Archive for heart
November 10, 2007 at 10:27 am · Filed under heart
So yes, I’m definitely pregnant. I am hungry all the time. Seriously, all the time. I feel like I’m constantly hungry, even after having a big meal. I’m craving asparagus so badly, it’s not even funny. I’ve been making — yes, literally forcing — my husband, the poor man (who coincidentally, is walking around with his chest proudly puffed out as a result of our pregnancy) to take me out to dinner almost every night to our favorite Japanese restaurant so that I can order three servings of my favorite dish — vegetarian asparagus maki rolls. Man oh man. I eat, and eat, and eat. And when I’m done with my share, I hijack his share. And then I eat some more, and I order some spicy agadashi tofu, with miso soup, and vegetable gyozas and edamane soy beans. I eat some more. And I’m satisfied maybe for another two hours, and then I’m hungry again.
I wake up at 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am feeling like I haven’t eaten in days. So far, I haven’t gotten up to get a snack, but I don’t know how much longer I can stand the middle-of-the-night hunger cravings. Especially for asparagus.
I have no idea how far along I am right now, since my last period came at such a weird time — the day after I got off my birth control. It is speculated that I am 8 weeks along, though I have a feeling I’m less than that. I’m going to get a blood test today and have an ultrasound next week sometime in order to see how far along the baby is. Regardless, it’s got a beating heart now, and Baby Bean is so well loved and so well received, nothing but positive energy can penetrate through the developing amniotic fluid.
I talk to Baby Bean everyday, while I’m driving, while I eat, while I’m watching TV, while I’m at my laptop. I talk to Bean and tell Bean how beautiful Bean is, and how wanted, and how planned, and how my heart swells, along with my eyes full of tears, at the very thought that my body is being harbored by Bean. I tell Bean that the world is going to be that much more beautiful, that much more loving, that much more peaceful, because s/he is now in existence. I rub my belly, which is barely showing at all (though the husband swears that I’m starting to have a little bump). I rub and rub and rub and through the palms of my hands I am physically emitting loving, positive energy so that it can be absorbed through my uterus and into Bean’s little beating heart.
Advice seeking from mothers and expectant mothers and anyone else who may know the answer: I’m sick. I have a sore throat, my throat is all scratchy, and my nose runs a mile a minute. No fever. Drinking lots of fluids. So far, no medication or cold syrup or anything. I’m kind of freaked about taking anything foreign into my body that isn’t organic, fruity, vegetable, or required for Bean’s growth and health. What can I do to help pass this icky cold along? I’m achy, tired, and coughing a lot. HELP!
We love you, Baby Bean. Namaste. Literally.
October 30, 2007 at 8:06 pm · Filed under daily, heart
I had something really important to say, but very little time and space to say it, so now I’ve forgotten what I was going to write about. It was something meaningful and deeply philosophical, but since it’s flown out of my mind, I’ll have to wait till later. In the meantime, I’ll tell you how my birthday is going so far.
I woke up to a lovely kiss on the forehead from husband, whispering, “Happy birthday, Pixie” right before he went to work. I slept in for about another hour and woke up, to find emails and notices full of birthday wishes. I hopped onto AIM, and saw Jenbug’s away message, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HELEN!!” Instantly, I am so gratified that this is such a change from even 5 years ago, when hardly anyone remembered my birthday, let alone wished me well for it. I haven’t even really started my day and there were already people wishing me good tidings for the day. I don’t need gifts, I don’t need cards, I don’t need parties.
I just need people to recognize me. One of my fears as a child was to be forgotten. I told Jenbug today that this was one of the reasons why I just stopped telling people when my birthday was. If they don’t know, then they can’t actually forget, right? I’ve been proven wrong in the recent years, when I realized more and more people made it a point to remember, and I was pleasantly surprised. I got so many calls today, from family, from friends, from even acquaintances online who I don’t really know very well. Sisser gave me a weird ass voicemail message wishing me happy birthday. She sounded like she had an accent and just stepped out of China or something. But it was cute, nonetheless.
I’m grateful for this life I lead. I’m grateful for the positive attention. I’m grateful. Period.
September 15, 2007 at 6:06 pm · Filed under daily, heart
My George has passed away. I am deeply sad, but also relieved because he’s no longer in pain. I feel like a part of me has been ripped to shreds, and the physical world is left a little less good because he’s gone. I can’t believe I won’t ever hear his voice again, or feel his grandfatherly arms hugging me tight, and telling me he loves me and that he is proud of me. I can’t believe my George is gone. I had a long, good cry today. I’m not surprised that he’s passed, and I was hoping it would happen sooner rather than later because the compassionate part in me knows that he was in so much pain — it would only be selfish of me to want him longer for my own needs. But still… my heart hurts. It physically hurts. It feels stomped on, and it feels like that good bit in my childhood has gone. A little of it that I want to hold on forever is gone. Another piece that I was proud of. I don’t have many of those pieces in my childhood, and George and Marian were big pieces.
