Happy Grandparents' Day, Grandpa David!

April 27 was my father's birthday. He would have been 74. The day also happened to be Grandparents' Day at my niece's preschool. I talked to my niece Izumi, who is four, on the phone yesterday:
    "Hi!"
    "Hi! I'm Izumi!"
    "Yes, hi! I'm April! I miss you!"
    "I miss you too!"
    "I heard yesterday was Grandparents' Day at school. What did you do?"
    Silence. My sister, in background: "Remember, you had lunch in the gym with Reiko baa-chan?"
    "Oh. Yeah! We ate lunch! in the gym!"
   I spoke to my sister, who worries about how to explain Grandpa David's passing to Izumi: if my sister were to say Grandpa David "got sick," would Izumi become frightened every time someone sneezed? I realized that as the family storyteller, I could take it upon myself to explain her Grandpa's life and death in a sensitive, yet meaningful way:

Dear Izumi,

On April 27, 1950-something, your Grandpa David was born in a Chicago hospital on a cold, windy day. Grandpa David was special from the very beginning. His birth mother loved him soooo much, she wanted to give him a happier home than she could. So one day, when the stork dropped him off on her doorstep, she wrapped him in swaddling and took him to the nearest hospital. There, from a row of gleaming white baskets filled with little pink babies,  Great Grandpa and Grandma picked him out, adopted him, and brought him home. They were so happy! He was their little angel.
     As he grew older, his blue eyes remained blue and his blond hair remained blond, suggesting an Irish-Catholic background, though only God really knows.
    Grandpa David was a mischievous, bright, handsome boy. He went to high school in Euclid, Ohio, where he was a four-time track and cross-country champion, just like your mom.

    When he was 18 years old, on New Year's Eve, he ran away from home and enlisted in the army. He almost wound up stationed with Elvis Presley, but Elvis had a movie to make and was sent off to Hawaii. Too bad. Grandpa David did some stuff in the army and traveled to Japan, where he fell in love with the country and its traditional, yet modern ways. He returned to the U.S. and attended Ohio State University, where he studied to be a creative writer. When he realized that the writing life was totally depressing and futile, he went back to Japan, met Reiko baa-chan, and got married. A Japanese-American stork dropped off your mom and me as little babies on their doorstep, and he spent the next 17 years working and raising a family.
   One day, when he was an older man, he was struck by a serious illness. An illness so rare you should think about it again, because it will never come up, I promise. He went to the hospital, fell asleep and never woke.
      Why? Sometimes that just happens to people, and we don't know why.
     The good news is, now Grandpa David is in Grandpa Heaven, which is right next to Doggie heaven, where dogs frolic amongts giant slabs of bacon and tennis balls all day long. Grandpa heaven is a giant living room strewn about with Laz-y Boys equipped with cup holders. Each Grandpa has his own TV screen that shows Superbowl games and James Bond movies 24/7. The best thing about Grandpa heaven is that they have strict visiting hours for Grandmas coming over from Grandma heaven. They can only nag their husbands on weekdays from 1pm-2pm.
    Yes, Grandpa heaven is a very happy place.
    The only problem is that children are not allowed there. But if you have a message for him, all you have to do is say it aloud, and he will hear you. You might not hear a reply right away, but if you really listen, you might hear a little voice that sounds like a rustle of leaves or whoosh of wind through the window screens: "Love ya, sweet cheeks. Sorry I missed Grandparents' Day."

confessions of a Luddite

I still have a flip phone--a banged-up but 100% operable, slick Sony Ericsson. When I left my cell phone charger at the Super 8 in Wooster, Ohio, last December, I couldn't buy a replacement charger at any store in NYC. The clerks at two Radio Shacks laughed; the salespeople at two T-Mobile stores stared as if I were speaking in the grown-ups' language of a Charlie Brown TV special. (Mwah-mwah, flip phone, mwahm wahma?)  Best Buy was a beacon of hope: the label on an antique cell charger promised to work with my phone. It didn't. But the Best Buy guy told me I could just buy one on E-Bay for 99 cents, duh, which I did.

    Homeless people have better phones than I do. Some of them also have MP3 players and portable DVD players, neither of which I have ever owned. 

    Correction: I owned a Nano for two of weeks. A well-meaning guy I was dating gave me his semi-operable Nano for Valentine's Day (he had a new one). You couldn't forward or rewind, but you could poke "play" and hear some dance beats. He asked for it back after we broke up. I lose umbrellas, gloves, hats, scarves and sunglasses on subways as quickly as boyfriends, so I've never invested in music gadgets since my COBY CD player broke around 2001. Needless to say, I do not own a Kindle.

   I'm terrified of the day my phone dies, when I will have to face again the option to upgrade to the new century. Despite my Amish-like ways, I'm a loyal Apple devotee. I love my Mac laptop. I have a crush on i-phones and i-tablets. But I shudder at the thought of being reachable 24/7, of being tempted to check work email or update my status or snap photos of the Jesus silhouette on my French toast or Google the Moore-Willis daughters at any given moment. I like to uni-task. I try not to text and walk at the same time. If I'm texting, how I can be fully attentive to my surroundings? How will I notice the pattern of clouds above or the scent of lilacs and dogwoods in bloom as I pass by? How will I have uninterrupted expanses of time to reflect, meditate, daydream? 

