Loss and Flight and a Broken Kite

Last night, the world lost a great man, as my grandfather, Dr. Te Hsiu Ma, passed away in his sleep. He was 90 years old.

He was born August 24th, 1924, in a small village outside of Beijing, China. Twenty years later, he was forced to flee the country, a refugee from the government. He spent the next 60 years of his life becoming a world-renowned scientist and much-beloved professor at Western Illinois University. A gifted biologist and geneticist, he is most well-known for the discovery and development of the Tradescantia Micronucleus Pollution Detection System. He traveled all over the world, demonstrating the incredible abilities of this common wildflower to detect pollution in air, water, and soil.

He married my grandmother, Peggy, in 1959, at a small ceremony attended only by a few friends. Together, they raised four children, my uncles, Lyndon, Lindsey, and Linwood, and my mother, Linette.

He was a loving grandfather to nine grandchildren: 7 biological grandchildren, and 2 step-grandchildren, whom he loved equally much. As the oldest biological grandchild, I was fortunate enough to have spent the most time with him before his passing, and it pains me that my younger cousins will not have many of the memories I have been blessed with. I therefore wish to pass along some of my favorites, both as a tribute to a great man and loving grandfather, and as a way to share these memories with those who will never get to experience them.

I remember the way he used to mispronounce "milk" due to his thick Chinese accent, and how I, as a precocious child, would always correct him, "No, grandpa, it's not moke, it's milk!"

I remember his art studio in the basement, and the playhouse he built for me under his desk out of a very large cardboard box. It had windows and a small door, and I used to play in it for hours, dragging toys in and out, and begging him to join me.

I remember painting with him, watching him put colors on canvases in works of art more precious than I could possibly have understood, with masterful strokes of his beautiful brushes, while I, young and inexperienced, sat nearby with my crayola watercolor palette, oblivious to the presence of a master.

I remember receiving "Letters From Felix," a reference to a popular children's book about a stuffed rabbit who is lost at the airport, and ends up on an international adventure, sending letters to his owner, Sophie. He would write me elaborate stories about a trip to some kind of candy land, and his adventures there, under the nom de plume of Felix the rabbit. Sophie wrote to Felix for the last time this February, after far too many years of letterbox-silence.

I remember traveling with him, stopping at a rest area to stretch and play Frisbee, where a somewhat poorly aimed throw (on my part, of course) resulted in some rather interesting roof-climbing adventures.

I remember flying kites with him in a large field, and I remember the day we learned the hard way to tie the string to the spool, as my beautiful plastic storebought kite soared beyond the reach of its cotton line, and was lost forever in a reservoir.

I was reminded of this particular memory yesterday, as I spent the afternoon flying a homemade kite with my fiance. We built the kite in our little apartment out of wooden dowels and fishing line and trash bags and twine. We carried it down the street to the park, the boyish excitement evident on my fiance's face. He had never built a kite before. It was a childhood dream come true.

We struggled to get the kite in the air, trying every possible method for anchoring the twine so as to reduce the kite's penchant for midair-pirouettes, resulting in two separate arguments. As we finally came to a design that might work, the unimaginable happened - the kite broke. The horizontal part of the frame snapped directly in half. I watched, heartbroken, as all of my fiance's childhood dreams came crashing to the ground. Frantically, I pulled the broken pieces together, wrapping layers and layers and layers of twine around the center of the kite, trying to anchor the pieces back together in the frame. I watched my fiance's face light up as he found hope again, and shared in his joy as, by some miracle, the kite was fixed. Quickly, we attached the final anchoring point and lifted the kite into the air in a powerful gust of wind. It didn't fly well, but it flew...

...for about fifteen minutes. After several unsuccessful attempts to achieve flight, and a few incredibly satisfying successful attempts, the kite came crashing down on its head, snapping the vertical dowel in exactly the same place as the horizontal. But we still refused to give up. We shoved the broken pieces back into the messy knot of twine and threw the kite back into the air, believing it could fly like some kind of plastic Peter Pan. And whether it really was faith, trust, and pixie dust, or just some fluke of physics, somehow, that thing still flew. Even after one side of the sail detached and had to be tied back on with leftover twine, it managed to capture the wind and soar into the heavens. It continued to float and spin on the breeze until, finally, we decided it was time to go home. By this time, the kite was an ugly thing, repaired and re-repaired several times, with more twine holding the frame together than anchoring it to the ground.

