Archive: Reflection

Last night, I dreamed many things.

I dreamed that my dad reminded me that I was already behind in my 2010 freelance revenue goals (which is true). I dreamed that Holly Burns told me that I would have no problem being a freelancer. I dreamed that I was helping to design t-shirts with an elementary school friend who was in Math Olympiad with me. I dreamed that when I woke up, it was Sunday, not Monday.

I also dreamed that I was in a computer lab I didn’t recognize. Gray linoleum tile floors, fluorescent lights overhead, and rows of gray desktop computers. I was sitting in front of a computer when Kip walked in.

I knew that he was dead, but at the same time, I wasn’t surprised to see him, as if we ran into each other occasionally in this unfamiliar, sterile lab. I hesitated, then waved hello, and he came over to chat. He was wearing worn blue jeans and a t-shirt scattered with what looked like handwritten notes, all in his jagged penmanship. Be happy. Be nice. Be well. On the back: Good-bye.

I don’t remember what we talked about. The conversation wasn’t charged or awkward. We were quiet together, like it had been too long since we had seen each other, and it would be a long time before we would get to catch up again.

My alarm clock sounded and shattered me out of the lab and into my bed. I slapped the snooze button and finally turned off the alarm five minutes later. Part of me wanted to go back to the computer lab and talk to Kip and try to remember what we said. Another part of me wanted to erase the dream with its cold exterior, fluorescent buzzing, and otherworldly tension. I was unsettled, disoriented, unprepared to be haunted. I didn’t pull myself out of bed for another half hour, and even then, I moved as though in a fog.

Today is my last functional day before Christmas and all that it entails, and this year, it entails a lot. It’s the most hectic Christmas I can remember in a long time, and that includes the year we hosted. At least, then, we were at home and in control of what would happened, but now, I’m watching the weather, making and checking lists, and otherwise trying not to fret.

I feel guilty because I know I haven’t prepared myself for what I like to be a reflective time. I prefer my Christmases quiet and contemplative, not hustly-bustly. Generally, by this time of the month, I’ve come to that placid place in my mind, but as of yet, it eludes me. Even with the weekend’s unexpected rest, my mind is still racing. If that weren’t enough, there is also the annual elephant that wanders into the room at this time of year: Kip’s birthday is Christmas Eve. A whole mess of memories usually wafts into my brain, tangled and unsorted, and I end up feeling mopey from missing him and feeling sad about his family. And then I feel guilty again because I’m not focusing on Christmas. And then my mind swings back to whatever is next on the to-do list.

I’m all mixed up inside, like my worries and thoughts are jostling for attention. Listen to me! What about me? I’m important, too! Don’t forget about me! I can’t figure out how to tune things out and focus. Part of my struggle is that the schedule dictates that I will never be fully at rest until we are done. The other part is that I have yet to accept that.

Tonight,  JG is making mussels and fries for dinner, and we’ll exchange presents with each other because our weekend is so crazy. We’ll break our no-TV-on-Wednesdays rule to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas. At the end, I plan to sing with my head tilted back, like the kids. The tree lights will be on, and I think Ted will snuggle up with us. It will be warm and quiet in our living room, and in my mind, I hope.

In a past life, I was bound for the Olympics. From the age of six, I had posters of illustrious gymnasts, taken from the pages of International Gymnast, pushpinned into my bedroom wall. Almost every day after school, and certainly every Saturday, my mom drove me to the gym for a four-hour workout. I climbed 40-foot ropes without using my legs, ripped blisters off my palms and staunched the blood with chalk, and obeyed when I was told, “Again!” I didn’t think anything of it; we were all in it for the final destination. We were working to make it to the top state level, then regional, then national. We wanted to be the girls chosen for the team to travel to Australia, but a full gymnastics scholarship to Stanford would have been a decent consolation prize. When anyone asked if it was what I really wanted to do, I set my jaw and said yes, I wanted to go to the Olympics. And then, I was twelve years old and exhausted, and I didn’t any more. I walked away.

In a past life,  I was itching to get out of my town. Out of the seven colleges I applied to, only one was in state, and the next closest was five hours away. I planned to wait until I was accepted before I traveled to St. Louis or Chicago; I didn’t care that I had never been to some of the cities where I might commit to live for four years of my life. The important thing was that I was going away, away. I was ready to be anonymous, no longer one of two Asian kids in my entire school, where everyone knew me and my sister and my mom and confused our names all the time. I ran as fast as I could to my university home, and for all intents and purposes, I never came back.