   Whenever I obsess about the evils of new technology and its devastation of attention spans, I think of Keats reclined in the tall grass and a nightingale close by singing. I imagine him listening, uninterrupted, still, enchanted, inspired. I can't picture him with a cell phone vibrating beside him, a Word window popping open on his tablet, a Facebook news stream updating him every millisecond with the status of his 999 "friends." He couldn't have tweeted an "Ode to a Nightingale" in 140 characters (although some scientific advances, like a TB vaccine, would have worked in his favor.) 

    One of the highlights of my weekend is turning off my phone, shutting down my laptop, and curling up on the couch for a nap. Mattie drowses at my feet, and it's so quiet I can hear us breathe.   

  

not tonight dear, i'm watching law & order

The postcard project is a challenge: apparently, I have zero time each day to write. That's right, no time on the 45 minute subway ride to and from work. No time while watching Law and Order: Criminal Intent. No time during my lunch break at work, and certainly no time on weekends. The post office is extremely far away (next door), and I'm not sure they make postcard stamps anymore. I have a repetitive stress injury in my right shoulder. I'm getting a migraine almost daily, I ran out of pens and paper. I'm plum out of ideas. I'm not sure where mail drop-boxes are, or if snail mail even exists. My fingers are frozen. I'm a terrible writer. I quit.

Postcard #1, Revised

Every day is every day is every day.
I'm thinking of too much
at once. Of an hour lost in a station
where engines idled in the tracks,
where fume and perfume and goodbye
fought for air. Every day is night, every night
another morning. I've walked into this season,
this ocean before. I didn't know I was weary
until you asked. I won't speak of flowers
or weather, of which enough has been said.
I'll spend most of my life
softening into forgiveness. The task
has chosen me. A fortuneteller
once told me to listen
as a whale listens
for pitches too high, too low
for most ears to comprehend.
I'm swimming to the source.
I'm holding my breath.

Postcard #2
(Experiment: rewrite the poem backwards in couplets)

I'm holding

my breath.

I'm swimming

to the source.

A fortuneteller once told me

to listen

as a whale listens
for pitches too high,

too low
for most ears to comprehend.

The task has chosen
me. I'll spend most of my life

softening into forgiveness.
I won't speak of flowers

or weather: enough
has been said. I didn't know

I was weary
until you asked.

I've walked into this
season, this ocean

before. Every day is night,
every night

another morning,
an hour lost

in a train station.
I think of too much

at once. Every day
is every

day is
every day.

Postcard #3, draft #1

(Experiment: rewrite with "every day" as anaphora, using the same words in original)

Every day is a fortuneteller.

Every day is holding
its breath. Every day is flowers
or weather, morning or night.
Every day I’m softening
into forgiveness. Every day is a season,
an ocean I’ve walked into
before. Every day is another hour
lost in a station, fumes swimming
in the tracks. Every day I’m weary
of perfume. Every day I won’t speak,
won’t listen to the ocean’s pitches.
Every day is a whale
and I’m thinking of too much at once,
fighting for air.
Every day is a fortune, every day a task
that has chosen me.

Postcard #3

(Experiment: with scissors, cut the poem so each line is its own slip of paper. Rearrange.)

Every day is a fortuneteller.
    Every day is holding
        its breath. Every day is flowers

lost in a station, fumes swimming

    fighting for air.
        Every day is a fortune, every day a task

in the tracks. Every day I’m weary
    Every day is a whale
        or weather, morning or night.

Every day I’m softening

    into forgiveness. Every day is a season,
        and I’m thinking of too much at once

Every day is another hour
     that has chosen me.

Postcard #4

(experiment: use a new anaphora, rewrite with same words as original)

since a flower is a fortuneteller

since every morning is holding its breath
since every train station is another lost hour
since the weather is every softening
since in the tracks another flowering
since in every ocean, a whale fights for air
since goodbye is a perfume
since night is forgiveness
since listening is saying and saying is a flowering
since every day is at once
since choosing is a task
since you asked me to--

Postcard #1 (April in April Poetry Month)

APRIL is poetry month. How lovely to have an entire month named after Me and my Profession. I'm participating in a poetry postcard project with fellow writers in Kundiman (an organization for Asian American poets). The challenge: through the entire month of April, write a new poem on a postcard every day and send it the next name on the list, flooding mailboxes with my genius verse. Mailmen will weep! Mountains will move! Hearts will throb with inspiration! Meanwhile, my own mailbox will be bursting with gorgeous lyric and sultry song. My mailman will finally believe that not only 1800-PET-MEDS and student loan companies are after me. Nay, I am sung to by Orpheus himself, by all the Muses and their daughters, by the most talented Asian-American bards of our time! (PS: You don't have to be a poet to do something everyday for a month. What will you do for 10 minutes every day to bring joy or change into your life?)

Postcard #1
Every day is every day is every day.
I'm thinking of too much
at once. Of an hour lost in a station
where engines idled in the tracks,
where fume and perfume and goodbye
fought for air. Every day is night, every night
another morning. I've walked into this season,
this ocean before. I didn't know I was weary
until you asked. I won't speak of flowers
or weather, of which enough has been said.
I'll spend most of my life
softening into forgiveness. The task
has chosen me. A fortuneteller
once told me to listen
as a whale listens
for pitches too high, too low
for most ears to comprehend.
I'm swimming to the source.
I'm holding my breath.