Cultivating Friendships

There is some hokey poster hanging at work:

Flowers, friends, and credit.  They all need to be cultivated.

But so true.  And I’m not doing so well on the first two counts.  Nah, just the first.  It’s the weeds, really.  But back on point, for some reason I suddenly find myself calling people, making plans, and sending emails in a flurry that even surprises me.

It’s like I’ve awakened from the winter doldrums, dampness, and dormant and I’m bursting like my backyard blooms to socialize, nosh, and make merry.  The longer days is key to all this…I’m so excited that the sun doesn’t set until 19:47 tonight, which I happen to know because I want to go to the Marina and take it in, in all its glory.  I feel kinda guilty for not taking advantage here, while I made such a point of it when we were in Hawaii.  It’s the same darn sun, and even the same darn ocean.

Anyway, so I called a friend last week, and she had just moved out of her old place the night before into her new home!   Also last week I emailed another friend, who I know from  college regarding the company she works for in the news.  And then I called another friend this week, and he’s getting a divorce, right after he made it through the seven-year itch.  (That one particularly saddened me, as I was at the wedding, and they seemed like such a happy couple, but, as I always say, you never know what’s going on in a marriage).  And I emailed another cadre of friends about a get-together in May after our April plans were dashed.  And I called yet-another friend this week to get together for brunch this Sunday, and it’s all good!

So even though I didn’t make a conscious effort to cultivate my friendships, maybe that darn poster at work did its magic.  I don’t care why or how, but like I said, I feel like a hiberating bear who’s just come out of her cave and needs to catch up with everybody.

Oh yes, I guess it’s also because I feel good these days about myself.  And I finally got around to doing the wardrobe upgrade I so desperately needed, what with all the weight I’ve lost.  I didn’t want to wear only black & charcoal grey slacks to work like I did last year (because I looked terrible in anything else, and I didn’t want to spend any money on “fat” clothes).  Now I have all capri- and other abbreviated leg pants in navy with white polka dots, red (!), and black, and basic khaki.  That was a huge pick-me-up, especially because I was dreading the shopping trip.

My dad’s three acts

My dad grew up in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation, but that sounds bad.  He just grew up when Taiwan was a part of Japan, just like my grandparents did (they took over in 1895).  Japanese was his first language.  Even though he has not regularly spoken it since 1945, when he and my mom went to Japan last month, the Japanese people he spoke with commented that he didn’t have any accent.  Well, he shouldn’t.  That’s the beauty of a first language.

After WWII ended, he began to learn Mandarin.  He didn’t like it; the characters were difficult to learn, and he liked the simplicity of Japanese and its phonetic alphabet.  (That was the one thing the Chinese did not allow the missionaries to do: change their written language into a phonetic one.  It would have made my life a whole lot easier in Chinese school during the 80’s).

Then, as he approached college, he realized that to be a more attractive candidate when he graduated, he should work on his English.  Two of his older brothers worked as translators during their mandatory military service, which kept them protected from the front, so he figured he’d do the same.  Unfortunately, by the time he’d graduated college, the military only took English majors for the translator pool, so that didn’t work out for him.

But as Cheri says, you can have a goal, just don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out.  It’s the journey, not the destination kind of thinking.  And so it did work out for my dad when he read in a newspaper while working for the US Navy (because his English was so good, he handily passed their English test)  of a master’s degree program at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.  It tested prospective students in a variety of subjects, including language (Chinese), geography, history, and, to my dad’s advantage, English.  They had to write an essay on the topic, “A little knowledge is dangerous.”

Growing up, my father recited too many times to count the story of seven blind men who encounter an elephant.  Each has his own description of what an elephant is from his limited reach (though I’m sure a blind person would have walked all around an elephant, but that’s neither here nor there).  One man says an elephant is like a snake, due to its serpentine trunk, while another says an elephant is like a wall, or like a post, or wrinkly, etc.

Now I know why my dad was particularly keen on this story: today he tells me that he believes it was the strength of his essay, using this old Japanese fable as his crown jewel, that landed him a master’s degree scholarship, room & board included.