In a past life, I went to London for five weeks. I lived in a hotel room with a mostly-absent roommate, and I scrimped on food money so that I could afford more theater tickets. Someone tipped me off to a Chinese restaurant where you could get a whole plate of sweet and sour chicken for only 4 pounds! I ate there often. One weekend, I took a bus tour through the Scottish highlands, and it was unbearably cold and beautifully stark. I bought a red tartan scarf as a souvenir, and it’s the warmest one I have. My classmates were not nearly as touristy as I was, so I struck off on my own to visit every museum I could manage. One night, after drifting through the Tate Modern, I walked over the Millennium Bridge to the nearest tube station. Snow fell all around, already forming a layer on the bridge, and it was one of the most gorgeous things that has ever happened to me. I didn’t stop to notice it in my beeline to the warm station, and when I look up at a frame of pictures from that time, it seems so far away.

In a past life, I lived by myself. I had just landed my first job with a start date two weeks after graduation, and I quickly leased an apartment. My bed was an air mattress on the floor of the largest room, and my only entertainment was the radio. Every week, I went to the grocery store and bought ingredients for a big batch of baked ziti or beef stroganoff. Supplemented by canned soup and bagged salad, I lived off of one meal for a week’s worth of lunches and dinners. In the evenings, listening to the gooey tones of the Delilah show, I sat at a hand-me-down table with whatever would stay propped open on its own, which usually meant a Calvin and Hobbes collection or a wedding magazine. JG was student teaching and I was pinching pennies, so was a rather spare time. Finally, he got a job and graduated, we got married, and I stopped eating the same thing every day.

Presently, I’m inching into the freelance writing world. It’s an uphill climb so far, and I can feel myself losing momentum. I want to sit and rest and ride out the rest of the year, but then I have to snap myself into shape and remember that I can’t lose six weeks and blame it on inertia. There are agencies to investigate, courses to enroll in, events to help plan, and business cards to order. It’s overwhelming to think about how I will have to work harder at this enterprise than at anything I’ve tried before, but some day, I’ll look back at my days at a full-time, company job without recognizing them. It will be just another past life, and I will have emerged again, anew.

The last time I was on a jury, the trial was for a criminal case involving a young man. There was a lot of confusion with the witnesses, and we went on an excursion to see the site in question. The deliberation room was hot to the point of distraction, and there was only a small water cooler for comfort. A few of the jurors were aggravating and loudmouthed, and we went through a whole reenactment of what we had seen presented in court. I satisfied myself with taking copious notes on my yellow legal pad. At first, most of the jurors were convinced that the defendant was guilty, but one juror eventually persuaded everyone that there was reasonable doubt, and we delivered a verdict of “not guilty.” I remember it so clearly, even what I wore that day: white dress pants, navy shoes, a red blazer, and a silk scarf with nautical symbols and anchors on it.

That is, that’s how it was when I played Juror #4 in my high school production of Twelve Angry Jurors. Until recently, I had never even been summoned, but on Monday morning, I reported to the county courthouse at 8:15 for my civic duty.

The courthouse was gorgeous — all terrazzo and granite and dark wood — but the jury meeting room resembled a large classroom with over a hundred seats. I received my juror number and badge, chose a seat toward the front of the mass, and reached into my bag for something to read. To be on the safe side, I had brought four books, along with two magazines and a laptop, on the off chance that there was a wireless internet connection. The other potential jurors read newspapers or books, and there was a low hum of rustling and settling. No one talked.

At 9:00, the woman in charge seated the first panel and directed us into specific seats. We were told that someone was coming up “soon” to escort us to the courtroom for jury selection, but we were only at the start of what would be a day of waiting. More than two hours later, we filed out toward the courtroom, and I was seated in a deep pew behind a very tall man. I doubted that the attorneys could even see me. The judge who directed the proceedings was very straight-forward and deliberate, and I admired how staunchly he promoted jury trials and objectivity. It almost made me want to be chosen. Almost.

I was not among the chosen 14 jurors, and the rest of us made a break for the outdoors and lunch. That hour was the fastest section of the day, much to my chagrin. Immediately after reporting back, I was assigned to anther panel, and again, we waited to go to the courtroom. I finished my first book and debated over the next. David Sedaris? I didn’t want to risk laughing audibly. My first John Grisham novel? I didn’t think it was prudent to whip out Runaway Jury in that setting. Small-town memoir it was. I bought a packet of candy from the nearby vending machine to keep me awake.

The afternoon dragged on through two more hours of jury selection in another dark wooden pew, after which I was not chosen. It occurred to me how tiring the whole process must be for those involved in it day after day. The attorneys looked solemn, and the court clerk shuffled through the room slowly. The effort behind maintaining due process of law was so huge, so grave. It was poignant to face the defendants and know that I might be in that jury of peers, which had only been an empty, civics-class phrase until then. I appreciated that the judges acknowledged the difficulty of reporting to jury duty, but if I or my loved ones were in the defendants’ position, I would hope other people would be open to this particular inconvenience.