Category Archives: life

I’m still here

23 Saturday Feb 2013

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Wow, I totally missed January and most of February, but I’m still here folks.  I thought about writing so many times, letting you know what’s been happening, but it seemed almost impossible to find the time to sit down and organize my thoughts.  It’s hard to believe that can happen living on a 12 mile island with nothing to do except stare at paradise.

It’s been hectic.  Hope’s college planning is in full swing and as the acceptance letters come in, reality keeps slapping me in the face.  The burn on my cheek from it all can’t be ignored.  She’ll be on her own soon and all the bargaining in the world with God can’t turn back the clock.  I’ll have to trust that what I’ve taught her will be useful to her and that what she’s learned about herself will keep her grounded.  I’ve no doubt she’ll be okay.  I’m just going to miss her :(

Yesterday, I was sitting in my Literature Studies class, listening to a guest speaker share  her experiences with discrimination when one of my students said something profound. He quoted Confucius, “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”  Apart from being extremely proud that they’re “getting it”, I was struck by the statement.  I haven’t taken enough time to appreciate the beauty around me, and most of all, I haven’t made enough of an effort to find beauty in everything.  Lessons learned from the mouths of babes are the most hard hitting.

There is no 2012 recap this year and no 2013 resolution.  I’m just trying to be better than I was two seconds ago.

Differential Diagnosis

10 Monday Dec 2012

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I love House, but not tonight.  I am watching Foreman die.  Foreman the neurologist, the young, successful, fearless doctor.  His father, a pastor, is paying him a visit to tell him that he does not want him to be afraid, but Foreman is terrified and desperate. You can see it in his eyes, fear, anger, resentment, pain. I watch the exchange with reservation, I do not want to see what I already know.   A man of presumably great faith is trying to impress upon his son, a man whose cynicism imprisons him, that he should pray.  For those of us who have been through Steeper Steps, we recognize these characters as Justice and Mercy.

A little later in the show Foreman attempts an apology to his colleague Cameron after stealing her article, publishing it under his own name and then purposefully stabbing her with a needle thereby exposing her to the same lethal virus that is killing him.  Cameron stares coolly at him and says, “No. You are dying and that is the only reason you want to set things right.”   It sounds an awful lot like the conversation in The Sunflower, where we revisit the theme of justice and mercy.  Or rather, it sounds like what I wished Simon would have said to the Nazi soldier on his deathbed.  I cannot stop thinking about forgiveness.  It haunts me day and night the way it haunts Simon Wiesenthal.  Jean Valjean, the Sermon on the Mount, Alexander, the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  Over and over again we see the paths set before us.  They are, as Javert puts them, “Equally straight, yet contradictory.”  Do we decide to follow the route of legalism cloaked in righteousness or the lonely difficult road to forgiveness?

481664_10200102667509218_835085575_nWhy bother with such a gut wrenching endeavor that probably won’t end well?  I have ask myself this question many times over the past weeks.  People may misconstrue my intentions, there are those who don’t think they have to be forgiven and some of the people on my list sure as heck don’t deserve it.  I think of my Steeper Steps group.  Why would we dedicate almost four weeks to dissecting our emotions like this?  Mark 11:26 “But if you don’t forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your wrongdoing.”   I  judge myself to be naive if I choose obedience above my feelings, but that is my pride telling me that my feelings are more important than my faith.  If I choose to forgive because my salvation depends on it, does the right decision make it any easier to do? If Simon forgave Karl so that God would forgive him would that be enough to wash away the blood of millions of innocent Jews?  If obedience is the beginning, what is the end? Is it the freedom of Valjean who could release his knife from the neck of his enemy with a clean heart? Or, am I, like Mary Gordon, slaving away in this hot kitchen of self-pity because it’s easier to sympathize with a victim?

Yes.  This feeling of self-pity is cozy, like a favorite pair of worn out zories.  Like Foreman being more comfortable hating his father than loving him.  Like walking undistracted on a pilgrimage instead of loving thy neighbor.  Therein lies the contradiction.  My decision to forgive, though solely based on God’s command and initially harder than holding on to anger, releases me completely from the ropes that tether me to resentment.  It frees me, not you.  It cleans my heart without absolving you of your guilt.  I’m ready to be free.

To my Karl S.

I realize this may not be the way either of us envisioned our lives and for what it’s worth, I know I’m not the only one who is hurt by it all.  I forgive you for all of it, even the parts that you think I couldn’t possibly forgive.  I harbor no ill will against you and pray that you find peace in your own heart. 

