The Silent "I"

Happy Mothers Day 2012!

I woke up this morning and found a lovely bouquet of orange, yellow and pink roses on the table by my computer.  I guess the Mothers Day Fairy must have landed here last night and just happened to know that my son's favorite color is orange and my favorite flowers are yellow roses.  Such a sweet gesture from my husband and son, along with cards and hugs and reminders of why I love being a mom.

I called my own mom, who marveled at the fact that for the first time in years my card arrived on time, along with a personalized card from my son to her, courtesy of the amazing Treat.com.  

I will forgive him the notion that her cooking (and not mine) is the best, because he is exactly right. I hope your Mothers Day is filled with joy, laughter, love, and great cooking.

 

Happy Mothers Day!

LiveOn Rewind: Family Photos Digitized & Restored

 

My Mother, As a Teenager in Korea

I've confessed here before that I used to love scrapbooking.  So much so, my husband used to call it my "cult meeting" when I would dash out of the house to join my friends for scrapbooking time together.  Unfortunately, having a full time job, a seasonal job, a volunteer position and a blog don't leave much time for other hobbies, so my scrapbooking gear is gathering dust in a corner.

 

Still, preserving my family's memories is important to me.  I have boxes and boxes of old photos that haven't made their way into scrapbooks yet.  With the advent of digital scrapbooks making it so easy to create and duplicate beautiful scrapbooks with a few mouse clicks, all the time and energy spent on paper books seems like a waste.

Unfortunately, most of our family's photos pre-2000 are in paper form.  Who has time to stand over a scanner and scan hundreds of photos? 

Enter, LiveOn Rewind...A few months ago, Clever Girls Collective asked me to be a brand ambassador for a new photo sharing, digitizing, and restoration service called LiveOn. As part of learning about the company, they offered to digitize some of my family photos without charge to me. It was an incredibly easy process, and I am completely sold on their services.

The first thing I did was figure out which photos to scan.  I decided start with photos from before 1990.  I ordered a postage-paid box from LiveOn Rewind, which arrived in a few days.  I was a little surprised at how small the box was, but I was even more surprised that I could fit nearly 500 photos into it.  I included some that were in pretty bad shape, thinking that someday I would learn Photoshop well enough to fix them.  Some of these are photos of my mom from the 1950's, when she was a young girl in Korea.

I filled up my box and slapped on the pre-made UPS label and dropped it off at a local UPS store.  A few days later, I received an acknowledgement that my photos had arrived safe and sound at the LiveOn Headquarters.

While I was waiting for my photos to return, I got an email from someone at LiveOn stating that they could fix my damaged photos.  (Note: there is an extra charge for this service).  I was beyond thrilled.  They sent me a sample of their work, which I posted.  I couldn't wait to see the rest.

A few weeks later, all of my photos were returned to me, with a DVD enclosed containing digitized versions of them.  There are copies of both the original image and the restored ones. There is also a gorgeous musical slideshow of photos that is like watching your life flash before you (or in this case, my mother's life). The results brought tears to my eyes. 

Original Photo, Before LiveOn Restoration

Photo After LiveOn Restoration

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last year.  I can't think of a better belated gift to them than a scrapbook of their early years together, and this way, I can keep a copy for myself and my brothers as well.  I can't thank the folks at LiveOn enough for the precious gift they have given me and my family.  I plan to put the DVD in our safety deposit box for safekeeping.

 

If you would like to let your family photos LiveOn, use this code at checkout for a 30% discount at Liveon.com:  cgc65 

Thank you to LiveOn for sponsoring this blog post. Please visit LiveOn to learn more about sharing and preserving your most important memories. I was selected for this sponsorship by Clever Girls Collective. Although story ideas were provided, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Granny's Chicken & Dumplings Recipe: DailyBuzz Moms 9x9

 

Granny's Chicken and Dumplings

Growing up in Ohio, Sunday dinner meant one thing to me: Granny's Chicken & Dumplings, a warm and hearty stew made of the simplest ingredients of flour, chicken, salt and pepper. A staple in the Midwest and South, chicken and dumplings is about as comforting  as a comfort food can get. It seems to be something born of hard times, when only the bare necessities were on-hand to make a meal for a crowd.

