One Way We Knew She Loved Us

Mom hates Star Trek. She calls it "that show with the people with stuff on their heads." I think she probably hates Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine more than the original series, because there are a lot more people with a lot more stuff on their heads, but she didn't like the original series either. Somehow No and I convinced Mom to take us to a Star Trek convention when I was seven or eight. It was at the Civic Auditorium in 1976. One of the things we saw was a preview for a movie coming out which sounded totally boring to me. Then the next summer I wound up seeing it six times: Star Wars.


We were very excited. There were a lot of Klingons and Andorians, as well as humans and Vulcans in Starfleet uniforms. There were communicators and phasers and all kinds of Star Trek paraphernalia to look at. There was someone selling Tribbles! Mom got us a pair, and Star Trek uniform shirts. Mr. Spock was my hero, so mine was blue; No got a yellow one. Or maybe I got the yellow one because, as the older child, I should naturally be the captain.


While standing in a hallway, No and I saw the Salt Monster come up behind Mom and put its hand on her shoulder. We weren't afraid that the monster was really going to reduce Mom to a pile of minerals, but I could barely breathe. I don't remember what Mom's reaction was, but I remember that the Salt Monster seemed pretty benign that day, giving her a little "goodbye" wave as it glided away from us.

Sir Gareth

Bug and YaYaWords of Thunder are driving to Long Beach today so that Bug can move into the her dorm room at CSU Long Beach. I helped Bug figure out the silent E when she was learning to read and now she is a college freshman. The kids change, but we stay the same, so it doesn't seem possible that eleven years have passed.

The summer before I went to college (or, the summer after I graduated from high school) I spent as much time as possible with my friends. Doesn't everyone? I wasn't sure that choosing to leave town for college was a good idea, just as I hadn't been sure that staying in town for college would be a good idea. I was going out with a friend of a friend, a summer fling just for then, which I knew at the time, even if he didn't (though it must be said that he told me he wasn't surprised to receive my "Dear John" letter after I'd been in school for awhile).

My brother and I weren't very close as teenagers. First of all we were teenagers, and we weren't the same gender, and we didn't run in the same circles - we didn't even go to school together. In fact, he was gone a lot of that summer, as Paulo's parents had taken both boys with them when Paulo's father got a temporary reassignment to Anchorage. I think No came back maybe a week before Mom and I left to take me to college.

The night before we left, I was in my room packing my instant-access bag (that is, the stuff I would want to unpack first) when No came in. He gave me a small metal figure of Sir Gareth that I didn't recall ever seeing before. He said that Ria had given it to him when we were kids, and that it had been his good luck charm for years. I was moved by his gift because really we hadn't spent much time together and had had almost no conversation for a couple of years.


I've gone through periods thinking he was the much more familiar Saint George or Sir Gawain, and periods when I didn't even know where he was. I've considered giving him to someone else for good luck (most recently, Bug), but I've always hung onto Sir Gareth. My brother gave him to me at a time when No was almost a stranger to me, and this was my connection to him when I was moving away and everything was uncertain.

Looks Like We're Going To Las Vegas

I got an email from KT a few days ago asking if Zirpu and I have birthday plans. Her mother is planning a reception for her and No in the city where she lives, and KT wanted to get her commitments down. I said Zirpu and I had talked briefly about going to Las Vegas for our birthdays during our birthday weekend, and the day after that we received an invitation to go to Las Vegas with them, Paulo, Dre, Psycopat, and Macho the first week of September.


We're going with them. I like all these people, certainly I've known all the guys forever, but it seems funny to me that we're going on a vacation with them. I think it will be fun, mostly because Zirpu and I will do what we always do - play video poker at a bar and people-watch - and hook up with the others whenever we hook up. Dre has already made dinner reservations for the first night we're there. I suggested maybe this could be our birthday dinner and she responded yes, if we wear party hats and they get to sing.

No's Birthday

My younger brother is 37 today.

I'm A Believer!

I never did get around to writing my toast for No and KT's wedding during that week in Mexico. I kept thinking I would and then suddenly it was the wedding day and then it was the reception, and then it was dinner, and I didn't even have a paper napkin to write on. Now that I temporarily have the DVD, I took the time to transcribe my toast. I wanted to share it.


I had given it a lot of thought so I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to say. This being No and KT's wedding, where pretty much everything was ad libbed, my little speech came out pretty well. If I had written it down ahead of time, it probably would have come out more smoothly, and I was afraid that without a script I would cry and/or babble, and I did neither.

Samatakah


I'm a big believer in love...

(cries of Yeah! and Woo!)


The first thing is, being an older sister - and those of us are are the older sister, we have a perspective on our younger sibling that might be a little bit less than the most generous.

(laughter)


One of the things that KT has given me is to see No as a man, to see No as a person who is willing and able to take on responsibility and love. And what I would say to everyone here who's loved KT longer than I have - longer than we [meaning Mom and myself] have - is that No will take care of KT. She can take care of herself, but what KT gives No is someone to take care of. No, the most loyal friend, is going to do that always.

Here's to love! Always, always!

