I was doing my short weekly grocery run at the nearby "super"-market. It isn't so super, the aisles being narrow, the choices, limited. The choices are limited to what its working-class clientele can afford. Actually, I am not even sure about "working class" since it closes at 6PM and on Sundays; what "working" person would actually be able to offer his business there? Really, it's for people on government support, or at least there are lots of them. You can tell when you stand at the register and see that nearly everyone passing through has their EBT card out.
I was tempted to get meat. I have been off red meat and mostly white meat for a few weeks now. I am just not in the mood. My palates, for some reason, just don't find the texture of these blobs of protein strands very appealing. But then I thought I shouldn't fall into the "I-am-a-vegetarian" arrogance ("arrogance"? I won't get into it now). I think meat is great as it gives a distinct flavor, but for now, at least, its texture isn't so interesting. So I thought about processed meat, such as bacon and ham. So immediately to my right as I entered with my little basket, there was the aisle of bacon and ham. I was tempted.
The two women next to me, both fit the stereotype of obese black women, were browsing through the sausages. One was counting the number of hotdogs in the package in her hands, calculating quickly the unit price and concluded loudly that it was a dollar more than whatever she was comparing to, something else in the aisle, from another store, not sure. Two thoughts came to me. Second thought was, wow, what am I doing buying processed meat from a store that offers steep discounts to those who rely on government subsidies. The worst part about processed meat is the "processed" part. Traditionally, as you find in Italy, and other parts of southern Europe, the process of making cured meat didn't involve carcinogens taunting you with very long chemical names; whatever they used the French or the Italians or the Spaniards didn't die from. Now, here, I looked at the front of the package of bacon I was holding, and I saw in big letters "sodium" mentioned many places, and I don't mean sodium chloride, but in front of words I can't recall. I still am very fond of chemistry (the educational context, not the romantic ones), but not on my bacon. So I gave that up.
My first thought, upon seeing those two women calculating the differences in prices, was, of course, me, and to be more precise, surprise, my past. I remember my parents having done that, and actually, put the past in the present, they still do that. One of my mother's favorite topic is how someone was trying to cheat her out of a dollar, or fifty cents. Combined with being a non-English speaking immigrant subjected to real and perceived discrimination by the established, her poverty-stricken past is as present as her wrinkling skin. I am, of course, part of that, or at least part of that legacy. I still find myself calculating the differences, and not always do I realize I am making a decision based on a two-dollar difference. So when I saw this woman hesitating on the chemical-ridden hotdogs because of the one-dollar difference, I felt both disdain and sympathy. I am a big shot Ivy League graduate who now works for one of the largest banks in the world, and in some very twisted way, more twisted than this woman's decision process, I still look out for the minor differences that actually matter to a lot of people in the world but not really me.
I ended up getting my processed meat from the only two "ethnic" foodshops in my neighborhood, the two being a block from each other. I almost felt I was in New York, being able to go from an Italian grocery store that seemed to me a front for the extant Italian mafia in this edge of Little Italy, to the only existing Polish store in the city, a living fossil from the not-too distant past when this area was thriving with Polish immigrants carefully establishing their roots next to the established Italian counterparts. The Polish immigrants scattered quickly, unlike their counterparts in New York's Greenpoint, and the only thing left to remind of their brief stay are this store and the Polish church a few blocks from the other side of my house. I got some Pancettas from the possibly-mafia-run Italian food store and a special type of Kielbasa and a special type of bacon from the Polish place. None had labels on them saying what sort of bizarre chemicals were used, but I would now live in ignorant bliss. I looked forward to adding them to omelets and other things for flavor and some texture.
Such was the slow start of my Saturday. Despite entering the 1.5th month of my "new life" I am still not sure what my weekend is like. There have been so many things happening that nothing seemed as regular as I tried to make or convinced myself to believe. I can't say "on Saturdays I do such and such"; this Saturday is different like the previous six. I do feel tired. I haven't slept much. I don't sleep much, not as much as I would like. Too much happening.
One thing that surprised me was a letter from my Mother. It was the first directed specifically to me. In the three dozen years I have been hanging out on this blue planet, this was the first time I got a letter addressed only to me. She wrote to "us" when she was alone in the US while we waited for her to get her green card. But never to me. She had written to other people, like my best friend from high school, the one that no longer talks to me (or, as I am told of her version, that I no longer talk to). She wrote to her to plead for her continued help with my little sister. She has written to my other sister when they were arguing over my sister's engagement. She had even written twice, at least, to my little sister, demanding that she lead an adult and responsible life, which in essence, made the young woman feel worse. Mind you, neither my little sister nor my ex-best friend understands Chinese. My other sister knows less than me. And, well, me, I did my best to understand the letter my Mother sent me. Keep in mind that it's not like getting a letter in Russian or Greek or even Arabic where, if you at least know how to type the strings of letters onto Google Translate you can get an approximate meaning. I didn't understand all the characters. But I understood the letter.