As a child, I watched my grandmother roll out dumpling and make quick work of cutting out dumplings into little bite-sized squares. Her knife skills would put even the Top Chef Masters to shame. I often helped knead the dough, standing on a chair to put my whole body into the process of shaping and rolling the dough into a ball, then using a rolling pin to flatten it out.  Granny coached me through it, making sure my dumplings were not too lumpy or too thick.  Making dumplings was better than play-doh for keeping little hands busy. 

Granny didn't use a recipe, so for the longest time I had only a vague idea of how to make chicken and dumplings.  My mother showed me how to make it, using the "eyeball it and throw things in until it tastes right" method.  My brother Mike is a chef, and he coached me through turning it into a real recipe a few years ago. The recipe that follows is an approximation of what you need to make Chicken & Dumplings, just like Granny used to make. The original recipe only uses salt and pepper for seasoning. I've added some chicken stock base and herbs for extra flavor.

 

 Ingredients

For Stock:

12 c water

3 bone-in chicken breasts

2 sprigs fresh thyme (optional)

2-3 leaves of fresh sage (optional)

1 packet Knorr Homestyle Condensed Chicken Stock (optional)

Salt & Pepper to taste

For Dumplings:

6 c + 1 c Gold Medal Self-Rising Flour

1 c water

1 t dried sage (optional)

1 t dried thyme (optional)

1 T salt

1 T black pepper

 

Home is Where the Heart Is

When I was in kindergarten, our teacher posed a question to our class of rambunctious five year olds: What is a home?  I recall many kids raising their hands, describing a house, a yard, a mom, a dad, maybe grandparents, a dog. One kid said, "where your toys are."  Another said, "A house you own."

I thought about the downstairs apartment where my family lived, my mom, my dad, my baby brothers and me.  We didn't own it; there was a landlord who came around to collect the rent and cut the grass. Our apartment was the entire downstairs of the old house, painted slate blue, with white windows and a dark red door. My mom was always there, it seemed, since she didn't know how to drive.  My dad wasn't always there with us, since his job as a trucker had him out on the road for days at a time.

There was an elderly lady who lived upstairs in one apartment. She would take me on excursions downtown to buy nylons at the local dress shop. The two of us would stop in a diner afterwards, where she bought me  pineapple sundaes and gave me a nickel for helping her decide which color stockings to buy, though there really wasn't much choice, since I really couldn't tell the difference between "nude" and "taupe". She smelled like vanilla and wore headscarves tied neatly below her chin.

In the apartment next to hers lived a young couple, barely out of their teens. The young wife would play Bobby Darrin and the Beatles 45s while we baked cookies together and danced around in her living room. I thought she was terribly sophisticated. She showed me pictures of Paris in a scrapbook, and told me it was her dream to go there someday.

Was this a home? I thought to myself.  My family and these two strangers above us? Then, it hit me.  I shyly raised my hand.  "A home is where the people who love you are."

I remember the teacher beaming down at me. "That's right," she said. "Home is where love is."

She drew a house on the board, with a big heart in the middle of it. For a moment, all the kids got quiet, as though they had to think long and hard about that, before commencing their normal routine of eating paste and toppling over blocks.  Looking back, that seemed a little abstract for five year olds.

I've lived in a number of places in my life. From that apartment house in Middletown, Ohio, to my parents fulfillment of the American dream, a three bedroom tract house in the suburbs of Dayton. As an adult, I've lived in dorm rooms and shared apartments in New York and Chicago. In Austin, Texas, I shared a house with my brothers' rock and roll band, aptly named "Sourlawn", then rented a small house on a dead end street where I could hear freight trains rumble by in the middle of the night. Frank and I lived in a big house with a pool overlooking the Austin skyline for a time, then moved west to California and a tiny corporate apartment.  We've made our home in a modest townhome in Palo Alto since then, full of paper and books and artifacts of our travels.

