Moon Cakes, Moon Cakes...

… everybody get your moon cakes!

The Mid-Autumn Festival is almost here. It’s one of the most important holidays in China. The festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar… the night of the full moon… between early September and October. This year it falls on October 4^th.  The Festival is a day for friends and family to gather together, offer thanks to the fall harvest, and pray for longevity and good fortune. It’s sort of like our Thanksgiving… but with moon cakes instead of pumpkin pie!

There are many mythical tales of it’s origins… which dates more 3000 years ago. But the most common told, and my personal favorite, is this one:

It is said that in ancient times, ten suns existed and the extreme heat made people's lives very difficult. It was the hero Hou Yi, who, owing to his great strength, shot down nine of the ten suns. On hearing of this amazing feat and the hero who performed it, people came from far and wide to learn from him. Peng Meng was among these people. Later, Hou Yi married a beautiful and kind-hearted woman named Chang E and lived a happy life.

One day, Hou Yi came upon Wangmu (the queen of heaven) on the way to meet his old friend. Wangmu presented him an elixir which, if took, would cause him to ascend immediately to heaven and become a god/goddess. Instead of drinking the potion himself, Hou Yi took it home and presented it to Chang E to keep. Unfortunately, Peng Meng secretly saw Hou Yi give the potion to his wife and three days later, while Hou Yi was out hunting, Peng Meng rushed into the backyard and demanded that Chang E hand over the elixir. Knowing that she could not win, she took out the elixir and swallowed it immediately. The moment she drank it, she flew out of the window and up into the sky. Chang E's great love for her husband drew her towards the Moon, which is the nearest place to the earth on the heaven.

On realizing what happened to his wife, Hou Yi was so grieved that he shouted Chang E’s name to the sky. He was amazed to see a figure which looked just like his wife appeared in the Moon. He took the food liked by Chang E to an altar and offered it as a sacrifice for her. After hearing that Chang E became a goddess, folk people also offered sacrifices to Chang E to pray for peace and good luck. Since then, the custom of sacrificing to the moon has been spread among the folklore.

Coinciding with the Festival is China’s Golden Week. Unlike most of us, in other parts of the world, the Chinese people do not generally get to choose their vacation days. Instead… China has two separate week-long holidays called Golden Week. Factories and most business close down for the entire week. This is when most Chinese people migrate back to their hometowns to spend time with their family.

The first Golden Week is in late January, or early February, and is commonly known as Chinese New Year. The second is called National Day and falls in late September or early October… the Autumn-Festival usually falls around, if not within, this same week.

So there’s pretty big stuff happenin in The Jing this week. Big, beautiful red lanterns are going up everywhere and Mike seems to come home with a new box of Moon Cakes every night. They look so pretty and I want to like them so badly but… I’ve yet to take a bite of one and not have to spit it into a napkin! So in the spirit of re-gifting… I will be passing these beauties on to our Ayi. She will be thrilled with them… and me… and have a lovely gift to bring home to her family next week!

As for me and Mikey… we’re heading to Thailand for Golden Week where we too will gaze at the full moon with our friends Tina and Matt. We will give thanks for a bountiful harvest and pray for longevity and good fortune.

But instead of eating moon cakes… we’ll be swilling booze.

Dear Mikey,

Twenty-five years ago today, minutes before we were to be married, you snuck into the back room of the church; you wanted to be alone with me, for a few minutes, before sharing our big day with family and friends. I remember those moments like it was yesterday. I started to tear up I hollered at you; my make-up was perfect! But we did hold on to each other, for what seemed like and eternity, before you finally said… “Let’s do this!”

Little did I know then… what all that would entail! We had one glorious year together, getting the kinks worked out, before finding out we were pregnant! Although we never got to meet and wrap our arms around our little bundle (you affectionately call Vincenzo Fred)… we continue to love him from afar and know we will meet someday. God quickly blessed us with another pregnancy and “almost” nine months later Jordie came into our lives; we were never the same. Two and one-half years later, Chunk-O-Love Nicky joined us and our family of four was complete.

The next ten years are a blur of your work, my work, your travel, my weekly business dinners, two kids in rarely the same school at the same time, soccer, girl scouts, softball, baseball, boy scouts… you remember the chaos! It was tough… like it is on all young families. We hit some bumps along the way… but each time we dealt with them head on and came out stronger than before. We held each other up, more times than we’d like to remember, when loss and grief came knocking at our door. Our kids were in three different schools, in three different states, in three different years, and Team Baker grew stronger… not weaker. We taught Jordan and Nicholas more about perseverance, because of our own challenges, then, hopefully, they’ll ever have to know in their entire grown-up lives. 