Isn’t life interesting?

I’ve been taking a history course from the Learning Company, and WWII has come alive for me in a way that it hasn’t before.  And then I read a book “Dog Man,” about the Japanese man whose love for Akitas may have single-handedly saved the breed after WWII.  And then I realize that my father lived through WWII, and even stranger, was a Japanese national during the war.  So his point of view is unique, at least here in the US.  And so here I found out all this history, as seen from a boy’s point of view.

And he even spoke of karma, as a young Japanese one-star general returned to Taiwan with lots of money and married a woman who bore four sons in quick order.  Tragically, all four sons died of cancer, followed by their mother.  The general was alone and traumatized by the age of 45.  And my father commented that people spoke of what horrors he might have committed during the war, that earned him such personal tragedy, a kind of “pay back.”

I don’t know if I believe such things, but it was certainly the first time I ever heard my dad speak of such things.  It’s really been great talking to my dad as an interesting older person.  This is a great time for our relationship!

And now I hit the gym.

Spring blooms

Sunday we went to the farm where my sister keeps her horse, but not to see him.  We went there to see the spring wildflowers in their glory.  Here in northern Cal, spring is the colorful season, because in as little as four weeks, the verdant grass will turn into yellow-brown hay, giving the hills a wastrel, I’m-a-punk-rocker-I-don’t-care-about-my-future-so-I-dyed my-hair-platinum color.

There were California poppies, giant, in their orange best, facing west and covering an entire hillside.  We took pix in a valley alongside lupine and other purple-hued beauties, as well as a yellow scrapper.

In my backyard, right now I have blooming: a lemon bush (oh! the heavenly scent of lemon blossoms), a giant tree with tiny purple blossoms that give off their heavy treacly scent once the sun sets (it’s a spring rite of passage for me, but I still haven’t gotten around to looking up the phenomenon in wikipedia) a tea rose bush, a lilac tree, and a Japanese maple (blazing red and in full force this spring, thanks to all the winter’s rains).

I don’t consider myself much of a botani-phile, but spring always opens me up.  From the moment my neighbor’s gorgeous cherry tree bursts into tiny pentagonal white blossoms (always the sentinel blooms) then our pear trees, another neighbor’s Magnolia tree, our own bushes that I’ve dubbed tissue-paper blooms for their fragile yet large size, to our pink Camellia bush, Spanish lavender (yeah! the autumnal pruning I did paid off in major dividends this spring), assorted purple wildflowers planted by the former owners, rosemary bushes with their purple accents, and my beloved California-native flannel bush with its brilliant yellow blooms in the front yard, the beauty touches me in a profound way.

The abundance, the resurging of life after a dormant winter, the scents….it’s life-affirming and joyous.  It’s no Garden of Eden, but it moves me.

Tires & Cleaning

I know, my life is full of interesting adventures, what with going tire comparison-shopping and, yes, that perennial crowd-pleaser, cleaning!  How do I maintain this scintillating lifestyle you ask?  Well, it’s not easy, and I worked very hard to be able to spend Monday mornings obsessively reading Consumer Reports and their reader forums.  And I had to take the car downtown, so that meant I got my exercise by walking home — yay, a 2-for-1.  Can’t get enough of those.

I almost forgot that I Advantage’d the cat this morning, in a pre-emptive strike against those pesky spring fleas.

Actually, I really am happy that I can spend the time to do such things (researching tires) and not feeling like I’m being “taken,” and making good consumer decisions.  Tires are not cheap!  The estimate came to $700.

The angry white kitty is banging on her kitty door now that she knows I’m home.

Yesterday we roasted our first batch of coffee.  It tasted delicious this morning, incredibly smooth and flavorful.  I look forward to this coffee roasting-grinding-brewing process.

So I just gotta bury the compost, vacuum the kitchen, LR & office, put away the extraneous clothes in the bedroom, do the dishes.  Hey, that’s not a bad list, and if I say so myself, I think it’ll be done in two hours!

Bye now!