via Instagram https://ift.tt/2tLCeNo
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Monday, January 21, 2019
Design, test, observe, hypothesize, revise, test again! 🚗 #vroom #monsterblog
via Instagram http://bit.ly/2CEVVKP
Saturday, December 8, 2018
Friday, November 2, 2018
Kicking off the #holidays right - with #thegrinch #movienight and #popcorn (and kakimochi and #capncrunch lol) 🍿🎞🎄🎁☃️❄️ #monsterblog
via Instagram https://ift.tt/2SFnGdD
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Proud of my little philanthropist who raised over $200 to donate to @redcrosshawaii for the people on the Big Island affected by the #kilaueavolcano. $35 of her own piggy bank money and inspiring others to join her - not bad for a 7 year old! Thank you to those who contributed with her! #monsterblog
via Instagram https://ift.tt/2lGcX3u
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Super tired and lazy so her dinner tonight was easy peasy grilled cheesy. 🤷🏻♀️ #monsterblog
via Instagram https://ift.tt/2HtbwBQ
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Let birthday weekend commence! ✈️ 🎉 🎈🐬 #happybirthday #monsterblog
via Instagram https://ift.tt/2GEYXUo
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Friday, September 15, 2017
A ball of yarn
Dear Isabella,
Here's another one I wrote about Grandpa Hilo. If I'm honest, it's mainly for myself but you'll probably find value in it when you're older.
Love,
Mommy
-------------------------------------------------------
If my time with you is a ball of yarn that has fallen out of my lap, the more frantically I try to gather it back up, the faster it unravels and rolls away from me.
I cannot remember the last time we hugged that you were not frail, because it was unremarkable and likely half hearted. It was probably sometime in 1998 or 1999 and it was probably at the end of a trip I made to Hilo and I was probably feeling conflicted. Cayla was a baby, and I bet you promised to move back to Honolulu very soon, and I undoubtedly tried to believe you. Or maybe you had made a quick day trip to Honolulu. One can only guess. You had the stroke very shortly afterwards I'm sure.
Desperate for memories I scour the photos and listen to voicemails. It's interesting what stands out.
In the pictures when I was little you seem so delighted. I feel like I remember being the center of the world. It's weird to realize how long ago this all was.
In so many of the photos I am tiny and white in contrast to you, so much bigger and darker than me, and looking at them makes me feel little and safe. Mom took good pictures. You're looking at me rather than the camera in a lot of them, smiling at something I'm doing, or trying to show me something. She snuck a lot of pictures of us sleeping, and either your hand is on top of me as if to keep me from floating away, or I'm nestled against you like a kitten.
We're often touching in our photos. You were very affectionate. "Hold my toe," you would tell me - meaning your finger. You had the dumbest jokes. One day, dropping me off at summer school, you wouldn't let me out of the car until I kissed you on the cheek goodbye. It was the summer before 7th grade so I was starting to feel uncool about that. But you insisted and then said, "You know why, right?" Exasperated, I sighed, "Why?" Knowing I was annoyed, you grinned, "Because your kiss is on my list." The Hall & Oates song had just played on the radio and you burst out laughing.
You somehow treated me like your princess, and also like a third son. Being the baby of all the kids and the only girl (till Cayla came along 15 years later) by default made me Daddy's Little Girl and all the typical magic that comes with the title. But you also ran down the sidelines at soccer yelling, "You're playing like a girl!" (Twenty-five years later, I have to tell you, "like a girl" is no longer an insult.) You bragged often that I threw a football with a tight spiral. You taught me to fire a rifle with form and precision. You insisted on teaching me the proper way to throw a punch, and congratulated me when I used the skill in real life. This duality has followed me, and I see it now, natural and uncultivated, in my own daughter.
I think that most of our conversations happened on the drive in to school in the mornings. We have Mom to thank for that - it was a careful calculation on her part. I wish I could conjure the details of those moments though. They are there, just barely out of focus. I can feel the chug of the old Pontiac Firebird under me as it sits in traffic on Wilder Avenue right before the Texaco, and the weight of the door as I slam it closed after you dropped me off. I can feel the confusion as you explain to me that you don't quite remember things from your childhood - how could you not remember things that would be so poignant and important? (I get it now.) I can almost hear the way you say "sweetheart" when you talk to me. I don't remember the exact words or the morning but there was once that you said we are very alike and I didn't grasp the significance at the time but I'd like to go back to that day and tell you I agree. I can imagine now the sound of your voice saying, "I know! I smaht das why. S-M-U-T smaht." What stands out is the image of your hand on the gear shift, the feel of your tone in the space of my head.