Yet, when it was in the air, it was glorious. You didn't see the broken frame or the knots of twine or the struggle just to keep it in one piece. You saw a great white sail gliding through a blue-sky sea. It snatched onto the wind's tails and was carried far into the heavens, one gust at a time. It may have been terribly broken, but in the heavens, it soared.

By the end of his life, my grandfather was not a healthy man. He suffered for the better part of a year from dementia and memory loss. By his final days, he had difficulty telling night from day, or remembering if he'd eaten recently. He had to be kept under constant supervision, and was on morphine to keep him comfortable, as inside, his organs began to fail one by one.

But this is not how I choose to remember him. I like to think that as he has left this broken body, his spirit now flies in the heavens, just as our broken kite did. I see him on streets of gold, singing like Pavarotti with the heavenly chorus, and asking God all the questions he never got answers for on earth. I don't see the broken man being held together with bandaids and medication, but a man in his prime, soaring with the angels for eternity.

While I do have many wonderful memories, there are some I will never be able to share with him. He will never see me graduate college. He will never see me finish my book. He will not be there when I walk down the aisle this October. He will never met his great-grandchildren. He will never see my first home, meet my cat, or hear my second album. And while he may witness all these things in spirit, never again can I hug him, or talk with him, or tell him how much he meant to me.

I was supposed to see him next weekend. My fiance and I were going to drive down for Easter. I had plans to bring a kite to fly with him one last time, and to share one last Easter celebration with him. Now, we will most likely be traveling to his funeral. I only hope that I can show adequate respect and appreciation for a man who has shaped more of my life than even I probably know, and who I hope is watching me with pride from his seat at the hand of the creator.

Rest in Peace, Grandpa Te. I love you.

Making a Mess

Creating is messy.

Tonight, I created a delicious mess. I took down a box of dry devil's food cake mix I thought we would never use, and I made homemade chocolate cake fudge. I buried my hands in warm, gooey chocolate and sugar and butter and milk and pressed together something wonderful from something I thought was useless. The kneading became almost meditative, letting the warmth soak into my body through the tips of my fingers, and the palms of my hands, scraping sticky dough back into the big red mixing bowl, reminding myself that sometimes, we have to make a mess, before we can reap the beautiful creation.

This applies as much to any art as it does to cooking. The mess is what makes the clean, crisp final product all the more satisfying. When we've cleaned our brushes, washed our pans, tuned our guitars, sharpened our pencils, and we can look at a project and say, "it is done," we find ourselves relieved that we have completed our goal, yet somehow, missing the mess.

Creating is undoing.

It forces us to look at our tools, all lined up in a row, and use them, throwing them every which way, undoing all our nice, neat handiwork, inventing a space which is all our own. It looks at our souls and pulls out the deepest, messiest parts of us, unwinding knots and tearing down walls, until all our innards are exposed in page or pan or paint. It expresses that which is inexpressible, and pushes our most vulnerable pieces into the light.

Creating is freeing.

This is the beauty of creation, when we take something that we fear, some secret part of us that we may think is too bitter, or undeserving of love, and we nurture it, feed it, press it and mold it, into something beautiful and delicious, finally sharing the parts of ourselves we love least with those we love most of all.

And for the record, the fudge was amazing.


----------
Cake Fudge Recipe:

1 (~16 oz.) pkg Dry Cake Mix (your choice.)*
2 cups Powdered Sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup) Butter, cut into tablespoon-sized chunks
1/4 cup milk

1. Line an 8x8 pan or baking dish with foil. Grease or spray with non-stick spray.
2. Combine Cake Mix and Sugar in a large mixing bowl. Mix together, and make sure to break down any chunks.
3. Add milk and butter and microwave for 2 minutes.
4. Knead together all ingredients until thoroughly combined. Dough will be thick.
5. Refrigerate 2 hours, or until desired consistency. Store in airtight container.

