake is better now. At least he says he is.