Cupcakes

"Everything is Everything" -Lauryn Hill.

 

Chocolate Cupcakes with Miguel before he moved to San Francisco.

At first glance, they seemed to be a couple. The flight from Boston to Baltimore was experiencing turbulence and, with her hand shaking, she reached over and grabbed his. He held it tight. Quite romantic. Windowless back row of a rocky flight, hands clutched onto each other. After the five minute ordeal, their hands separated and she apologized. They started a hearty conversation about travels, and education, and careers, and lifestyles, and languages, and family. It was seem-less. It wasn't until 10 minutes before the flight was over that she asked his name. Whether it was her being genuinely scared, or incredibly smooth, it was nice to see some sparks on an otherwise banal trip back and forth to an otherwise banal routine. Things like that only happen in the movies or...

They surprise me. I am goal oriented. When I travel, I'm focused on getting from point A to point B, hopefully without having to sit next to strangers (I'd rather stand), or be pulled into small talk (awkward), or look at people (most awkward). 

I judge too quickly.

Cupcakes at Sticky Fingers, with Ten, who I hadn't seen since I graduated.

Bac (auntie) Hao and Bac My Le, two of my clients when I was an Americorps member used to take care of me as though I were their grandchild. I got an amazing puffy winter jacket (it's been a staple this year) and lots of lunches on days when I insisted on eating a shitty $2 microwaveable burrito infused with preservatives.

Full disclosure: I take less than $600 per week after taxes, which, sounds just about as shitty as those burritos. Yet I knew, down to the dollar, what resources my aunties had. That shitty week for me is their whole month's income (and more than a family of four in poverty takes in each week) yet they were in their 60s and 70s looking like 50-year-old's, taking care of this idealist NESCAC kid they don't know.

At the risk of sounding existential, that inexplicable humanness that certain people possess, that is magically reciprocated and, additionally, paid forward by recipients, is impractical to us cautious, calculated, questioning people--- but it's a beautifully enviable quality. It's innate. It's spiritual. I hope it comes from years of trial-and-error about how to take risks, how to avoid mistakes, and how to live life...

So many young people, want to be adventurous, want to love people, want to be charismatic, and go crazy, and be perfectly unscathed at the end of the day--- but we (I) end up scuffed up, sometimes a little bloody, and dirty... I don't know how to find the RIGHT people. If I didn't have to ask: “who and what am I to you?” my infinity for love would be a grand thing. None of us are, if he exists, God, so we have the fault of searching for belonging and self worth through our relationships... and defining our faults through an inability to gain comfort and acceptance. But when we stop trying, we lose that humanness and imperfection, that drives us to each other.

Homemade Vegan lasagna with the boy, Eddie.

I started this writing process over a month ago not knowing where it would go. I kept re-looking at it and it kept hiding what I wanted to say from me. My first real adult love with whom I created real adult connections has chosen to pursue his real adult career ambitions in Africa. I am growing as an educator in D.C. It wasn't quite a plane ride, it was a sequence of flights, and neither of us is in our 60's but this is a predecessor to that kind of wisdom.

When people reflect, they say “when I was (insert younger age here), I thought I was in love but it was just infatuation, it was just hormones, it was just naivety, it was just a rebound, it was just attraction, it was just loneliness, it wasn't real.” Hindsight and the pursuit of wisdom, devalues the growth and emotions one experienced when he or she was in the moment. One spends time as a person evolving from those moments, invested in those connections. The scruff, maybe bitterness, maybe realization of being naive, maybe dissatisfaction that comes from fuck-ups probably inform the current re-definition of things. Learning from past mistakes may instill fear; it's a fine line to walk.

I provided my aunties with direct services for an hour a week, and they spent time cooking for me, talking to me about their families, and that was it. Insignificant.

They didn't get a grandchild or a friendship despite divulging vulnerable information, despite the gifts but I think they got that moment in the short life hammered in-between the dust-to-dust reality of our human flesh (if you read my last blog, you realize my fascination with grasping that we are only in-tact flesh and particles) to create kindness and love out of that moment... and to place value on it. We are all dust in the end, from the richest to the poorest, most popular to least popular, so there isn't much to lose and a lot to gain from our short lives.

To piece the choppiness together, despite what I say 10 years from today about this three-year period, this three-year period (in its moment) is a blessing of love and mutual growth. Sort of like plane rides and interacting with a stranger... before one knows someone, he had to have been a stranger. And someone must've said hi and questions must have been asked. Three years is a big fraction in a short lifetime.

The beginning comes easy for some, especially the fearless, but we all share an existence and our actions, words, kindness, openness, affects people...who in-turn use the emotions they experience from us to inform their actions with others.

Again, everything is everything.

 

A link to the colorism blog.

http://huynhamerasian.blogspot.com/2013/01/colorism_4.html