nudle

Pretty in Pink.

Go with me down the rabbit hole for a moment.

Tonight I watched Pretty in Pink. I mean, okay, Ewan and Iona and I went to a wedding and when we got home, after some ham and cheese sandwiches, I caught the last forty-five minutes of the movie. And oh, my irony and smirking and yet also sentimentality. Slap me, please. James Spader was so cute and young (but was he always forty, even when he was twenty-six?), and Andrew McCarthy, what did I ever see in him? Molly had such beautiful skin and lips and hair. I reminded Ewan that we saw Jon Cryer on a plane from New York to Chicago, but he sat in first class so we weren't able to stare at him as much as I would have liked. Ewan said, "Who?" "Ducky! Ducky!" At that point Ewan went to bed.

I watched. And you know, it was a pretty good movie. I think it was lost on me at nineteen. (Nineteen! I was old enough to get it! But I was sheltered. Anyway.)

Frequently, in my mind and out loud, I deride the person I used to be for being silly or unfashionable or uninformed or not discerning. But after she kissed Blaine and the credits rolled and the Psychadelic Furs played the theme I was absolutely transported to my young nineteen-year-old self. I realized (again) that we never stop being that person. Or the person we were at four or one or thirty-two. So let's take that a step further. Is it also true that we never stop being the person we will become, pre-birth, pre-conception, the person who lives in the genes of our two parents (and our grandparents and our great grandparents, and so on)?

My deep question for tonight is, how much of us is wired to be who we are before we're born and how much room is there to be impressioned by the Psychadelic Furs and Nik Kershaw?

Iona on growing.

Me: "I made my omelette with egg whites because big people don't need the yellow like young people. We're not growing like you."
Iona: "Mom, you're still growing. You're growing into a grandma! You'll probably be a little smaller than you are now."

Fourth.

I had fun this weekend hanging out at a beach house with friends from high school and all of our kids (age 0 to 14), along with my friends' various sets of parents. Thanks to our hosts, food and drink magically appeared just when we wanted it. Dangerous fireworks were lit and admired, and we could see two additional shows from our waterfront seats. After Ewan and the children and the grandparents fell asleep those of us remaining sat in the hot tub until the wee hours hashing over how well we know each other and, of all the crazy things, still love one another. And the raccoons left us alone (Iona and I had a startling midnight visitor when we spent the Fourth in this house three years ago).

On the way home the next day Ewan, Iona and I stopped at 13 Coins for a good-bad-for-us lunch to soak up the beer, and I ran into my friend Rochelle, whom I've known for approximately thirty-one years. I'm happy that she looked happy. It may have something to do with having a nice, handsome partner after being married to a p-r-i-c-k for, really, too long. Or maybe she's happy because she knows she's strong and funny and loves herself for getting through some tough times these past ten years.

The scene at the 24 hour 13 Coins was (as it often is) surreal. The staff wore pained, false cheery expressions and (though the place was half empty) told everyone there was a half hour wait. Our waiter seemed to think that if he looked meaningfully into our eyes and said everything with deadpan irony we would forgive the ridiculous wait for Iona's biskitti and one meatball. And (of course) we did forgive. The chef was barely concealing his desire to commit suicide under a thin facade of hostile jokiness. A well-turned-out ninety-year-old woman in a suit and wheelchair drank an early afternoon cocktail in the Night Owl Room. It was all very Toulouse-Lautrec.

Then we napped for two and a half hours, got up and ate salmon with local strawberries and whipped cream for dessert, and watched Cloverfield. Ridiculous! Scary!

What's been going on with me.

We went to violin camp. I (with my sisters) am throwing an anniversary party for my parents on Saturday. A red marker bled on the light blue sofa. The adoption process marches on, excruciatingly slowly. A birth mother will choose us. I am imitating Chekhov in a piece I am writing about college boyfriends. It is sunny.

Iona on mummies.

"A long, long time ago in Egypt they took moms that were dead and they'd take the brain out and wrap the moms in cloth and bury them in the pyraminds with all the other old stuff."

What it was like before the Age of Enlightenment.

Tonight I came back from dinner with a bug bite on the littlefinger edge of my left wrist and one on the littlefinger edge of my right wrist. We all agreed this is odd. Iona said, "Mom, I know you don't believe in the mummy [in the basement of the church next to my school playground], but whenever we see weird things we think it's the mummy. And we're always finding weird things! And Maxwell says the mummy is his pet, and that's weird! And I gave a crystal to Rivka, and it made the mummy speak to her!"

Maui: day two.

Got up around 5:30 yesterday morning. Found an alternative to the $30 breakfast buffet -- the $16 breakfast burrito. Top-notch; egg whites, spinach, turkey bacon, cheese, salsa. Healthy breakfast offsets the buffet we hoovered up last night at the Japanese restaurant: tempura everything, potstickers, crab legs, sushi, brownies, chocolate fondue (brownies WITH chocolate fondue).