Someone in my life got to listen to my complaint not too long ago. She got to hear a lot of complaints, of course. But this one was about how when we weren't in front of each other, or rather, when she didn't have to be in front of me, when there's a computer screen or a text message enabled phone between us, she seemed more caring, more loving. In essence, she opened her heart up more. I think most of us do that, and the only difference is that some do it more than others. I think that when there is already a wall to protect your heart, you need not build one despite knowing that the one you build can be colder, even more hurtful, than the one the two of you find already standing in between. And the same with my Mother. For as long as I have heard her voice, especially starting when I understood the meaning of the tones if not the actual words, I have heard mostly poison, and blessed it was to hear something neutral. I remember very few "kind" words, whose kindness I obviously could not piece together at the time. I remember her telling me one time that she saw some guy selling a robot toy for ten bucks, and hesitated to get it for me, and that she regretted her hesitation, and so she gave me ten dollars instead. What for? I didn't understand the logic. I was twelve, and I was mainly just confused by why she always gave me such a hard time for owning and asking for more "Transformer" toys and then now she willingly tried to get me a "robot" (probably not a Transformer since they cost a lot more than $10).
Before I went to the not-so-super-market, I was listening to another lecture from the semester long philosophy course on Death. I think I mentioned it. I don't listen to it for really "enlightenment"; I am too arrogant to think I can still be enlightened even by a brilliant philosopher from Yale. But it helps me with my logical thinking, entertains me with ideas and different perspectives, and yes, makes me think. Something different happened on this episode. The professor, usually being funny and gives comical examples, told a quick story of a student he had had in class not too long ago. He was an undergrad (as this was an introductory course to philosophy) who was told he had terminal cancer. He decided, interestingly, to take this course, on Death. The context of this example was what would you do if you actually knew more precisely when you were most likely to die, because one of the "problems" with death is that most of us don't know when we would die, and so we can't "plan" on anything. But I am not interested in the context. It's more the story itself. The senior decided that his goal was to finish his undergraduate education at Yale. Unfortunately, half way to the semester, he became too ill to stay and had to return to his home where death awaited him with cold, stiff arms. The fairy-tale ending was that Yale still decided to award him with a degree, letting him feel accomplished before his own death. The focus I am putting here is that there is something beautiful about doing what you can to enjoy life knowing that it is short. "Short" for the simple reality that it does end, whether because you have terminal illness or because you are simply human, simply mortal. The beauty isn't in the philosophy of it all, but in the fact that we humans feel attached to the idea that we do what we think would make us happy in a world where nothing is guaranteed, not even that you will actually be happy doing what you think makes you happy. Nonetheless, it's the doing that matters more than the "reward" that might not await you. I don't know if that senior was capable physically of feeling happy when the Yale representative visited his home some timezones away, delivering his diploma. It doesn't matter. What mattered was that he made a decision that had no guarantees of any degree of success. When we get to have the luxury of a long life, like many of us from developed countries do get, we take life for granted and don't try to do what makes us happy. We count the pennies when we don't need to, we strive for goals for someone else's sake, for past's sake, for anything but our own real happiness. We forget to do what makes us happy, despite the lack of guarantees for success.
And so even though when I got the letter from my Mother, I didn't know what to do, I felt grateful, I allowed myself to feel lucky after reading it. (Before reading it I thought either it was money for Chinese New Year that she had forgotten to give me, or some serious news I didn't want to hear.) Allowing myself to feel close to a person who didn't allow herself to feel close to her own son, that's an attempt, a stab at, happiness. Life was really too short to wish you never hear from someone who you felt poisoned your life. It's too short to fear a letter because it had a high chance of being something nasty even though you never gotten such a letter from that person before. If we were given so many more decades to live than that Yale senior, I think we owe it to ourselves to make every cobblestone of the Road a piece of attempt for happiness.
What struck me about the letter isn't its purpose, or its obvious purpose. She told me since I have been writing letters to my Grandmother, and since it is her birthday coming up, and since some random relative I have never heard of before had been sending the old lady $100 each birthday, that I should do the same in my next letter to her. To my hero who traveled around the world with the sole purpose of making happy her family whom she had left behind and would not see for decades. I was grateful my Mother informed me of this idea. But I was especially moved that at the end of the letter, she said she was happy that I turned out to be such a good son.
So for the first time, I realized that for her a good son wasn't just someone who went to the best Ivy League, got the best job, married the nicest woman, produced the most obedient children. And it was slightly sad and beautiful that she figured out how to tell me this behind the wall of a letter so she wouldn't have to hide her love behind that wall of hers as she had all my life.
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