Thankfulness, revisited.

In no particular order, I am thankful for:

My long legs. They help me get things done a lot quicker than if my legs were shorter... okay, there are other reasons why I'm thankful for my long legs.
Strawberries in-season. And once in a while out-of-season.
Same with raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.
Candles with nice, subtle scents.
Fleece.
Warm, cozy blankets.
Orgasms--when they actually exist in my life.
My ability to remember numbers.
My toenails.
My flexibility.
My determination.
My mirror, because I am vain.
My Sonicare toothbrush that keeps me cavity-free.
Warm socks.
My morning MamaLlama-bucks (iced mocha).
Hot tea.
My microwave oven.
Wireless internet.
Text messaging.
My friends who watch out for me and take care of me.
Red wine.
A decent recycling program in my Town.
Being able to drive a manual.
The fact that I don't have to wear much makeup.
The wonderful memories of experiences had.
Christmas lights...DURING the Christmas season.
Airplanes.
The fact that "high-heeled comfort" is not necessarily oxymoronic.
Perennial plants.
The fact that black goes with pretty much anything.
That I don't believe in shopping on Black Friday.
Facials and pedicures.
Dates with any of my girlfriends.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In Thanksgiving

This week we in the United States, as well as our citizens scattered throughout the world, celebrate Thanksgiving. Tradition calls for the turkey, cranberries, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and a plethora of fattening delicacies that, as tradition also mandates, we are to enjoy guilt-free regardless of how we might later pay for such indulgences.

Albeit something I ought to practice more readily in my life, I also find myself forced to slow down and reflect on all I have to be thankful for. This is a hard time of year for me in that blood-line family is located so far away that it is pretty much impossible for holidays to be spent together. The cold, dark weather always draws me into hibernation mode. Heartache that is inevitable with the dark memories surrounding my father's death at Christmastime also seeks me out no matter how hard I might try to hide from it. Two close friends both have their fathers critically hospitalized right now, both as of this week; it seems that others are starting to catch up and, although I want to be able to do what I so needed from others when my father died, I am finding it emotionally impossible for me to do anything but pray for the well-being of all involved.

Perhaps selfish, but I just cannot put myself through the wrenching emotions it all causes deep in my soul. At least their fathers got to know their grandchildren, have relationships with them and see them grow into beautiful young people while developing adult relationships with their own children. Much like me and both my grandfathers, my children never knew their grandfather. He was days away from receiving his first retirement check when he died. The two fathers now hospitalized are much older and have lived a much more complete life. Yes, it is sad but they have also come much closer to living our socially-defined full cycle of life. Yes, I think it's unfair, because I am selfish. But I also recognize Life is unfair and there isn't anything I can do about that. It all just hits too close to home for me still. So I stay my distance.

Funny how strong we can convince ourselves we are, but when said strength is tried our weaknesses shine forth with greater force.

*---*

I spent the weekend completely engaged with the little monkeys! As my weekends are currently running a Friday-Saturday schedule with Sunday-Thursday students, I do the best I can to maximize our time together on Friday evening as soon as Princesita is home from school. This time spent together made me reflect actively on the deep gratitude I feel for so much in my life. This will be my serious list, due to the tone of the post. In a couple of days I will then post my not-so-serious Thanksgiving list when I have a bit less work and a bit more cranberries and stuffing on my mind.

What am I thankful for? No elaboration needed:

My beautiful children
My God
My friends
My garden
My family
My health
My home
My business
My students
My talents to make this happen for me
My opportunities
My cat
The food on my table
Enough money to live on
Warmth
Music
Love
Peace
My emotions
All of you, some who come and go and others who stay and 'virtually' complete my life

The most sincere of Thanksgiving wishes, warmth, blessings and love, from Mama Llama to YOU!

Flashback Friday

Next Friday Thanksgiving will be behind us, our interiors filled with food and fun and the warmth that comes from time spent with people we love--family in the blood sense and in the metaphoric sense. Last year I remembered my first Thanksgiving in Japan, a holiday (obviously) not celebrated there. It was not the first time I had lived in a foreign country during a major United States holiday, but in Ecuador a small gringo community gathered for a lovely turkey feast, which made that First Time much easier to bear.

感謝祭の日 Thanksgiving Day in Japan

感謝祭の日 Kanshasai no hi Thanksgiving Day was a very special day in Japan for me, my first being one of the first true demonstrations of how gracious and generous the Japanese can be, once you pierce their formal exterior.

