2012 Gratitude

Highlights of 2012 (5): What are you most grateful for this year?

I'll put down the top five things in my life/year that I'm most grateful for, in order of importance:

1. Improved communication and communion with O., particularly for the breakthrough conversations we had in mid-October than changed so much.
2. New friends and old--who would be higher on this list if it weren't for the fact that I am equally grateful for them every year. 
3. Our house, which is so much better than our 2011 dwelling and which is now occupied by only us and the bunnies.
4. Bunnies, babysitting, the other part-time job, and grad school applications: things that keep me occupied and give me a sense of purpose or accomplishment.
5. Health.

Once upon a time, and far, far away [Turkey, pt. 2]

Once upon a time, it was summer, and sunny.

We traveled, O. and I and my parents and his parents and my sister, to a far away land: Turkey. The first night, we lost my parents very temporarily, and I yelled at O.'s father. The second night, we prepared to leave Istanbul. The second morning, we rose at dawn and piled suitcase upon suitcase into two taxis, dividing the Turks between the two cars so that no one would get cheated. The taxis swerved through cobble-stone alleys and across lane-markers, and deposited us, slightly out of breath, at the ferry terminal on the Sea of Marmora. Confused and staggering under our luggage and passports, we found our way onto the ferry that would take us to another continent in a short hour.

On the ferry, we ate cake and sesame-encrusted simit, and O. drank whole milk from an aseptic carton. I stole sips from his paper cup. It was warm and creamy. A weather forecaster on TV chattered on, and I tried in vain to decode her incantations.

Once docked in Bursa, we deboarded in chaos, some squeezing into an elevator. I refused and sought the stairs, suitcase in hand. My sister followed, and my father. On land our party of seven was reunited to stand, looking lost, in the shade of the bus terminal, awaiting a van that would take us into the city.

The van came, and its driver arranged our bags like Jenga blocks in the back. Some roads were closed, there were delays. We wound through the hills and for the first time I saw the Turkish countryside--sun-colored hills rolling away from the road, and olive trees standing in silver rows. It was oddly familiar, evoking California and the south of France, the countryside I stayed in when I was fifteen.

Arriving, after a winding journey, the van pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of an open garage on a busy street: the car rental agency. There the Turks haggled about the insurance portion of the rental contract, and the Americans sat around, bemused and uncomfortable at blocking traffic for so long, and having no idea of the proceedings but noting the increasing loudness of the incomprehensible conversation happening twenty feet away.

Eventually, an agreement was reached and the contract was signed. Having arranged our suitcases in another jigsaw puzzle tower in the rear of the van we were actually renting, we now arranged ourselves inside it, and got on the road in our big black van.

The journey across the Anatolian peninsula began.

* * *

Now it is cloudy, and the leaves are turning red and yellow, and carpeting the sidewalk. We are back in New Jersey, and I am longing for summer (so recently past), for sunshine, for California. O. is talking about quitting his job in a week, and I am thinking: I will never get home to my garden.

But surely this is the start of another journey. Job or not, there will be another road trip across this continent in June. My exile far from the golden state will conclude. In California, even if we can't buy a garden, the hills will be there, rolling and golden, tall grass the color of summer. The oaks will be there. The sea will be there. The sky and the sun will be there, and I will be there with them.

This is a journey, and there will be many arrivals.

Cover Letters and Bragging

I will delay a more past-reflective post once again, because I spent all my writing time today on an email, a cover letter and a resume. (I'm applying for a job as an editorial assistant!) Writing the cover letter was by far the most bizarre writing experience. I had to write a letter to a stranger, telling her how awesome I am! The language of the resume and cover letter is alien to my daily life. A lifetime of social experience, especially living in Japan, has conditioned me to downplay my accomplishments and wait for others to praise me.

If I were Achilles or Odysseus or Hector, reciting my glorious deeds and prowess at everything I set my hand to would come easily--I'd have had a lot of practice, as a man in a culture and religion where salvation comes through self-glorification (as long as it doesn't overstep into hubris, which gets you damnation).

But as an Asian-American woman, clinging to a religion that praises humility and socialized into a historically Protestant culture where public displays of pride were anathema, writing a cover letter is downright unnatural. It helps to think of it as describing how my skills match the specified qualifications, but still, the experience is, in a word:

AWKWARD.