I remember all of these places fondly, with all the laughter and tears, joy and heartache that comes along with life.  I have been proud to call these places home, whether I lived alone or with family or friends or total strangers at times. I was thinking about these places recently and was reminded of one of my favorite songs, by singer-songwriter Sally Fingerett.  Her message is about tolerance and understanding of families of all kinds, and the refrain is:

Home is where the heart is
No matter how the heart lives
Inside your heart where love is
That's where you've got to make yourself
At home

I have boxes and piles and scrapbooks full of photos of the places I've lived. I have a few pictures of the houses and apartments, but mostly, the pictures are of people.  Even so, there are some images that are missing and reside in my memory alone.  I sometimes wish that I had better records of the places I have called home over the years, more photos or recordings, but I will have to make due with what I have, and the knowledge that wherever I go, as long as I'm with people I love, I will always be at home.

***

If you have photos or videos that need to be digitized, check out LiveOn Rewind. Use the code HOLIDAYREWIND now for 30% off your purchase!

 If you have oldThank you to LiveOn for sponsoring this blog post. Please LiveOn to learn more about sharing and preserving your most important memories. I was selected for this sponsorship by Clever Girls Collective. Although story ideas were provided, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Heart of Haiti Mother's Day Tribute: To My Granny

The very clever Clever Girls Collective asked its bloggers to write a post in honor of Mother's Day and in support of the Heart of Haiti campaign about a woman who helped us along the way.  This Mothers Day, The Clever Girls would like to offer you the chance to buy something from the Heart of Haiti collection, to benefit rebuilding of Haiti by local artisans. Get 15% off your purchase from May 3-8 by using the code: CLEVERGIRLS. 

I've been blessed many times in my life with help and assistance from some amazing women, but none more wonderful than my grandmother, Haley Campbell.  My grandmother, or Granny as she liked to be called, was a tiny, scrappy woman from the hills of Kentucky who was probably my first role model for hard work, perserverence, and having a positive outlook on life, no matter what cards you are dealt.

Family lore has it that I was a large and fussy baby, nearly too much for my 90 pound mom to handle.  Mom and I traveled from Korea to the US when I was nine months old.  It took four layovers and 47 hours to get from Seoul to Louisville, Kentucky. To hear my mom tell it, I screamed the entire time.  I am a much better traveler now, and try to keep the screaming to a minimum.

A magical thing happened when we arrived in Louisville.  My mom had never met my grandparents and my aunts, who were waiting at the gate for us, looking exactly like the faded black and white photos she was clutching in her had.  According to my mom, I took one look at them, and immediately quieted and reached out my arms.  Somehow, I knew I'd come home. 

Throughout my early life, Granny was my strongest ally, best friend, and biggest cheerleader.  My mom and I lived with her during my toddlerhood, while my dad was stationed in Germany.  When my dad came back to the US and was stationed at Fort Knox, my grandparents would drive from Ohio to Kentucky every Friday to pick me up, and return on Sunday with me.  When we moved back to Ohio, I spent nearly every weekend of my childhood at her house, mostly with my cousin Barb and other cousins as they grew older. 

 I remember being in her tiny kitchen, a pot of chicken & dumplings simmering on the stove, cornbread baking in the oven, with gospel music blaring on a tiny radio, and all of us dancing.  Granny had a special kind of dance, part shuffle, part clog-stomp, keeping time to the music, while the kids joined hands and danced in a ring around her.  By today's standards, we were probably very poor, but we didn't know it.  What we knew was that we were in a house full of the richness of love.

As I grew older, Granny encouraged me to study hard, and when I graduated from high school, she was there, in the front row.  She never let an opportunity go by to brag about me, to the neighbors, people in the grocery store, at the doctor's office, or just about anyone who would listen.

I went off to college in the fall of 1979. Granny wrote me letters, telling me what was happening at home, how her garden was faring, and whatever she happened to be thinking of at the time.  She didn't have much money, because by now she was no longer working, but she always managed to tuck a neatly folded $5 bill into the letter "just in case" I needed it.  It seemed like her letters and her $5 bill seemed to always arrive at the exact moment I was down to my last $1 and subway token, a few days before my work-study check was due and I could breathe again.  That $5 saved me more than once. I knew that $5 was a great deal of money to her, and it meant the world to me.