I had an 英会話 eikaiwa English conversation class on Monday nights that I taught each of my three years in 中之条. As the autumn season of 1994 progressed, I was coming to realize that, for the first time in my life, I would not be experiencing Thanksgiving in a way that I had always known through tradition: gathering of family or friends, plethora of food, recounting stories already million times told but yearned for yet again so as to fulfill the requirement of tradition. Even in Guayaquil in 1992 I had a Thanksgiving dinner, along with my North American classmates, at the house of Bostonian ex-pat who had connections and could get a turkey. However in Japan, and much more so in rural 群馬県 Gunma-ken, it was extremely difficult to find a turkey, although the word for turkey, 七面鳥 shichimenchou, does exist in their vernacular.

My 英会話 class pooled together what must have been a great sum of money and imported a Thanksgiving turkey for me. They disclosed this gift two weeks before Thanksgiving, and I put together a list of other foods and recipes for those who would like to try preparing some other "traditions" that I was familiar with, such as sweet potatoes with marshmallows and cranberries and pumpkin pie. The next week we passed around a sign-up sheet and corresponding recipes for the next week's Thanksgiving Potluck Dinner...a first annual event for this 英会話 class.

This was a joyous occasion. We talked about the idea of thankfulness and how our different cultures celebrate and recognize this idea. We had an immense amount of food and the turkey was delicious. It was an enjoyable event, that we reproduced in other forms the other two years of my tenure.

At the end of the night, the group's leader presented the rest of the turkey and the leftovers to me and told me to have the rest on Thanksgiving night, and to invite my other friends who probably would not have any Thanksgiving turkey that year.

So, to my residence came my North American friends Mike, Chris, Laraine and Ted, and our Australian "bug-catcher" cohort John and together we reheated the turkey and spooned out all the side dishes and had a wonderful, memory-filled evening, giving thanks for all that we had and the fact that we had each other to lean on in the middle of our little individual pieces of rented Japanese heaven

Back to Izzy...

Okay. Izzy.

Now I think I see it. It is how we always, when alone, go back in our minds to what we know, what we were, finding comfort in memory so as not to have to deal with the fear of being alone. We try to go on with Life, go to work, play, meet people, learn, love...and then return to the quiet, the alone.

Why are we so afraid of quiet? Of being alone? Are we so accustomed to constant action, constant noise, constant mind-engagement that, when we cannot be externally stimulated we will go to great lengths--like bringing back the dead to fulfill a an active role, or at least a role of more than merely a memory in our lives, for example--to not have to be alone with our own thoughts and feelings? Are we that scared?

Interesting thoughts provoked tonight...

blustery beauty

Saturday was a balmy yet blustery day.

A strong cold front was blowing in from the northwest, ahead of which we had temperatures reaching the mid-70s. The warmth brought people out from all corners wearing shorts and t-shirts, attempting to capture what many acertained were the last of the vitamin D-bearing sunrays of the calendar year.

It was glorious!

I awoke feeling an inexplicable energy. Hearing the gara-gara of my bedroom windows all night, I had evidence of Mother Nature's power and sensed it was a day to take full advantage. Although I vow to never drive to the gym, I decided to couple my trip to workout with a trip to the grocer only around the corner, and my shopping spree demanded items much too heavy to lug all the way home on my slight frame. So I brought my clothes with, intending to shower and change at the gym.

Great workout, ran 5 miles in 33:05 (YIPPEE!) on the elliptical and showered. Forgot my comb of all things, so I pulled my long wet locks back into a pseudo-bun, a little eyeliner, a little lipstick and voila! done. Walked out and, working out right in front of me was a looker.

And he looked. And said, "Hel-LO!"

Damned my shyness, I smiled and lowered my eyes and barely audibly uttered a 'hello' back, and continued walking...but with my head high and feeling GREAT. Attractive. Noticed. Sexy. And with my presence validated.

Sometimes that is ALL I need. I am demanding, but my needs are few.

Off to the store, dropped the goods off at home, a couple of phone calls then off to be out and enjoy the morning. All the news reports warned of rapid changes at a later point in the afternoon, with plummeting temperatures ushered in with the wild wind, so I knew I could get away with single-layer jeans (no tights) and a sweater with no jacket for only so long.