Finally, in their teenage years, we were able to start carving more “us time” into our lives. I’ve always appreciated that as hard as you work, and especially as much as you travelled, that you came home on the weekends and gave us your best version of yourself… even when you were probably feeling your worst. Every Saturday morning, instead of sleeping in, you and I would get up and go to the City Market, or out to breakfast, or just take a drive either in the country… to honor your roots, or down to the city… to honor mine. It never really mattered what we did or where we went… it was always about reconnecting, in a positive way, after another week apart. You kept us strong.

We managed to get both kids graduated from high school… with not a single encounter with an Overland Park police officer… not even a traffic ticket (!)… and away they went, tip-toeing into their own unique versions of adulting, while WE found ourselves empty nesters!!! I think it’s fair to say both of our kids are… well yes… appalled at how well we’ve adjusted! But they also (secretly) love the fact that we are so independent, not only of them, but of each other as well. I truly think that is our secret, Mike… that we don’t have to be together. We both know how to fill up our own lives… but we still choose to be together as much as we can.

And now we live in China... just the two of us. Wow… you’re still putting our marriage to the test after all these years! And like other times in our marriage, you had to do a little coaxing (let’s vacation in the middle-of-nowhere Minnesota in a cabin for a week with two babies), a lot of selling (“I don’t care if he is just 16, a boy’s first shot should be on Bourbon Street with his dad!”), and a tiny bit of bribing (You won’t have to cook, or clean, or drive…), but because of my blind, yet well earned, faith in you… of course I got on that plane. 

If, twenty-five years ago in the back room of that church, I’d have had a glimpse into the world we were stepping into… would I have walked down that aisle toward you, or, run out the back door?

Neither.

Nope… I would have tucked that beaded train up between my legs, wrapped it around my neck, knocked over a few bridesmaids, tossed my bouquet to the crowd as I sprinted past, and as I jumped into your arms,… probably knocking us both to the ground… I’d be yelling, “Hell yeah… let’s DO this!!!”

I love you so very, very much, Mikey and am so happy that, after twenty-five years, we're still holding on to each other!

Bunny

Pity Party for One, Please...

Okay… it’s officially here. I knew it was coming eventually. I thought I was mentally prepared for it. I even had, what I thought was, a good and sound strategy which was… just ride it out. But it’s Day 5 now and this saddle’s getting sore.

I am homesick.

I don’t really know when it started cuz I’m the Queen of denial. I can thank my Irish ancestry for that double-edged sword.  But I do know this: it’s been slowly building since the day I got on that plane headed to my new home in Beijing.

You don’t notice it at first, of course, because of all the excitement and logistics of such a big move. The first few weeks are like you’re on vacation; going, doing, seeing. And I was fully prepared for the “honeymoon phase” … so it was no surprise.

Then you start to settle in. You meet your new “family"… other ex-pats from the same company that brought us over here. And let me be the first to say… man did we get lucky! We are with a good group of people, not one weak link in the bunch. We have fun, we relate to each other, we support each other, and we pick each other up when one of us is having, what we have now coined, a “China Day”.

A China Day is when you wake up with your chest so tight you can hardly breath and all you can think is… “What the fuck am I doing in China?!?” The good news is… it usually passes within a day.

But plain old homesickness is different. It’s a tougher dragon to slay. It starts in your belly and lingers there for awhile. You can push it down fairly easily.  Do something, text or FaceTime someone (assuming they’re up which is rarely the case), or drink! It’ll go away.

But it comes back around quickly and next time it’s up in your chest.  There are few less terrifying feelings than not being able to breath. And once the anxiety reaches your chest it’s no longer possible, for me at least, to push it back down to the more manageable space in my gut.

So last Thursday and Friday were spent, for the most part, crying. That would be followed by a period of numbness, then crying again, then numbness, then crying… you get the idea; it wasn’t pretty.

By Friday evening I willed myself, and Mikey gently coaxed me, to participate in a going away party for one of the ex-pats heading home to the states. That really is the best medicine for times like this. You have to force yourself out and be social, which I did, and ended up having a great time. I laughed a lot.

So whew… glad that’s over, right? Not so fast. I woke up the next morning and there was that helpless feeling again. It wasn’t just in my belly nor contained to my chest; it had moved into my head!

Now I’ve been to a lot of therapy in my life. For broken relationships, broken family, broken job… I know how the head works. It will win… if you let it.  I can’t let it.

So yesterday I did yoga for the first time in forever. It felt great. Then I had lunch with friends. We laughed. Then a few of us went and discovered a new (to me) flower market. I bought tulips. Then I came home and fired up Hulu. I caught up on General Hospital. 