Granny died when I was in law school, after a battle with stomach cancer.  I've missed her every day since.  I like to think that somewhere in heaven, there's a little woman from Kentucky, dancing her special dance, with a choir of gospel-singing angels as back-up.

I was selected for this very special “CleverHaiti” opportunity by Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity. All opinions are my own.

Whittier, Alaska: Fishing with Grandpa, Just for the Halibut

 
One of the highlights of our recent trip to Alaska was going fishing with my dad and son in Prince William Sound.  We chartered a boat through Bread n Butter Charters in Whittier, Alaska, based on a recommendation from an avid fisherman who lives next door to my friend, Susanne, in Anchorage.  He told Susanne that Bread n Butter would not disappoint us, and he was right. 

We got up at 3:45 am to drive down to Whittier so we wouldn't miss our 7 am launch.  Fortunately, it was light outside, so it didn't seem as early as it actually was.  When my dad says we're leaving at 4:15, by golly, we are leaving at 4:15.  We ended up driving Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell to the airport on our way out.  Dr. Mitchell was a featured speaker at the conference, and asked if he could hitch a ride, so we obliged.  He is a lovely man, and it's not every day you get to hang out with a true American hero. Dr. Mitchell, my dad, Alex, Ralph, and I all bundled into the car at exactly 4:15 am and set out.

The reason for the early rise was that we had to catch the Whittier Tunnel opening by 6:30 am, or we might miss the boat.  The Whittier tunnel is a one lane tunnel through the mountains that is used by cars and the train.  You have to time your trips to and from Whittier to coincide with the tunnel's schedule, or be off by an hour. We made it to the tunnel at 5:45, and were the last car through before they opened for traffic going back the other way. 

The tunnel was carved out by the Army, to connect their former secret military installation there to the main road for supplies.  We heard that they managed to blast out the two and a half mile tunnel in 6 months, with two crews working on each side, meeting up within 6 inches of each other in the middle.  The crudely carved-out tunnel looked like John Henry himself had just used his pick axe all the way through it.  It was kind of dark and creepy inside, and we were the only cars passing through at 5:30 am.

Bread n Butter Charters is owned and operated by Mary & Jim Norris.  Jim is the captain of the boat, and Mary does the bookings.  We got to the Charter office at the marina before they opened, but there was already another group waiting.  They were going on a different boat.  Mary came to open the office, and sold us our fishing licenses and took our payments for the trip.  The trip was pricey ($280/per person), but we were going out with an expert guide and would be out all day long.  I figured that I probably wouldn't have the chance to fish in Alaska with my dad again, so it was well worth it.

My Mother's Garden

In the fall, I went home to Ohio to attend the funeral of my uncle Larry, my dad's brother-in-law. It was a sad time for our family, but seeing my parents, aunts, and cousins made it all more bearable for everyone. 

My mother is an somewhat fanatical gardener, and though it was the end of the summer, her flower garden was in full bloom.  I took some pictures of their bounty, and through the long, rainy winter, like to take them out to look at them from time to time. 

With spring's arrival throughout most of the US, I thought I would share some of what we have to look forward to in the coming months.  Here in California, the brillian orange California poppies are already making an appearance along the side of the road.

Asian American Voices Project

My friends at Clever Girls Collective sent me the link to this video, a trailer for Asian American Voices: Shaping Silicon Valley, Strengthening Community, and Sharing Hope a film about the contributions of Asian Americans in Silicon Valley. You get to hear the very moving stories of various Asian-Americans and how their lives and work helped to shape the community we live in on a daily basis. The full film will be screened at the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival on March 20, 2010.

While this film centers on immigrants in the San Francisco Bay area, the stories could be told just about anywhere. For me, the stories reminded me of my mother, and her immigration story.  I've written here before about my mom's determination to become a US citizen, but I haven't told all of her story. That's more than one blog post could possibly handle.

My mother's birthday is tomorrow, March 6, and I have been thinking a great deal about all that she has contributed in her 69 years.  She was never able to complete high school because the Korean War interrupted her schooling and she had to go to work to help support her eleven brothers and sisters after their father died.  She came to the US as a teenager, married to my dad, with a baby in tow. She had three children before age 25. She worked in a factory for 25 years, and would have kept on working had it not closed its doors and moved operations to Mexico.