*My cake mix was 18 oz, and the fudge turned out just fine, with no other changes to the recipe.
Inspired by this cake batter candy recipe. 

It Just Has to Be

I am a writer.

I. Am. A. Writer.

The words sit on my tongue, not quite real, not quite solid. It's something I've sort of known all my life, but never actually expressed or embraced. Not until two weeks ago, when I turned to my fiance and said, "I want to write a book."

It's a book that has been in my head for over two years, tugging at my bones, pulling at my heartstrings, begging me, "please, please share me. Pour me onto a page and drink me back in, one word at a time. It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be."

It doesn't have to be good.

It just has to be.

So, in the clutter and chaos of my home, I created a space for creating. Shelves of fantasy books, journals and crayons and pencils and markers and chalk for the chalkboard I made myself out of a pizza pan and spray paint. Cups of tea and sticks of incense and my very own magic wand.

And I wrote.

I am a writer.

Last week, I identified myself as a writer for the first time. I was in a job interview, and the interviewer asked what I do in my spare time, and I answered her, "I play music, and I read... and I'm a writer." It was words that I had never said out loud to anyone, not even myself, and suddenly, saying it to a complete stranger, made it feel very real. I felt a piece of that identity bubble up inside me, warm and gooey and sticky, filling in some of the cracks that had been growing and widening for longer than I can recall. It felt right. "I'm a writer." It legitimized years of literary obsession, of grammatical knowledge, of absorbing everything I could about the nature of words.

I am a writer.

It sits there, so delicate on the tongue, almost like it's scared to peek out and make its way into the world. It hides behind rows of bone, protected from critics and naysayers. It's safe in there, warm and snug, and unaffected by the outside world. No one can call it names like, "lie," or "joke," if it can't hear them through the soft pink walls of its safe house.

But creating has never been a safe venture. Nothing has ever been created that didn't first have to crawl out of its protective shell and stand in total vulnerability before the unforgiving masses. But that's what gives it life. Like a baby can never be born without leaving the womb, so a story can never be born without leaving the tongue. In order to gain life, it must first leave everything it knows behind.

The wallpaper on my writing laptop says, "Whether or not you write well, write bravely." (Bill Stout) Put the words on the page, and go from there.

It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be.

I am a writer.

So, I open my mouth.

So I Went to A School Board Meeting...

As some of you may know, I'm a News Reporter for three local radio stations in my hometown. Tonight, I went to a school board meeting. After suffering through a 3-hour meeting in which exactly nothing newsworthy happened, I was struggling to come up with a story to send the news director to use tomorrow. To overcome my writer's block, I wrote this. This is the story I wish could go on the air:

[language warning: some swearing.] 

Wednesday night’s School Board meeting was interminably long and unequivocally boring. Nothing happened, no one cared, and even the school principals didn’t want to be there. As such, you, as the listener, definitely don’t care what happened, because if you did, you would have showed up and sat through the entire three-hour-long meeting, most of which was spent discussing budget minutiae and teaching the mostly elderly board how Facebook works. But you and I both know that was a waste of time, so I won’t bore you with the details of the reports from athletic coaches about “he’s going far” and “she’s so talented.” I won’t tell you about the brief appearances of the students of the month, or the board’s feigned interest in “how do you do it?!” or their sheepish responses, smattered with “um” and “well…”

Instead I’ll remind you that regardless of what happened last night, today your child still got up for school, maybe ate some breakfast, left the house in an outfit that odds are you seriously questioned before begrudgingly wondering to yourself what happened to the fashions of your time and sending them on their way with a loaded backpack and a fistful of lunchmoney. They still went to math class and the teacher still managed to simultaneously overexplain a concept and not teach a single student a damn thing about how it actually works. And after the last bell rang, they still went to the same sports practices and study groups, and when it was all said and done, they came home to the same house and the same room and the same bed and tomorrow they’ll do it all over again.

I’ll tell you the only detail of that meeting you care about, which is this: tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, your child will still follow this exact same routine, until the day they graduate from high school. As of last night, nothing has changed, and based on previous experience, it never will. Which is why I’m telling you: if you want to know what happened at the school board meeting, go to it yourself. No one else gives a fuck.