This morning I woke up and guess who was still in my head? Yep… homesickness. It didn’t help that when I checked my phone it had not one but two messages from Jordie that simply said, “Are you up?” That means one thing… she misses me too and is herself struggling.

Jordan is in class now so our chat will have to wait a couple of hours. But in the meantime I decided I will try and slay the dragon by doing what, typically, works best for me when I need something off my chest… blog about it.

Living in China is hard. It is mentally exhausting. Everything is a challenge, every move I make has to be calculated, every word I try to say invokes giggles or blank stares. The language is just not coming to me like it is Mike… I’m frustrated.

I want to drive my car. I want to have a random conversation with the cashier at Target. I want people to look me in the eye, on the street, and make some sort of connection with me. I want to see someone, I don’t already know, who looks like me. I want to have cocktails with my girlfriends and laugh about things that need no backstory… cuz they know the story; they are the story. I want to take Jordie and Nick to dinner on a whim. I want to sleep in my bed with both my puppies hogging the sweet spots of the bed. I want to sit in my backyard on a warm, sunny day.

Writing tends to relieve my anxiety so what the hell… I’m giving it a shot.  After this I’m going to get in the shower and prepare for yet another day. The Ayi will be here in about an hour… I will try harder to to talk with her today; she’s a friendly face and the only real constant Chinese person in my life… I like her.

I can’t wait for my FaceTime with Jordie in a little while… I’m going to dig real deep and try not cry. That’s what showers are for anyway.  But before I do that I’m going over to my calendar to mark off another day; I’ve been keeping track of how many days til I see her and Nicky’s faces. Thirteen!

Afterwards I’m going to bundle up… it’s still too cold here for my bones… and head out. I’m not going to plan my day; it’s not going to be so calculated. I’m just gonna go. I’m going to say “hi” to people on the street. I’m going to hold doors open for people. I’m going to have lunch somewhere, by myself, on a whim. I may even have a beer or a glass of wine and laugh about some crazy old memory made with my friends. 

It’s sunny here in Beijing today; the forecast says it might hit 50 degrees.  So maybe I'll find a bench and sit outside in my new backyard.

So get out of my head, homesickness. You will not win!

Thirteen Days.

Write-On

My sister Toby rekindled my love for fountain pens, a few years back, when she bought me a black beauty for my birthday. When we lived in Switzerland, as kids, fountain pens were all we used in school. Oh what fun we kids had, flicking them at each other, when the teacher left the room! 

I failed to pack that gem of a pen so I don't have it with my here in Beijing; that really bummed me out. I love to write handwritten notes and using a fountain pen to do so just ups my writing game. I honestly think I write better content when using that pen.

I've always been a bit of a pen snob though. Maybe it's because I did use fountain pens in my youth! You'll never see me chuck anything faster than a bad pen. Hell I'd hang on to a bad boyfriend longer than I'd hang on to a crappy pen! 

Our junk drawer at home is filled with pens. I will grab one to scribble down a phone number or an appointment but the second that tip hits the paper and it doesn't feel right... it is g-o-n-e... GONE!

But today I'm back in fountain pen bliss!  We went to the Tianyi Market in the Xicheng District; it's an almost indescribable place. Seriously... I don't even know that I can put into words what this place is like. When you pull up... and we were fortunate enough to have a driver again today... you don't know whether you're going to a circus or an amusement park! But I think that might be a blog post for another day.

The great thing about these various markets is you have no idea what you're going to find there. Today, at Tianyi, I found fountain pens and bottles of ink! The pen Toby bought me uses ink cartridges. I think that's the type we used all those years ago in school but I could be mistaken.  In any case, the ones I saw... and OK lets get this elephant out of the room... bought... OK, two... get off my ass... use vacuum filler technology. I've only filled one so far and I can already tell it's going to take some practice, and finesse, to get a 100% fill. 

I bought a royal blue Hero, which is an, almost 100 year old, Chinese manufacturer and gets pretty good reviews. The other one, which I have not yet filled, is a pearl white M&G which I know nothing about.

The nib on the Hero is a little fine for my taste. But it's been my experience these tend to loosen up a bit; sort of like a fine pair of leather shoes. I hope that's the case with this one.

Paper matters greatly, as well, with fountain pens. If you want to know what writing-perfection feels like then try scribing on linen paper with a smooth-flowing fountain pen... Oh. Yeah. Baby.

So if you're into writing handwritten notes and letters, or if you think you want to but just never get around to it... get yourself a fountain pen. 

And write something nice. To me!