I saw people I had not seen in a long time, I met a nice young waitress at CPK, recently graduated from high school, who wants to be a pastry chef and has been accepted into the CIA, I bought new tights in preparation for the cold week (always need footless tights and heavy socks), went to My Store (White House Black Market, if you're wondering) and actually found a sweater I could afford, and sat out in an open air square, eyes closed and just taking it all in--the air, the wind, the energy, the good moods...

...then the rain began.

As I am a wicked witch llama that melts when wet, I ran to my car as quickly as my clogs would allow me and drove the seven miles back to my home, where my children had spent the entire glorious morning downstairs watching cartoons with their father.

(sigh)

I soon realized my cell phone was gone and, after making some key telephone calls to establishments visited, I decided it was gone for good. But no big deal--I was feeling great! Off again to another store, it was still relatively warm and windy with more storm clouds in the distance. With my iTunes "mood mix" playing at a volume louder than I would permit had my children been in the backseat, I enjoyed my ride out, did my shopping and rushed back out to my car in another windy rainfall.

As I arrived home, the sun broke through the confused sky and behold, a strong rainbow arched through the sky welcoming me back.

My pot of gold? A day of feeling free, accomplishing tasks and knowing I could go out and do all of this all by myself, and carrying this wonderful liberating feeling with me all this week! The warmth in my heart helps blanket me through the sporadic snow showers we expect this week.

The Izzy Factor

I am a fan of Grey's Anatomy. I consider it my "smut fix". However, in this week's show there were some occurances surrounding some conflict in the life of one of the principal characters that have remained vividly fixed in my mind.

The great love of Izzy's life died a few seasons ago when a heart transplant did not come through for him. The Great Love--meaning she was ready to marry him and have his children, and this was reciprocal. His "apparition" is now watching over her and has, as of the last episode, convinced Izzy that he is real--thus not permitting her to go on with her life.

The imagery was strong--he had her take her hand and place it on his chest and, in the moment I was expecting her hand to go right through him it of course did not, it touched a real person...or what Izzy believed to be real.

How do we reconcile our ghosts? These could be past loves, or those whom we love reciprocally but cannot be together due to current circumstances. Or those who have actually died. Are these people real? Do/Did these relationships exist? How would one bring realities together that would otherwise not coincide?

Current technology permits so much that was not previously possible. Webcams, live voice chats, cell phones and text messaging is worldwide, breaching any distance; lovers on two different continents can maintain great levels of communication, with quasi eye-to-eye contact in real time. I see that with my friend whose husband has 50 more days left in Afghanistan--I even get to chat with him every so often when visiting her house, a possibility unheard of in previous global conflicts.

However, the questions in my mind that the Izzy Factor poses are: How much does all of this enable the development of a complete fantasy, something that is true but yet is not as physical presence is mythical rather than real? (I am not speaking of seeing loves that have left this world. If that is the case, some sort of professional help is required in my opinion.) If physical presence of the other is truth for a short time say, every few months, how is that reconciled against a reality of distance, no matter how rich and deep communication lines run? When two people who live under the same roof cannot communicate as well as two who are forced to do so by circumstance, does that transcend the relationship level to a degree?

I suppose that would have a lot to do with the will of both individuals involved; the will to maintain something good and true even against all odds, the will to maintain the spark and to learn new ways of keeping magic alive that could easily die out if lacking a two-sided deep investment, the will to risk not being comprehended by those physically present just to keep something good alive, the will to believe that truth can sometimes not be touched.

Or perhaps I read way too much into the Izzy Factor.

Flashback Friday

Another coffee date this morning with The Exception was, well, exceptional. I feel inspired to write, but will have to wait until the latest headache passes. Plus, with two four year olds in the house I think that my energies are meant to be spent elsewhere today. Never a dull moment!

Today's Flashback takes us back to Japan and a pot-pourri of topics...well, you'll understand the pun upon further reading.

pot-pourri

In the course of my travels, I have beheld my fair share of toilets.

Some are decked out, all the bells and whistles (quite literally). Others, as those on the isle of Taquile of Lake Titicaca in Perú, are simple, guarded in the middle of the night by a cow just waiting to scare the living s**t out of you before you make it to the hole in the ground. In Thailand we had to flush the toilets with buckets of water; at least there was running water from which we could fill the buckets and we did not have to hike all the way to the nearest waterfall to fulfill this purpose.