Sincerely,

Boni

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When Life Gives You Change, Drink Soup

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

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Harry Wong is Hot

When I was in college and all the money I had fanaggled (I don’t know how to spell that word and I’m too lazy to Google it) fanagled ( I just Googled it, but now I’m too lazy to edit this paragraph so you must mentally omit all this before moving on) my dad into sending me finally ran out (because I just had to buy those beige Uggs), I’d flip my apartment over for loose change then walk to the closest 7-11 to buy a 99 cent hot dog.  Those were big ass hot dogs, a week’s worth of good eating.  Warning: this post has nothing to do with the photo of Harry Wong.  Warning: Sometimes I neglect to put my warnings at the top of my posts, so you have to stay confused for a little while before you get warned. Which now brings me to my story about all the things I hated about college.  Ahem.

ALL THE THINGS I HATED ABOUT COLLEGE (Alternately entitled, Why Did You Send Me Away?)

1.  The soup in the vending machine was a rip off.  It was beef flavored water and if they’d marketed it properly maybe I wouldn’t have been so disappointed.  It haunts me to this day.  God, I miss that soup.

2. Studying.  I read “Where There’s A Will, There’s An A” a bazillion times (okay once because I bought it with my own money).  Then I’d spend hours studying while my friends drank beer outside.  Then exam day would come and I would never be ready because I stopped studying to drink beer with my friends.  I was adhering to the 15 minute study – 15 minute rest cycle, I had only enough will for a C then.

3.  My car.  Let me elaborate.  My car which I didn’t have for a long time because my parents weren’t like everyone else’s parents.  Hence the need to drink beef flavored soup in the parking lot at 9:30 pm when I was waiting for a ride home after my 3:30 pm class ended. I finally saved up for a car the year before I got pregnant and quit school.  It cost me $500 and I named him Andrew, which seemed like a good name for a rusty Oldsmobile that almost never worked.  Sorta like his namesake.

4.  My apartments, because I had many, which also meant I had many roomates who made too much noise and laughed too loud and owned snakes and threw parties and totally messed up my mojo.  Fun times, fun times.  Maybe this shouldn’t be on the list.  Too late.

5.  Myself.  I was too good for everything in college.  I was too good for exams, so I didn’t show up to them because I refused to justify what I’d learned to anyone by answering some dumb questions on a sheet of paper.  I was too good for my parents who didn’t understand why it was so important for me to finally spread my wings unfettered by the restrictions of small island life.  Staying drunk the entire Spring Break was the only way to prove that I could see something through to completion.  I was too good for me and so I sabotaged myself time and time again with the illusion that I was actually “finding myself”.  More like finding my way to the nearest loser.

There’s lots more, but I’d have to unearth all the memories I worked so hard to stuff into my subconscious and that’s just not worth the anxiety that will last for days if I do.  Of all the things I wasted, I most regret squandering precious time.  If I had been smarter, I would have spent less time flipping off the world and more time getting shit done so I wouldn’t feel the need to flip anyone off, especially me.

There’s a happy ending.  I went back to school.  It took ten years between babies and full time work, but I did it.  Yay, me!  The moral of the story is that you never get to make up for lost time, even if you eventually get your crap together.  Next thing you know, you’re 31 and lecturing your kid about sacrifices.  Okay, so I’m 41.

Warning: this post is not intended to parlay any advice to college goers or lovers of beef flavored water.  As the owner of this blog, I reserve the right to be

random.

On the Veranda

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Blogging, life

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Growing up, our parents had very little to connect them to their childhood other than what was shared on the veranda.  Gathered around each other, they recanted tales of life as it was to them, sometimes sifting through boxes of weathered Polaroids with ink stained dates on them.  I grew up leafing through drawer fulls of bound albums in my grandparent’s living room, sitting cross-legged on the shag carpet staring at my aunts and uncles, my father as a child, imagining what it was like to be them. Every once in a while I’d peel off a hardened page protector and read a caption on the back of a photo, the smell of adhesive on my hands, each crinkling of the plastic whispering my history.  We relied on subjective recounts of days nearly forgotten, triggered only by a faded memory.  Every once in a while I’d stare at a picture of myself as a baby and dig deep to try and connect it to an emotion.  “What was she feeling as she held me? Was I being a good girl that day at the beach?” Some of my questions had no answers, no pictures to help me make sense of things.  Part of my life is a big ball of nothingness.