Yesterday morning I hit the pool with Iona hours before the water slides opened. Had lunch, then in the pool for another three hours. The slides at this place are unbelievable. Lots of tame, easy, open grades from pool to pool that make Iona happy, and two steep, fast, long slides that are like crack for Ewan and me. We can't get enough. Up the stairs, down the slides. Play with Iona for a while, then start arguing with Ewan about who gets to go back up the stairs first, to get a fix.

Iona was undecided about going down the 'scary' slides. Four times we stood at the dark mouth of the tamer of the two while I reassured her that she could do it, pieceacake, brave girl like her, if you sit up you go slower than if you lie down on your back. She wrung her hands and snapped her fingers and, each time, turned around and let the four-year-old boy behind us go. "I don't like the dark ones. I like to be in the light," she explained. All this with Ewan at the bottom of the slide waiting for her to shoot out, there to catch her.

There's also a rope swing that dumps you into a deep, small pool. It's not my favorite, since every time I do it I get water up my nose, but I could stand there for an hour watching kids and adults swing out and do flips off it into the water.

Before I left I bought these ladies' tankini swim suits at Nordstrom. The two tops I bought (both black) are this nice, heavy nylonish fabric that's snug over the breasts but a little loose under, like a comfortable tank top. Hides the flat stomach I never had and really don't have now after lugging around a ten-pound baby in there six years ago. But I didn't predict how much playing in the water I'd do here, and having wet, heavy fabric flapping around the midsection is irritating. So in between sliding yesterday I visited Quicksilver, a shop here in the hotel, where apparently everything is in junior sizes -- 3, 5, 7, that sort of thing. I realized the sizing thing when I couldn't get my left arm into a size S rash guard. I bought a size L, black with day-glo applique, and a pair of bright green short board shorts, so now I can swim in actual clothes instead of yanking at a swim suit. Play clothes.

It strikes me here, at this watery playground, that adults don't get enough opportunities to play. Yesterday Iona expressed an interest in going to the morning camp offered by the hotel and I thought, who will play with me? Ewan has to finish a proposal and be on some conference calls this morning. So I selfishly forgot to sign her up, and we're going to the pool after breakfast.

Day three, up at 5:30 again this morning, and haven't had coffee yet. Off in search of.

Maui: the first day.

We got here about 1:00 today, but couldn't get into our room until 3:00 so we wandered around in our long sleeves and long pants and shoes with socks like uninformed, overdressed, hot, tired aliens from another planet for two hours. We're staying in a mall, but it's a very nice mall with a sushi bar and the sushi bar has a chocolate fountain. It's more like Disneyland here, actually. No garbage. No crankiness. Lots of purple orchids. Though if Disneyland had purple orchids they would cost $24.95 apiece and here people are draping them on you, putting them on your check and laying them on your pillow as if there is no purpose higher in life than getting rid of all the damn purple orchids. We saw a tiny lizard and swam and went down some water slides. I didn't go on the scary, long water slides yet; it's terrifying enough getting used to walking around practically naked. I wonder if, before we leave, I'll get to the point where I don't yank at my bathing suit.

What's been going on with me.

I've been writing, just not here. But I missed writing here, so here I am, writing about what I've been writing about.

I wrote a parenting resource plan for adopting an African American infant (Korea is an eighteen month wait, minimum, and now we think that's too long to wait). One big difference between adopting and having a biological child is the paperwork. At least, I thought the parenting resource plan was paperwork, but it's ended up being an expansion for me, a sort of prototyping experience. Writing about how we would bring Korean culture and African American culture into our lives has expanded my views of what identity means. I look at people differently now that I've prototyped walking beside them. In my mind, on paper, through research, I've attended a celebration of Korean American Day, gone to Festival Sundiata and gone to the beauty shop to get tight little braids in my daughter's hair. Probably both daughters' hair. Though we can't choose the child's sex. And an infant! No sleep! Diapers! We are definitely out of our minds, in a good way.

I wrote my final story for the final quarter of my class and handed it in last week. It's about a girl, her mother, her grandmother and the spirit of an African American nanny. My classmates will talk about it tonight. It's a story that I need to continue to write and rewrite. It's a cycle and a prophecy.

I rewrote "Puce Box" and read it out loud at University Bookstore last night. It went pretty well; I had fun. My sister and parents were there.

I wrote an analysis of a classmate's story. It's good, she's a good writer, so that was a pleasure.

I'm tired. Ewan's tired. Iona is tired, too. We're off out of here for a vacation soon.

Small red bird.

Now there is a small bird on the power line with a red top that graduates to black at the tip of the tail. It is singing its heart out. I need to get a bird book.

I just completed a draft of my story. Literary fiction is almost always a downer. I cried for my protagonist.

The story is told through three points of view. One of the three characters gets just the final paragraph. I wonder if I can change the voice in that last paragraph?