Food, Water, Rest January 20, 2012

Chefs have this impeccable ability to push through most conditions, hunger, exhaustion, and extreme physical discomfort. I have cooked with a second degree burn, saute station, on a Saturday night. That’s a masochist for you. Stubborn as mules, and soft as pizza dough we think we can continue indefinitely. Im here to tell you, we cannot. We grow old, our bodies break down, our sleep patterns stay the same and we pull from a smaller and shallower reservoir of energy.
In these past months, almost two full years after my mothers death I felt irrationally crazy. Edgy, empty and lost, my sleep was elusive, I found my patience with everyone wearing thin. Not ok for a teacher, whos job is to swim in a sea of questions, as gracefully as possible.
In the midst of cooking for two weddings for chefs (intimidating) I met a lovely new friend. In the absence of spending *actual* time together we talked a lot over email. Also a writer/blogger we talked about feminism, food, books. It reawakened a part of myself I had lost to work and life. We developed a cute system of checking in; breakfast questions, accounts of exercise and daily activities. On a cellular level I remembered how good breakfast was. I slowly became less irritable, very slowly. I looked forward to spending a quiet hour to myself, eating.
Then came the questions about why I wasnt sleeping. Actually, the exact question was what my achilles heel was. And I honestly couldnt say, I was that far removed outside of my body that I had forgotten. Any disruption or lack of sleep just further fueled my inner asshole. Fall closed in, and I started to bundle up, crawl into bed with a book and force myself to wind down and get ready to sleep. Enduring the short period of impatience was worth it, every morning when I woke up far from exhausted and hungry. My body was slowly speaking to me again.
That last piece was tricky, I am notorious for wanting water and never drinking it, small cups of it laying around the house like tiny birdfeeders for some invisible companions. My morning coffee was joined by a glass of water, and my water bottle at work was always in sight…and lo….that complicated swirl of balance returned. The flashes of deja vu that had been missing, and the gut reactions I used to have came back.
One of my dearest friends, and her partner told me at my lowest point that when I felt destroyed, horrid, implacable that I should do a diagnostic check….food.water.rest. They are the tenets of self care that should never be forgotten, because they nourish our complicated beings on a cellular level, and those small atoms are so easy to feed or neglect every moment, every day.

Hungry Ghosts or Loss and the ghosts it leaves behind January 2, 2012

It would seem strange to be talking about ghosts, after ringing in what promises to be a good year. After spending the morning at my uncles house; a combination of new walls and old, 4 generations of family and so many smaller tribes of children running through it seems fitting. Each new years day, my uncle and his immediate family go to the cemetary, a tradition that my family also does, albeit not on the same day every year. They go to pay respect, and also I think to remember the bonds that remain. It is a certain strength this, to remember who is left and to honor who is gone.
My cousin Tommy died when he was 14, much too young of course and unexpected to all of us. It was the end of an age of innocent happiness for all of us. Because even though we were scattered all over the island, and the west coast, we could always rely on coming back together, and the 3rd gen running around the house, or the beach eating, screaming, and getting scoldings. I remember taking him and my brother to the beach; they were so little, caked with dried sand, drinking passionfruit juice and eating chips. Tussling little boys are always beautiful to behold, brown limbs flailing, enlisting any passerby to help them build the biggest fort ever. Tommy’s mother is like a sister to me, she made sure I stayed out of trouble, gave me dating advice, snuck me beer when we would go out for Thai food.
Tommy toggled between Washington and Hawaii, just like me, but only because his father lived there. Eventually, somehow, his father got full custody, and my cousin only got him during the holidays. We were all very upset, but we made the best of it. No one completely understood how miserable this made Tommy, how he felt displaced from both his mother’s family, which now had three little ones, and his father’s, which had a new addition of its own. In the family pictures of him as a young man, he looked increasingly forlorn, and not of the typical teenage variety. But who could know? Having gone through custody battles myself, his mom and I would discuss the stupidity and injustice of it all, but it was like discussing the weather, or sports, it seemed normal. When I turned twenty eight, I got a phone call from my mother telling me he had died, killed himself while his parents were out and he was babysitting his baby halfbrother. Never have I seen my entire family cross the ocean at once. Never had I seen them so…empty. My cousin never looked as happy or as mischevious again. She and her parents, so proud of their washington boy became for many years, what I refer to as hungry ghosts. After a great loss, there is a greyish green sheen of light that hangs over the ones left behind. They laugh, and move forward, but their voices become softer on the subject of those gone, and the reminiscence can range from a pause over favorite foods, or a drive past a park or well loved destination.
I never knew what it was exactly, only a creeping sadness. Not until I lost my mother two years ago. It comes and goes like the ebbing tide. I know this now, and it informs how I appreciate and move through the world myself. But I am determined not to become a hungry ghost, it is too much, it can suck the fire out of life this loss and grieving.
How to cling to the happinesses that remain, when you are confronted with profound loss, even from lifes blows? This much is clear: you cannot stop dreaming, you cannot keep yourself empty, because waiting for someone’s return is not giving them a better evolved version of yourself. Anyone, even someone long gone, would not want that, not if they loved you that much.
So this post, while a recollection of a young man ten years gone, is also a celebration. It is a reminder to myself that this year I have seen myself at my best, and my worst and both have given me the tools to move forward in earnest.