Our children, digital natives, will grow up very differently.  Unless you’re a scrapbooking household, our children will have thousands of digital images saved on external hard drives.  For the mommy bloggers out there, there will be archives of carefully crafted posts and commentary.  As a blogger and a mother, I am careful about what and how much to publicly share.  Careful and mindful.  I do not want my blog to implode; to taint my children’s perceptions of me as a parent or diminish the value of their personal experiences growing up.  What I want is for them to be able to look back as adults who shared the same home with me and see me as the woman I am now.  When they are ready, when they are grown, when they are able to separate who they wanted needed me to be and who I really was, they will have this blog.  It will be filled with recipes, not just for food, but for life. I will write letters to them now that will make sense to them twenty years from now. If they ever wonder how much they meant to me, they won’t have to search too far to find out.  They’ll chuckle through my highs, they’ll visit the valleys with me, they’ll squirm through my quirks and celebrate my triumphs with new eyes. Will it hurt them? I am sure it might, especially when they get to the hard months where there is silence on my blog…the months they’ll remember I couldn’t do much but cry myself.  Will they hate me?  I don’t know, I hope not.  If my writing remains true to myself, the woman in my posts and the mommy they knew will be reflections of each other, one a little blurrier than the other, but one in the same.

As the world gathers round their computers to read about famed mommy blogger,  Dooce’s separation, there is criticism about her laying it all out there for the world to see.  Part of her popularity as a blogger can be blamed on our desire to peek through the windows of her life and watch safely as she unabashedly bares it all.  We judge her for her honesty, her pain, her truth, tsk-tsking every time we log back in to her site. All from the comfort of our anonymity.

I log on to read her journey through this difficult time because it resonates deep within me.  Her willingness to welcome me into her world, as difficult as it is, reminds me that I am human and that I survived the roller-coaster ride.  More than anything, it validates everything I went through.  Grief is messy.  Life is messy.  Grief and life are both temporary.

I wish I knew the woman who gave me life.  I wish my memories didn’t consist of yellowing photographs that tell no story or the life she chooses to remember.  Remembering none of it myself, I wish my mom had a blog.

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A red for a blue

09 Monday Jan 2012

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There are just some days, you know?  Some of you can read this and know exactly what I mean.

There are days when I need a fancy red dress to fall out of the sky in “The Gods Must Be Crazy” style and make me feel what I desperately want to – alive.  Then there are days when I need to slow down and stop rummaging through my brain for feelings to attach to thoughts, trying to make sense of geez, everything.  The middle times are the worst.  Like now, when nothing is wrong and yet I don’t feel right.

Photography by Rochelle Cheever on rubypearl's Etsy Shop

Maybe I have too many clothes on.  Come to think of it, my closet is so full of clothes it’s hard to decide what to be wear anymore.  I feel suffocated by the images of myself stitched into the fabric that I put on some days, and yet I want to dare-double-dare myself to stop being “myself”.  Maybe I’m saying this all wrong.  Maybe someone else can explain this better…

I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be.

This red dress has consumed me lately. Even as I covet it I think, “I’d never ever wear a dress like this.” Why not? Because it’s not me, not … appropriate.  Responsible.  Safe.  Exactly.  Is that enough? I don’t know if i want to wear it because it’s touched so many lives, hoping some of that magic will rub off on me or if I just want to be outrageous.  A big red dress is pretty outrageous for me.  Anything other than a nice pair of jeans is.  Exactly.  It’s outrageous and daring and out of character and fun and dreamy and frilly and super freakin’ badass.  And not safe.

What’s My Retirement Plan? Pajama Blogging. That’s not very grown up, I know.

09 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by in life, new journeys await, retirement

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I’m thinking about retirement.  Not because I’m 40.  Just because I can.  Not because I’m unhappy.  Just because I can.  Not soon, but in time because I can, I can, I can.  I can be anything I want to be because I already did what I had to do.  So now the possibilities are endless, or at least more varied, like M&Ms.  Did you know M&Ms now come in Coconut?

I could make organic snacks.  Dried okra chips and avocado smoothies.
I could create the island’s first margarita scented anti-bacterial, non-greasy mosquito repellant. Who wants to smell like Happy Hour? Oooh, me, me, ME!
I could open a Halo Halo shop and put all kinds of local yummies in it like bocayo, mango balls  and lemmai bits.  It would be a Håfa Håfa. 