Despite whatever hardships came her way, She kept her sense of humor and fun, ran a tight ship, and grounded her children in the belief that they could make of their lives whatever they could dream. My mother has been my inspiration, trusted adviser, and friend for my entire life.

My mother never held public office, has never been on television, owned a business, or traveled much of the world.  She has raised three kids, sometimes as a tyrant, sometimes as a friend, but always with enormous courage and love. Her contribution to the world may not seem to be that big, but to me, it is everything.

My mother's story, and the stories of the people in the Asian American Voices film, are only a tiny representation of what Asian Americans have contributed to the US. I hope that everyone, no matter what their ethnicity, will take time to watch this and reflect on the impact of diverse cultures to the richness of our society.

You can join the dialogue and become a fan of the Film on Facebook, and if you do, you could win tickets to the March 20 showing at the SF International Asian-American Film Festival!

Great Northern Adventure: Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada

This is Part 3 of a series on our Great Northern Adventure 2002, in which we take a circuitous route to visit some polar bears in Canada.

November 5-6, 2002

After our exciting jaunt into North Dakota, we drove northeast to Steinbach, Manitoba.  Frank’s  ancestors were Mennonites, so Frank has always been interested in Mennonite history and settlements.  There is a large Mennonite population in Manitoba, and most of it appears to be centered in Steinbach. 

As we drove in, Frank noticed the car dealerships had the names like those of his ancestors, like Friesen and Penner, which thrilled him to no end.  I guess that gave the place an air of familiarity to him, but I was unimpressed.  I suppose I would have felt differently if they had names like “Choi” or “Kim." 

We found our way to the Frantz Motor Inn, which Frank had reserved in honor of his late Grandmother Tena Franz.  “Probably some distant relation,” he mused. 

The place had a creepy, “Twin Peaks” sort of atmosphere, with blood red carpet, beat up walls and dim naked lightbulbs swinging overhead.  There was something unsettling about the experience, like we might see a ghost wearing a polyester leisure suit or possibly see “Crime Scene” or "Biohazard" tape around one of the doors.  It may be somewhat telling that I can only describe these places in terms of old television shows—they seemed to be stuck in time, and in this case it looked like the place had not been redecorated for about 30 years. Our room was actually much nicer than the hallway led us to believe it would be.

We ate dinner in the motel’s restaurant, The Brass Lantern.  It was unremarkable except for the fact that the portions were huge and served on what might have been used as a turkey platter instead of a plate. It was just what we needed, more big bland food.  Alexander’s chicken nuggets were about the size of his 95% percentile toddler head.  We retired to our room and watched the results of the U.S. elections.  The Republicans appeared to be making significant gains in both the House and Senate.  We went to sleep depressed.

How I Became A Mother

The MOMocrats are helping spread the word about the Mothers Day Every Day Project, part of the White Ribbon Alliance's efforts to raise awareness of maternal death worldwide.  Over 500,000 women die in pregnancy and childbirth each year, due to lack of necessities like clean water and basic medical care. To honor this effort, we are sharing our birth and adoption stories.  Here's the story of how I became a mom.  Please share your story on your blog and leave a comment over at MOMocrats and we'll link to your post on Sunday, in honor of Mother's Day.

I've written before about my feelings about being the mom of a boy, with some trepidation, but ultimately, much joy. My pregnancy was uneventful.  I had some morning sickness, but nothing debilitating.  I never had to go on bedrest, or worry that anything was wrong. All the worries I had were of my own making.

I delivered Alex by scheduled c-section, probably the least dramatic birth method every invented.  I went in for a routine prenatal visit at 38 weeks, and had an ultrasound. 

"Oh, my!" the ultrasound technician exclaimed.

"Is that a good 'oh, my' or a bad 'oh, my'?" I asked.

"Well, your baby is measuring a bit um,...large," she said.

"How large is large?" I asked.

"He's looking like about 10 pounds," she paused dramatically.  "Plus or minus 15%. I think you should discuss this with the doctor."

I could handle the "minus 15%", but giving birth to an 11 and a half pound baby was not exactly something I was prepared for.