The gaps stand out too. There were times we went months without each other. There's almost a year of no photos, no memories. This is where the ball of yarn rolls faster and faster away from me. I both know, and don't know, what was happening to cause these deep chasms of time. It has nothing to do with us and everything to do with us.
There were arguments, words thrown that could not be retrieved, wounds inflicted by an adult child who couldn't understand their power until it was too late. How could you have withstood the disrespect and sass flung at you with such fury? The indifference that followed? Now, as a parent, I can only imagine the heartbreak and rage you must have felt. And yet, not even a flicker in your eyes betrayed anything but patience for my impetuousness. You forgave me even before I knew to ask for it.
You weren't perfect, and to pretend you were would steal honor from the good you did have. I think you usually had good intentions but you often failed and you sometimes outright lied. You had terrible financial judgment and you carried enormous debt for most of your life. There was a sliver of time during which you enjoyed great success and I was fortunate to be a child during that time but then it slipped through your fingers. You had a tendency to be unbelievably self absorbed - so much so that it wasn't as if you were choosing your self over someone else. You simply did not see any other person in your field of vision. And usually, you convinced yourself that your choices were somehow in service of those you loved.
Throughout your life, you were unflinchingly yourself, and you demanded that your children carry that same confidence. Your ego was tempered by my mother's humility though, so I landed somewhere closer to the center of the spectrum. But you have passed on to me an inability to be anything other than my entire, genuine self. As I grow older, I realize more and more how alike we are in that way.
We parent more by example than we probably realize so I wonder what I am passing on to my daughter. I hope she will inherit some of our fire - I think it has served me well so far. I don't know if I believe in an afterlife but if there is one, I like to think that if you are watching, you would agree.
Here's another one I wrote about Grandpa Hilo. If I'm honest, it's mainly for myself but you'll probably find value in it when you're older.
Love,
Mommy
-------------------------------------------------------
If my time with you is a ball of yarn that has fallen out of my lap, the more frantically I try to gather it back up, the faster it unravels and rolls away from me.
I cannot remember the last time we hugged that you were not frail, because it was unremarkable and likely half hearted. It was probably sometime in 1998 or 1999 and it was probably at the end of a trip I made to Hilo and I was probably feeling conflicted. Cayla was a baby, and I bet you promised to move back to Honolulu very soon, and I undoubtedly tried to believe you. Or maybe you had made a quick day trip to Honolulu. One can only guess. You had the stroke very shortly afterwards I'm sure.
Desperate for memories I scour the photos and listen to voicemails. It's interesting what stands out.
In the pictures when I was little you seem so delighted. I feel like I remember being the center of the world. It's weird to realize how long ago this all was.
In so many of the photos I am tiny and white in contrast to you, so much bigger and darker than me, and looking at them makes me feel little and safe. Mom took good pictures. You're looking at me rather than the camera in a lot of them, smiling at something I'm doing, or trying to show me something. She snuck a lot of pictures of us sleeping, and either your hand is on top of me as if to keep me from floating away, or I'm nestled against you like a kitten.
We're often touching in our photos. You were very affectionate. "Hold my toe," you would tell me - meaning your finger. You had the dumbest jokes. One day, dropping me off at summer school, you wouldn't let me out of the car until I kissed you on the cheek goodbye. It was the summer before 7th grade so I was starting to feel uncool about that. But you insisted and then said, "You know why, right?" Exasperated, I sighed, "Why?" Knowing I was annoyed, you grinned, "Because your kiss is on my list." The Hall & Oates song had just played on the radio and you burst out laughing.
You somehow treated me like your princess, and also like a third son. Being the baby of all the kids and the only girl (till Cayla came along 15 years later) by default made me Daddy's Little Girl and all the typical magic that comes with the title. But you also ran down the sidelines at soccer yelling, "You're playing like a girl!" (Twenty-five years later, I have to tell you, "like a girl" is no longer an insult.) You bragged often that I threw a football with a tight spiral. You taught me to fire a rifle with form and precision. You insisted on teaching me the proper way to throw a punch, and congratulated me when I used the skill in real life. This duality has followed me, and I see it now, natural and uncultivated, in my own daughter.
I think that most of our conversations happened on the drive in to school in the mornings. We have Mom to thank for that - it was a careful calculation on her part. I wish I could conjure the details of those moments though. They are there, just barely out of focus. I can feel the chug of the old Pontiac Firebird under me as it sits in traffic on Wilder Avenue right before the Texaco, and the weight of the door as I slam it closed after you dropped me off. I can feel the confusion as you explain to me that you don't quite remember things from your childhood - how could you not remember things that would be so poignant and important? (I get it now.) I can almost hear the way you say "sweetheart" when you talk to me. I don't remember the exact words or the morning but there was once that you said we are very alike and I didn't grasp the significance at the time but I'd like to go back to that day and tell you I agree. I can imagine now the sound of your voice saying, "I know! I smaht das why. S-M-U-T smaht." What stands out is the image of your hand on the gear shift, the feel of your tone in the space of my head.