Or, I could blog in my jammies allllll day long and no one would know.  Except you ;)

Vintage CorningWare…I’m Speechless

26 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by in life, moms, regifting

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My mom came over with several pots of orchids for our yard last Friday.  Yes, that was nice, but if you know my mother she is always giving me some quirky garage sale find she managed to hoard for years, just waiting for the perfect time to surprise me. “Hmmm… Good Friday, I think Boni could use another Southwest deviled eggs tray.” 
Her favorite presents are old dishes, magazines with living healthy advice about 20 years too old or ginormous tapestries mounted on gold plated frames. It used to bug me, but now that I’ve found mismatched kitchenware to be chic, I gratefully accept all things as long they aren’t from China.  My mother dislikes anything from China, even though everything comes from China.  Except fortune cookies.  I get those on the internet for cheap.  I kinda like that there are hints of her everywhere now.  It kind of reminds me that I though I try to put everything in neat little piles, not everything belongs that way.  Like life.

Leave a message…i’m at the beach

19 Sunday Sep 2010

Posted by in family, illusions, life, priorities

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This is what happens when you whine about not having been at the beach for weeks.  Your husband tells you to go to work and concentrate on what you need to get done and then organizes an afternoon fiesta. Family, food and unlimited bliss. I love this man.
This is my kind of afternoon meeting.  Me, Jess and my sister Yvette.
Count the black dots.  
On second thought, don’t waste your time looking for things that aren’t there.

Our Cherry Tree

06 Thursday May 2010

Posted by in fruits, life, mansanita, peyton sommer

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The mansanita berry.  We called them cherries when we were little, but they’re really plump little berries with tiny little seeds the pop in your mouth like fruit caviar.  I spent many days in Chalan Lao Lao climbing mansanita trees with my cousins as a little girl.  
 
Sommer, my little monkey.  We planted this tree a year and a half ago.  Now it’s taller than our house.  It’s such a great feeling watching the girls get active climbing and playing in the yard.  Who says all kids do nowadays is play video games and watch tv? Phooey :)
Peyton got almost two palms full of “cherries”.  She ran in the house to share with everyone.  
Sometimes you don’t get to enjoy the fruit of your labor until you get your hands and knees dirty.  Then one day, when you least expect it, boom!  Your palm runneth over.

Pushing 40 is better than pushing up daisies

08 Monday Mar 2010

Posted by in getting older, life

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I’m 39.  There, I said it out loud.  I sat in the holding room of the Manila airport waiting for the flight back home.  I don’t know why I was thinking of my age.  I remember looking at 30 something year old women as a teenager and dreading the day I was that old.  I wanted to be worldly and witty, like the cast of thirtysomething, but only at the age of 18.   Now I am that old and I look around and realize I will one day be middle aged.  I looked around for some 40something year old women and wondered if I’d look like that one day, then wondered what that was. They looked happy.  They looked … like they had seen too many things. 
I’ve never been afraid of getting older before.  I don’t think I’m afraid now, not so much the physical part of aging anyway.  I listened to their conversations.  They were more substantial than mine; less about dreams and plans, more about family and life already lived.  Am I being overly dramatic? Will I stop talking about my dreams one day?  I can feel my heart pounding.  I don’t want to settle, to sit around and talk about what I did and what I could have done; what went well and what I wished I could have avoided, no. 
Maybe I’m feeling this way because I have time sitting in my room healing, not being busy, not occupied enough to forget there are things I don’t want to think about.  Like wasting time.  Like wasting life. A friend says it might be a sign that I need to slow down and look at things a little longer. The OCD part of me wants to start a bucket list, but the flesh and blood Boni part of me thinks that’s really truly overly dramatic.  Still, I can’t help but think of the things I want to do still.  There are big things like I want to write a children’s book.  There are semi-big dreams like traveling to Greece.  Then there are the dreams you can’t control like I want to see my children grow up to be kind and successful men and women.  I want to always wake up in the morning excited to go work.  I want to feel loved and give love each day that I have breathe in me.
I don’t want to think of the nevers, who wants to dwell on the unpleasant?  A friend says it’s our experiences who make us who we are.  I’ll be whoever it is I was who endured whatever it was that came my way… no matter what.  Perhaps that’s what both frightens and fascinates me.

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