California’s just not California without George and Marian.
September 6, 2007 at 8:42 pm · Filed under heart
I love the way clients respond to me sometimes. Today I had a successful session with a family who I was sort of dreading to see because of their lack of motivation and overall engagement. However, I had a heart-to-heart with one of them, and it went MUCH better than I had expected. I even got several smiles out of her, and it really made a difference. Yesterday, a client told me she didn’t want services to end and joked that I didn’t get her “permission” to leave after our time is done. It was touching, and I was very pleased that they like my services. Not that I am expecting that, but it’s always nice to know that people appreciate you, y’know? It’s nice to know that they like your presence and that you’re doing something good. Even if I didn’t help them in any concrete way, at least I got to make them smile and feel safe for just a little while. Maybe they can take that example and know that the feeling is possible, and they can open themselves up to others in the future. I like making people feel safe. I like allowing them to. It makes me safe too.
This work is so significant to me. Jen from work said that I’m probably the happiest person she knows. I’m glad about that. I came home all chipper and Husband asked me, “Are you drunk or something?” 
I answered, “No, I’m just drunk on LLOOoOoOoOvvVVVveeeEee, baby.” Then I did a little dorky, cheesy dance for him, which made him roll his eyes and smile. Hehe.
P.S. If you haven’t entered yet, go enter my pet photo contest. You get a prettiful bracelet if you win!!
August 30, 2007 at 11:20 pm · Filed under heart, interests, thoughts
Yesterday Husband and I saw a really touching, heart-warming, soul-gutting movie: Blood Diamond. I recommend everyone sees it, especially because the subject is so sensitive and the imagery is so soul-wrenching. I think people need to be exposed to what goes on halfway around the world. While I’m not generally a fan of Leonardo DiCrapio, I find that a lot of his movies are really well-done. He’s not just another pretty face.
Throughout this whole movie, I kept asking Dave, near tears, “How could people do this to each other..? I don’t understand..”
How could we shoot children and women needlessly? How could we kill innocent people? How could we dance for joy around bloody, maimed, lifeless bodies in pools of red, red blood? I don’t understand. I refuse to look at it as human nature. Rather, it is something that has seriously wrong with the human race, that would allow us to hurt each other in such a horrid way.
When Dave and I first got engaged, and while we were looking for my perfect engagement ring and our perfect wedding bands together, Dave insisted that we get non-conflict diamond rings. I didn’t even know what that meant. I didn’t realize there was even such a thing as “blood diamonds.” I started reading more into it, and I realized that most of the world’s diamond industries hold all the wealth of all the diamonds coming in, and most of the diamonds coming in are from 3rd world countries where child slaves and innocent laborers were forced to mine for diamonds in poor, ugly conditions. Most of them are killed off, or separated from their families, or made to live in cages. These are smuggled, dirty diamonds. These are diamonds with blood souls. These are rotten, bad diamonds.
When we started looking for diamonds for my rings, we realized that Canadian diamonds (which are non-conflict diamonds — which means they were mined legally, ethically, and safely: no one had to bloody die for my finger to freakin’ shine) cost even less than conflict diamonds did. In the U.S., to get diamonds imported — whether with conflict diamonds or non-conflict diamonds — they all cost pretty much the same. The only difference is that those ignorant buy blood diamonds because they are more common. Most of us don’t know where diamonds come from. Most of us don’t realize that the first hands who touched our little sparkling stones was a starved, whipped, beaten, bloody, brainwashed, little boy in South Africa. Most of us don’t realize the lives that were lost to get that little piece of fucking rock on our finger. Most of us are too fucking stupid to know the price we have to pay in order to look pretty.
I’m fucking proud that I don’t have conflict diamonds gracing my fingers. I told Dave that if we couldn’t find non-conflict diamonds, then I don’t want any diamonds at all. I could very well wear a stone made of sand on my finger and I’d be happy. Please, please, for the love of Buddha and God and Allah and the good part of your soul, don’t buy blood diamonds. Insist, simply insist, that the next diamond you buy, for your girlfriend, or your fiancee, or your mother, or even your pet or yourself, not be a blood diamond. Please.
August 27, 2007 at 9:15 pm · Filed under heart, thoughts
The place I grew up in. It is so familiar in my mind that it is almost like looking at the back of my mind. The skin and the wrinkles morph into the neighborhoods where things used to look so tall and big because I was so short and small. The street corners, the houses I walked by, the trees and even the smell — all so familiar in my head. I remember when Dave used to come to California to visit me — way before we moved in together — and I would repeatedly and excitedly show him around the cities I grew up in. I anxiously talked about each teacher and each classmate I remember as we pass by my elementary school. I pointed out the driveway of the rented home where I learned to ride a bike. Over and over again, as if he hasn’t seen it all or heard it all before (which he has — apparently I showed him almost every time he visited). So eager to share a part of me to him, so desperate to showcase the way my life has been, the way my life was.