The gaps stand out too. There were times we went months without each other. There's almost a year of no photos, no memories. This is where the ball of yarn rolls faster and faster away from me. I both know, and don't know, what was happening to cause these deep chasms of time. It has nothing to do with us and everything to do with us.
There were arguments, words thrown that could not be retrieved, wounds inflicted by an adult child who couldn't understand their power until it was too late. How could you have withstood the disrespect and sass flung at you with such fury? The indifference that followed? Now, as a parent, I can only imagine the heartbreak and rage you must have felt. And yet, not even a flicker in your eyes betrayed anything but patience for my impetuousness. You forgave me even before I knew to ask for it.
You weren't perfect, and to pretend you were would steal honor from the good you did have. I think you usually had good intentions but you often failed and you sometimes outright lied. You had terrible financial judgment and you carried enormous debt for most of your life. There was a sliver of time during which you enjoyed great success and I was fortunate to be a child during that time but then it slipped through your fingers. You had a tendency to be unbelievably self absorbed - so much so that it wasn't as if you were choosing your self over someone else. You simply did not see any other person in your field of vision. And usually, you convinced yourself that your choices were somehow in service of those you loved.
Throughout your life, you were unflinchingly yourself, and you demanded that your children carry that same confidence. Your ego was tempered by my mother's humility though, so I landed somewhere closer to the center of the spectrum. But you have passed on to me an inability to be anything other than my entire, genuine self. As I grow older, I realize more and more how alike we are in that way.
We parent more by example than we probably realize so I wonder what I am passing on to my daughter. I hope she will inherit some of our fire - I think it has served me well so far. I don't know if I believe in an afterlife but if there is one, I like to think that if you are watching, you would agree.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
August 22, 2017 at 06:36PM
Yup, she's my kid. "Aw look, a butterfly!..." [Sly smile directed pointedly at me.] "You know, I might get you a butterfly for your next birthday." 😑 from Facebook
via IFTTT
via IFTTT
Sunday, May 14, 2017
She made us Mother's Day breakfast (with Grandpa's help) 💕 . 🥓🍳🍞🍓 #monsterblog
via Instagram http://ift.tt/2rfpdss
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Hilo (Great) Grandma
Dear Isabella,
You met my Hilo Grandma once, when you were a baby. She was already half way gone, and hardly recognized me or understood who you were. I wish you had known her the way I did.
I remember the shuffle of her slippers on the old brick paver walkway surrounding the family house. Lying luxuriously in bed on spring break - I slept in her bed between her and Grandpa when I stayed with them - I would hear her walk past the louvered windows hanging the laundry on the lines at the back of the house. "Hoy! You're still sleeping?" she scolded, but with a smile.
She stocked the house with my favorite foods when I came to visit. ClassicCampbell's chicken noodle soup would be stacked under the sink and she made Portuguese sausage burned in the skillet, or Filipino chorizo in the big can. She would make corned beef hash cooked so long it was utterly dry, and mix it with hot rice and roll it into dumplings for me. Loaves and loaves of bread, toasting pair after pair of slices for my breakfast and buttering them generously all the way to the edges with Country Crock. After dinner I had all the ice cream cones and Swiss Miss I wanted.
The next morning she would measure me for a dress and tell me how much smaller my waist should be.
My grandma saved old Ziploc bags for reuse, bought meat on sale because it was cheap and froze it for years, folded and saved wrapping paper. She carried Ricola and strawberry hard candy in her purse and fed it to me to keep me quiet in church. Her most famous phrase was, "Hm! UP to you." Sometimes when I was little and she was younger, we would walk together to my Aunty Felipa's house a few blocks away.
She gave me uncomfortable lectures about my body being my temple. She would bring me to her bedroom and painstakingly show me each piece of her extensive jewelry collection, telling me exactly what gem it was and the story behind her purchasing it or receiving it as a gift. She put four blankets on the bed in case I got cold - in the summer. She let me play with all her old-lady perfumes on her dresser.
I had to bathe at 4 o'clock in the afternoon as if we were still on the plantation, and I was encouraged to put baby powder all over my skin afterwards. I was not allowed outside - even to sit on the lanai with shoes on - once I had bathed.
