Posts Tagged Under Kimberley Kwok
The Tyranny of an Anniversary
The anniversary ringtone flashed on my screen demanding my attention.
“Remember,” it said. “Today.”
So damn sure of itself.
This isn’t the add-another-notch to the wedding band date, although I’m sure I’ve had a few snarky responses to those as well. This anniversary was a reminder of events that we feel obliged to honor even though honor is not something we like to give death credit for. Why would a mother want to remember her son’s death?
The countdown to his last day dovetails along with the broadcast demands of 9/11’s 10th anniversary the week before. But I’ve been anticipating September 18th since May. His birthday seems like a poor joke in light of our family’s holiday lineup: Mackenzie’s falls on Martin Luther King Day (her initials just happen to be MLK); Tyler’s is Labor Day (you can say that again) and Aaron’s falls on Memorial Day (not funny). Cameron came along three years after Aaron died on – naturally – the first day of spring. Our herald to life renewed. Continue… »
By Kimberley KwokCycle of Crap
It must be summer, because I got the out-of-nowhere urge to cull my 5-year old’s closet for the high-waters and faux three-quarter sleeve shirts that have even the DADs commenting, “She’s kinda outgrowing her clothes, isn’t she?”
Our neighbor’s daughter is the lucky recipient for our 10-year old Gap and Gymboree classics whose paper-thin knees I hoped would survive at least two more wash cycles. When I finally clear them out, I take another look around her room and realize the work has just begun.
There’s more Bisphenol A (or is it B?) plastics in red and blue and yellow than there is floor space; a rainbow of colors and shapes stuffed into rectangular toy chests as a pretense to organization that is really the fallout of Goodwill’s ‘no more toys’ policy. Continue… »
By Kimberley KwokSubsequents: When a Mother Loses Her Child
Subsequents
But there was something about this clinical-sounding label that lent a controversial tone to the chat rooms in the various bereaved parent sites.
I never weighed in on any of these conversations. I’m not the online chatting kind of person, frankly, which makes this site a bit ironic for me.
By Kimberley KwokWorking Mothers Are More Respected
I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but I know I had something to do with it.
Marley and Us
My ten-year old daughter wants a dog when her little sister turns four.
At first I was thankful for the two-year reprieve. Now I’m annoyed by her hypothetical dog. With its hypothetical name. And with the hypothetical questions she feels warrant discussion.
Or worse — answers.
Should it be an Irish coat or an American coat? Can we move Cameron’s toy kitchen and have it sleep there? Should we paper train or outside train? Go to a breeder or adopt? If it was okay for Cameron to be three years old instead of four, could we get the dog in a year?
By adminWhere the House of a Mother Reflects the Home of Her Daughter
Monica Balius lived a few blocks away. It became our daily habit as two new best friends to stop at her house after school for a snack and play time. At Monica’s house, there was always a red-stained plastic gallon jug filled with Kool-Aid and an assortment of Keebler cookies waiting for us.
On this Saturday, our roller skating marathon had taken us up and down our neighborhood’s hilly streets, and we both needed a break. She needed a bathroom and I needed a drink, and there we were, staring at my brown front yard from the sidewalk edge.
“Can we stop at your house?” Monica asked, innocently. My mother had never subscribed to the southern hospitality thing, that “ya’ll come back” spirit of dropping by for sweet iced tea. Our ten-foot backyard fences went up as soon as the moving vans left. I turned the front-door knob of our house trying to convince myself that there was nothing to worry about.
By adminMusical Memories, Musical Moments
My four-year-old, Cameron is singing my childhood in the backseat: “If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady…”
If today is like most, her next request will be a song that hit Casey Kaysem’s charts when I was nine years old: “Oooh, what a lucky man… he waa-aas,” a song she likes because it has kings and witches. (I didn’t get the last part, either, but it’s the line: “A gold covered mattress on WHICH he was laid..”)
My older kids chime in with their Johnny Cash favorites (“Folsom Prison Blues,” and “A Boy Named Sue”); afterwards, my twelve-year old declares that Johnny Cash isn’t really country: “He’s his own genre.”
By adminA Civil Discussion
A friend of mine got married last week in City Hall. He wanted a church wedding, and asked my minister to officiate. Unfortunately, the Presbyterian Church would only allow him to bless this couple, not marry them, because they’re gay. Although his civil ceremony was less pomp and circumstance than vows exchanged in stain-glassed sanctuaries, it was just as official in the eyes of the law.
That got me thinking about the church and state separation we supposedly still honor in this country. The law recognizes marriages by ships’ captains, judges and mayors, but somehow, the whole religious debate has crept into the equation. Growing up in the South, there were churches that banned dancing and drinking and required women to wear dresses at all times. They defined their version of morality and built a congregation of like-minded party-poopers. This group had no more say in a constitutional re-write than the groups trying to ban gay marriage.
Marriage is a religious choice, but it’s a civil right.
By adminMommy Gets Some Time to Herself — Yeah!!!
I’m leaving in two days. The thought of riding in my own passenger zone without hauling five hours’ worth of activities, snacks and diapers is enough to make me giddy. Just me, my book, and my iPod.
In any order I choose.
These next forty-eight hours will be focused on preparation for the trip; not packing, mind you, but advance meal preparation, directions to ballparks, soccer and piano schedules, phone numbers for parents, coaches, and our contractor. I know the odds of finding these homemade meals eaten when I return, with In-N-Out just over the bridge and Gaspare’s thin crust six blocks away.
By adminSummer of 1984
It was the summer of nineteen eighty-four when I headed to California for the first time. I’d decided to end my three-year relationship with the wrong guy about the time the nose of my Delta DC-10 lifted off the ground for San Francisco. I was two weeks shy of twenty, and on my way to a summer internship with a Fortune 500 company, where I could pretend to be worldlier than my North Carolina license revealed.
I’d be one of ten interns working in air-conditioned, corporate cafeteria comfort in the Palo Alto office park.
During the first week, I scanned the list of interns for potential romantic encounters. Of the four men, two were fellow Tarheels, and my summer roommates and were automatically disqualified. That left a Creighton University student named Steve from Nebraska and a University of Michigan student named Kevin who was from Hong Kong. I wrote him off, assuming the language and cultural barriers were too high to warrant further review.
By admin