**Photos by Michelle Turner.

Following up on forgetting

I received my inheritance from my grandmother with a formal note from my aunt on Thursday. It brought up a bunch of crap about how I'm angry that my aunt is angry at me and has not accepted my apologies (as I've already discussed). I'm also sad that there is someone out there who doesn't like me when I have done EVERYTHING I can think of, everything I've been trained to do, to close the loop and make it better. Part of it is also that my aunt stands between me and No and anything of my father's that my grandmother had (photos, letters, etc.) and that by all rights No and I should receive. I was talking to my mom about "the thing with my aunt" and really, her advice was to just let it go, because why would I want to fix a relationship with someone as "toxic" (her word) to me as this aunt?

Mom is right. I think I've felt upset because I've felt an obligation to this aunt because she is Dad's sister. But I'm her dead brother's daughter and who knows what she's feeling. My mother is a saint to have maintained a connection with my dad's family for the sake of No and myself, because the relationship with them was difficult for her.

Mom said that she would talk to my aunt about anything Noah and I "should" have. I think my aunt might think she should have them because he was her brother, but Mom says my aunt's mellowed as she's gotten older. Nothing in my experience as an adult leads me to think she is generous at all. But we'll see - and at least I don't have to feel responsible for that conversation.

As nice as it is that she sent our inheritances, I am more interested in photos and stuff. When I was there in '96 our grandmother gave me the yarmulke and tallit that Dad wore for his bar mitzvah, as well as a few pictures, one of which is below:


I immediately gave the yarmulke and tallis to No, even though I knew he wouldn't use them. Maybe he and KT will have a child who will choose to bar or bat mitvah and will wear them.


So I am letting go of the aunt thing. Watch me...

A Visit to San Francisco City Hall

Getting legally married in Jalisco turns out to be quite involved, so KT and No did the legal thing yesterday.

Before

After

No memories

I've already mentioned the olive tree incident, and I've been working hard to remember other things my brother did. I'm not having much luck with remembering specific incidents.

I mostly have memories about him. When we were little, No said Oreos were good for you - they tasted so good, after all. He loved Steve Austin of The Six Million Dollar Man and he loved Speed Racer. We watched Star Trek together on a black and white TV while he wore 3D-style glasses for his vision therapy. His favorite color was green. He liked to ride the elephants and watch the whale shows at Marine World (much different in those days than it is now), and to visit the shark exhibit. When we went to Camp Beaverbrook, No always took the sweeping chore in his cabin.

He liked graham crackers in milk for breakfast (he would pile five crackers on top of the bowl and, crying "hee yaw!" break them in half with a karate chop) and baloney sandwiches with ketchup. Our family went out for dinner most Friday nights for awhile, rotating who got to choose the restaurant, and No always chose Joky's Burgers, a small place near UCSF. When we went to the Sizzler, he always got the steak and crab legs.

When he graduated from fifth grade, he wanted attend Herbert Hoover Middle School, but Mom sent him to Discovery Center instead. No is loyal, and still spends a lot of time with people he met there, including his business partner. In high school, he signed up for Latin so he wouldn't be expected to speak the language in his regular life, and later lived - and spoke in Spanish - in Mexico for several months. He's about to get married, so he's finally finishing his university education by completing a paper on opportunities for his event-planning business, Perfect Party Plans.

When they were small, No and Saj always wore baseball caps, often backward, which seemed to annoy many of the adults in our lives. One year for Halloween he was Fonzie, wearing his glasses over the mask. In high school, he was usually fashionably dressed and even had one of those red jackets like Michael Jackson wore in the "Thriller" video (though I'm not sure he ever wore it). His pants were '80s tight, he had at least one thin tie for school dances, and owned several Theo Cosby-style sweaters. He got a letterman's jacket for Saint Ignatius, where he wrestled and played football.

No has Mom's curly hair and wore it long as a very small child and again in his mid-20s. The first time around I remember his hair blowing around, coming out of the pathetically small plastic barettes Mom would put it in. His hair was light brown, with blond streaks... Now it is dark brown, with red highlights (and some grey in his beard). When he had long hair as an adult, he usually wore it back in a ponytail, but one morning a friend and I saw him with it down. His hair was halfway down his back, falling in sausage curls all the way, and my friend exclaimed, "He looks like one of the patriarchs!" He did - all he needed was a staff and a long robe to complete the picture.

Here is a memory of No, doing his job as he saw it: In March 1998 I moved back to California with a man, and we planned to live together. The day we arrived, No looked at this man, who was a foot shorter than he, and asked, "What are your intentions toward my sister?"

My brother is getting married in six weeks. Because of the kind of wedding No and KT are having, the gifts requested are memories.

My earliest memory of No is him standing next to me while the gardener was lecturing us about shaking the olive tree. We were in Grasse, so it was 1972 or '73; the lecture must have been in French, but in my memory, which doesn't have subtitles, it was in English.

Ne secouez pas l'olivier!

Post France, I remember standing at the top of the stairs with him when Kaiser sent a doctor to the house (!) because we were so sick with chicken pox. There are a few of things that don't make sense about this memory but Mom confirms the house call.

For the next few weeks I will be mining for pre-high school memories that don't make him look bad. I am the older sister, after all, and mostly what I remember are times when we were fighting. Mostly I have a sense of No in my life rather than specific memories. I plan to ask around other people I know what they remember doing with their siblings to see if anything jogs loose.