My grandma often picked kalamansi from the tree in the driveway and squeezed the juice over my hands after I had been playing in the dirt, saying it was the same as washing. My hands would be sticky but I smelled of bright citrus. She would talk on the phone in Ilocano to her friends or our family and every so often I picked up my name and I knew she was talking about me. People were always dropping by the house for an unannounced visit or to give her papayas or bananas or lychee.
Grandma's house was the heart of the family. Grandma was the matriarch. I was her golden girl and she loved me with ferocity. She died Friday, she's been gone a lot longer, and I miss her and I wish you had known her.
Love,
Mommy
Friday, March 17, 2017
March 17, 2017 at 05:45PM
My girl found flowers to pick me just like before 💕🌼 #nowandthen #fbf from Facebook
via IFTTT
via IFTTT
My girl found flowers to pick me just like before 💕🌼 #nowandthen #fbf #monsterblog
via Instagram http://ift.tt/2n8kBFE
Friday, January 6, 2017
We had an intern at work today. Thankful my company lets me do this in a pinch. #betterhealthbetterlife #monsterblog
via Instagram http://ift.tt/2i2SLrh
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Grandpa Hilo
Dear Isabella,
There are things I want you to know about your Grandpa Hilo, things you will not get to experience or learn about on your own. In time I hope I can capture just a glimpse of the man he was to me growing up, in stories maybe.
I wrote this about him for myself, but by the time you're old enough to read this, it might make a little sense to you.
Love,
Mommy
I lie here and I remember him, as if he is already gone. In a way, he is.
Nothing quite prepares you to see your parent - who you think of as a strong, if flawed, individual - reduced to a crumpled heap of vulnerability.
The dad I knew was a solid man. Big arms and stone hard calves from working Big Island cane fields in his youth. He made me hold his hand everywhere we went and kiss him on the cheek when he dropped me off at school. When I was in third grade he walked me across Middle Field to class on the first day. I didn't want to hold his hand and to this day he talks about how heartbreaking this was for him. In summer school before eighth grade I decided I didn't want to kiss him goodbye in the morning. He wouldn't let me go without it and quoted the song that was just on the radio, "because your kiss is on my list." I rolled my eyes.
My dad taught me to be fierce. Until Cayla came along, I was the only girl in an ocean of boy cousins and brothers and I was the baby and I was spoiled. But I was taught the proper ways to throw a football and swing a baseball bat and at my soccer games he would yell, "Stop playing like a girl!" I threw a spiral better than Jason, and beat Ian at chess, and I fired a rifle with stunning accuracy, and my dad showed me that I could do anything the boys could do.
My dad taught me that I'm special. He has never stopped talking about the night in Hilo when, at 3 years old I told him the crescent moon was "trying to come out. Like a button." He thought that was so genius. (I still don't exactly get what the big deal was.) He would buy me a card and maybe a flower or some other small gift every Valentine's Day. He always reminded me that even as a grown up I could never escape being Daddy's little girl.
I have spent the better part of my life expecting this time in a very real way. To varying degrees, Dad has been near the edge of death since I was 15. Many days and nights since then I have spent staring at a ceiling in the dark or at a scuffed linoleum floor under unforgiving lights, and remembered. Remembered the morning drives to school, the trips to Burger King, the Sundays at Sandy Beach. Thought about all the lessons he taught me: take care of yourself first or you can't take care of anyone else, don't carry baggage or you will get stuck, if you're going to do something do everything to be the best at it. I think about these things, I hear his voice so clearly.
I have also spent much of our time being a rotten kid. He and I had our ups and very intense downs, and I went through periods of speaking to him with utter disrespect, contempt even. Ignoring him. Punishing him, essentially, for what at the time felt like grievous wrongs. We had epic arguments, exchanged some charged words on occasion. He loved me - liked me, even! - unwaveringly and vehemently through all of it. I took his love for granted, and only in the past couple of years realized how comforting it was to hear, "But how are YOU, Sweetheart?" My dad taught me forgiveness.
Last week I held his hand, pianist's fingers wrapped around mine. His skin was so soft, paper thin, dark brown. Today I wished I could go back to third grade and walk across Middle Field with him one more time.
Now that the night is upon me, I realize. Nothing prepares you to say goodbye to your Daddy.
Monday, October 31, 2016
Monday, October 10, 2016
October 10, 2016 at 07:34PM
Discussing the family roles if she were to magically be part of The Little Couple family... Her: You could be the grandma. Me: What?! I don't want to be a grandma! Her: Well you're gonna have to be a grandma when I have a child. Me: Yeah but that's not for a very, VERY long time. Her: Well you better start getting ready because the 'ears go by very quickly. 😂 😳 from Facebook
via IFTTT
via IFTTT
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)