My first time in Japan, the most adventurous excretory experiences I had ever had usually involved cutting down Christmas trees in the woods in Oregon, where sometimes we had the chance to create "yellow snow" and sometimes not, depending on the year. Heavily jet-lagged after a fourteen-hour flight from Oregon to Narita, the first day in my new environs found me at Nikko National Park, a park renowned for being the center of the Tokugawa shogunate.

Of course, nature will call following a ramen lunch during which I learned that slurping one's noodles is, indeed, art form in that it is almost impossible to not get the juicy soup all over one's face or clothing in the noisy act. We hiked up the hill to the トイレ--toire (toilet) and I was greeted with a sight never before beheld...an oblong, slightly ovalesque shaped piece of porcelain inbedded in the floor.

Huh?

So, how on earth do I use this?

My host mother and eldest sister came to my rescue, trying desperately not to laugh as my host mother hiked up her long skirt to demonstrade the "straddle and squat"...a position that, after three years of perfecting, really does wonders for the thigh muscles (now millions of blog readers will go and install Japanese-style toilets in their homes just to tone, I know...).

Trick is: when there is plumbing, face the plumbing.

When there isn't, just try not to lose your slipper down the toilet. It happens to every 外人 at least once. Poor John from Perth was blessed with a non-potable hole in the ground benjou at his residence and lost so many slippers down that thing that the sewer sucker-dude who came by every few weeks for taking care of the benjou waste would just, reportedly, laugh.

My episode occurred at the Nakanojo 文化会館, the bunka kaikan, the local cultural center, at an important event. No matter what you wear, you change into slippers three sizes too small for your feet upon entrance. Another story for another day. One of mine plopped into the plumbed fixture by accident. Oops. That was fun to try to remedy.

My parents came to Japan in March 1997 to visit. I took them touring through Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kyoto, and back up to Nakanojo before we met up with my sister, who had already visited me a year and a half before, and hit China and Hong Kong together. Feeling rather punchy following the longest plane ride of their lives, followed by a 2 hour commute back into Tokyo to their hotel and the experience of passing through customs...it was their first international travel--it would be my father's last and the first of many for my mother--we settled into our rooms. I stayed in Tokyo with them, as Nakanojo was just less than 4 hours away by train, and a good friend's father, a hotel entrepreneur, arranged special deals for all of us throughout our stays.

My phone rang. It was my mother. She sounded relieved to be able to figure out how to pick up the phone and ring my room.

"Can you come over here for a sec?" she asked.
"Sure, what's up?"
"Um...the toilet doesn't seem to work. I can't figure out how to flush this thing!"
"I'll be right over."

The toilets in many nice Western-style hotels are western-style. However, in saying "western-style" this is to mean "decked out to the max." You have next to your hipline an array of buttons you can push for a variety of cool effects: everything from the sounds of rushing water to bells ringing, a bidet feature, a fan feature (to dry you off, of course) are all expertly displayed with lights and little kanji characters that describe, to the trained eye, exactly what each button will do.

But none of them seemed to make the toilet flush.

I couldn't imagine how many of these buttons my mother must have pushed before she called me. But from her uncontrolled giggling I guessed that her efforts must have involved most of them.

"Here, Mom." I pointed to the side of the toilet, where the flush knob is on pretty much any toilet we in the Western World has ever used. This, of course, made her laugh even harder. "They put so many buttons here in plain sight, you'd think one of these would do it!" she roared.

Yeah. That would be too easy.

My little house had a western-style toilet. Pink. Cute. In an itsy-bitsy tiny little bathroom about the size of a 3' by 6' rectangle. It had two manual flush cycles...小 and 大 (little and big)...depending on the purpose of the flush (I will refrain from further illustration). The only other "extra" my little pink piece of ceramic heaven had was a heated seat function. In July, when first arriving, I had to admit to not having any idea as to why in the hell Toto (yes, that was the name of the brand. I heard the music group "Toto" got their name after having been in Japan. All I could think about for three years, every time I went to the bathroom, was "Toto too? Yes, Toto too.") would make toilet seats that would heat, especially being a person who prefers to philosophize in a nice big rocking chair as opposed to "on the pot."

Then came winter.

Wow. Heated toilet seats. What a GREAT invention! At least one part of my body can be warm...