I know what it feels like to want your legacy to continue, and I’m only 26. Worse yet, at the time Dave was visiting me all those years ago, I was about 20. I know what it’s like to want so desperately to show the people you love where you grew up, how life rocked and swayed you into existence everyday, the things that made you who you are, the memories that you have to hold onto so tightly.
The very reason why Gabriola Island is so special to us is because it is where Gran spent her teenage years, back during the war. She lived there from the time she was 12 until she was around 18 or 19. Each time we go there, each time the family spends a week of summer vacation there, she shows us around the island. This year, I had the fortune of driving Gran around the island, while she pointed each spot where a memory lived. The little school house she went to school in, which is now The Women’s Institute. The little house she and her parents lived in, which is now a “guest house” in the back yard of a huge front house, overlooking the beach. The home we stayed in — camped at — is the very home her father built. She pointed each house that was there for more than 70 years, and who used to live in each. She described having to walk 3 miles to and from school everyday, rain or shine or snow (barefoot, in freezing cold, etc. etc.). She told stories of how she used to call a male friend who had a crush on one of her female friends, “Tom Hug-and-Kiss-Her!” because his name was Tom Huggins. She pointed out what the fire department used to be, where the museum was back in the day, what the convenience store was before it was a convenience store. It was touching. It was like I saw her in a new light, young again, age 13, just starting life, with so much ahead of her. It was even before she met Grandpa, who together they would give birth to Sylvia, who would later on give birth to my darling husband.
History in the making. Without Gran, my husband wouldn’t be here. Without my husband, where would I be?
August 24, 2007 at 8:40 pm · Filed under heart
Ode to really good books. Currently, I am reading Iris and Ruby by Rosie Thomas. It’s a relatively new book, and I’m about halfway through it (it takes me a while these days to finish one book). I am captured by the alliteration and the writing style. The first page was so beautiful written, I couldn’t put it down for at least a few more chapters. I knew I was hooked when the language described veins of love captured in human ribs, like a caged bird. The imagery is so beautiful. I am so impressed. It makes me want to get my paper and pencil (or rather, my laptop) and start writing, the way I used to write before I became a boring old married fogie. Heh.
I miss the days when I was more imagery-focused in my writing, versus just getting words out there, versus just making myself known. I miss the days when each word was like a newborn child — the feeling of being able to capture a feeling, a notion, an idea so vividly that it feels like you are giving birth to something beautiful, something meaningful — something original. How beautiful the notion of being able to write something that means something as well. I am going to capture those days again, and make them mine again. I am going to chase them, and hang onto them like trying to fly across the desert with sandy winds in my eyes. It’s painful to try to capture something that you’ve lost so much.. like grasping for air, and letting it slip through your fingers because you don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to feel like once you’ve held it. You only imagine it.
Words were like air to me. They crippled me into desperation and necessity, yet they became the crutch I can’t live without, the buttress I was anxiously laying on. Before I had anyone, I had my words. Before even Dave the Husband, words were the zen to my anxiety. They were my suicide, my rebirth, my growth. Before there was Happy Helen, there was Wordy Helen. Happy Helen wouldn’t have been around if Wordy Helen was never born and taught.
And now, I holler and beg for the days when words become my savior again, except this time it will be different. This time, it won’t be through desperation, nor will it be through neediness. This time, it will be because of pure joy. This time, words will not be my suicide, words will be my love.
August 24, 2007 at 9:45 am · Filed under heart
Have you ever tried to describe the feeling of love? The knotted ties in your stomach, that wrap themselves around your rib bones and color your stomach fluids. They’re pink. And maybe red. But they all flourish and tie around each other like two lovers with limbs hung tight around, always hesitating to let go. Yes, that’s love. Love is nice.
I guess I shall attempt yet again another post about how incredibly in love I am. It sounds contrite, and it even feels rather silly, to say the least. Everyone knows what it is, yet no one knows how to describe it. Over one month of marriage already, and I look at my husband and think, “I can’t believe I’m married to him. I can’t believe we’ve been together for 8 and a half years.” I asked him the other day, “When does this newlywed feeling die down?” I don’t really know if it does, considering I was so in love with him before we got married, and even then it was already 8 years in the making of the Life of Helen and Dave. Now we’re into the new stage in our lives, and I don’t see any chance on God’s green earth where this feeling will dull in my heart.
It’s cupped, held gently by the winds of time. It’s stroked and nurtured with each passing funny face he gives me, each joke he tells me. It grows because it’s trusted, and the long years have become normalcy. And yet the normalcy doesn’t get old. I come home, and I see him, and my heart flutters like butterfly wings on a windy summer day. I must have memorized the lines on his face, each scar on his body, the way his hips curve just so, or the way his arms feel when they are around me. I can close my eyes and judge exactly, to the point, where my head fits so perfectly in the soft curves of his neck. I can smell him even now, when he has been long gone from home, at work, after the wee hours of the morning of getting ready. I can spot him blindfolded because my aura recognizes his. All so familiar, yet all still with such a new feeling to it.
I can see us grow old together. At first, it was a little girl’s fantasy. When I first met him, I was afraid to imagine such happiness. Angry, depressed, scared, alone — the fantasy grew until we became “official,” past the mere point of friendship, even past the declaration of “best friend.” And then somehow, the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” are dull in comparison to who we are to each other. Didn’t sound right even then. After 8 years, the words “fiance” and “fiancee” felt more of a match for us, but even then, the lighting is dull in the spark of our love. Now, the words “husband” and “wife” wrap around our lives, encompassing everything we are. And still, while it surpasses the meanings of “boyfriend” or “fiance,” the word “husband” still doesn’t describe exactly who he is to me. The colloquial “love birds” and all the other cliche terms and phrases used to describe young love seem pale.
And all I can do is use a smile to describe his footprint on my heart. Just a simple smile.
“Are you happy, Pixie?” he asks me almost nightly.
I look at him, unable to describe just how silly the mere word “Yes” is, and still unable even more so to come up with a better word.
“Yes,” I answer.
He smiles as if he already knew the answer before I uttered it, and I asked him in return if he is happy with me. I already know the answer too.
“Yes.”
When words can’t describe the true emotions of the heart, we are left with simple responses to simple questions. And perhaps that is all that needs to be understood: love is simple.
August 22, 2007 at 8:04 pm · Filed under daily, heart
I went to my last session for a client today. It felt good, and a little sad. This particular family — I feel like I haven’t been of much service or help to them in the short time I’ve been working with them. It’s been a good 5.5 months, and it just doesn’t feel like we really “clicked” or things really got addressed. I hate that feeling, but I don’t think it’s entirely my fault. However, I do tend to think that I could’ve done more, could’ve tried harder, could’ve should’ve, etc. Oh well. I’ll get over it.
I found out from a colleague today during lunch about a kiddo I used to work with. If any of you are old-timers who have been visiting me and reading my entries for at least 4 to 5 years, you’d remember a time when I used to talk about a group home, with Mr. Technicality and Rock Boy. Whiner Boy. Remember them? I found out today that Mr. Technicality is a foster kid, never got out of the system, and is in trouble with the law. He’s 16 years old, scared, and alone. He has a really good lawyer, though, who I was having lunch with today. I felt really sorry for the situation he’s in and I am really saddened with what happened to Rock Boy. He must be about 13 now and he’s institutionalized. 13 and no place to go. *sigh* My heart just breaks. I feel like it’s been ripped to shreds and pieces. Those two brothers were what made me decide to go into counseling and therapy. They contributed to me being who I am today — a lot. I wish I could’ve done more for them, could do more for them now. I think of them from time to time.
You always remember your first clients. They nestle in your heart, and they never leave. They become like your mind’s family, and your heart’s home. You always remember your first clients. In this business, they are the ones who make you or break you. Rock Boy and Mr. Technicality made me.
August 19, 2007 at 9:34 pm · Filed under heart, interests, sponsored
You know, there were so many toys I wanted as a kid, and never got. The biggest I remember is Teddy Ruxbin (remember him, people?!), and My Little Pony. Teddy Ruxbin is long gone, but at least My Little Pony is coming back. I think they’re running out of new ideas for toys. Actually, I think what it comes down to is that our generation had the best toys ever, and even though technology is advancing and there are cooler ways to do things, when it comes down to it, advertisers still lack the originality and creativity to think of toys that would genuinely capture a child’s attention for more than 2 weeks or so. Toys back in our days were created for children to use their imaginations, like figurines (we’d have to actually make up scenes and stories for these figurines, versus having them automatically talk or only have one action each), stuffed animals, builder blocks, and the ever classic animal inflatable. My bias is that if it requires batteries at all, it’s not entirely worth it and it’s a rip-off.
Back in the day, we were so poor my brother and sister and I would go outside in the afternoons of the summers and ride our bikes, hunt bugs, collect different types of yard thingies, and just roam around the neighborhood. We would rarely stay inside until it was time for dinner.
I miss those days. I miss being little and having all that energy to run around with my brother and sister. I miss how physically close we used to be. Once we became “adults,” we made different friends, we did different things, we had different hobbies. It’s kinda sad, but I guess that’s just the way things are. At least we still have the memories (or at least Eddie and I do — Sophie would have to be reminded through stories cuz she doesn’t remember much ).
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