Easy Rider, August 21 2008

She means Cliff Vaughn, who designed the bikes for Easy Rider. Coolest person my mom's met sailing yet, I'm sure.

Hey Sweeti, How are you doing there? We are at Portobelo to meet our friends. Spent a week at Isla Grande. We made trips to Colon twice, it took 6-hour to get there and come back. We are tired of bus ride at this point. We met an interesting cruiser at Isla Grande -- he made the film of "Easy Rider". I don't know that film, but Carl knows. This guy definitely has characters. He said his name is Cliff Voss (or Von). Too bad I don't have internet here, otherwise, I can google him. Other than that, everything is good. We got our booze, so we'll head back to San Blas Islands tomorrow. How are you doing there? Get ready to move again? Hope everything is good. Have a very nice week. Love, Mom

A Chinese Grocery in Panama, August 13, 2008

Because of their egg shortage, I gave my mom a recipe for egg-free birthday cake, but it was too late. I was headed to an anime convention for the weekend; Meg and I still hadn't talked about what had happened at the beach, but things were getting pretty icy between the two of us.


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Dear Sweeti,

Thank you for the recipe. Carl did bake a cake for me -- used 4 of our precious eggs. The cake is very delicious. Carl also drew me a birthday card which is really cute. Thank you so very much, I had a nice and quite birthday.

Since our friends drank our last bottle of rum, we sailed to Isla Grande today. Hopefully we can catch a bus from here to Colon to get our supplies. I have not seen a car for 2 months, it's odd to get back to civilization.

Sorry to hear your place is not peaceful. Is Meg the trouble-maker? When you plan to move out? What's Otakon? A place? Will tell you our experience by taking the bus to Colon. As usual, since our Spanish is so poor, you never know if we can get into Colon or some unknown place. The tour book stated there's a chinese grocery store. So I'm ready to practice my Chinese.

Have a great days and weekend, Sweeti.

Love you and missing you so very much, Mom

Birthday, August 11, 2008

After the lease with Brendan ended, I moved with two friends from high school, Gloria and Meg. There was a lot of weird tension between me and my housemates at times, and this culminated at the beach. A bad thing happened, which I described to my mom in limited detail, and she gave me good, motherly advice which I couldn't follow.


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Dear Sweeti, How are you?

Thank you for the email. Glad you got some tan lines without burn. :) Sorry Meg is not very nice, maybe she's in a bad mood. Try to do something to cheer her up.

It's my birthday today, Carl sang a birthday song to me when I woke up. Carl plans to make a cake for me. Since we are low for eggs, I may not want him to make a cake. We are still at Porvenir waiting to check in. Unfortunately, the port captain is still not here. We will give him last chance to check us in tomorrow. Regardless, we will head to Isla Grande, Isla Linton and/or Portobello. From there, we can take a bus to Colon to get more food and drinks. There are very few items you can buy at San Blas Islands. We met a few good-looking guys from a big boat. They are really nice, however, I suspect they transport drugs. Also, we met some missionaries at Porvenir. The minister leading some medical personnel from South Carolina, will give medicine to Kuna Indians at San Blas. It's their 3rd year to do this. We are very touched.

Hey sweeti, don't feel depressed about jobs. It may not be the time for you to move on, maybe the best job for you is not there yet. I had the same experience while I'm working. Always anxious to get specific jobs and found later I was lucky I didn't get those jobs. Oh well, go with the flow, I'm sure you will land a job you really like.

Have you watched Olympics? We have not had any communication media besides email. Carl and I finished Trailer Park boys, South Park and we started family guys. Unfortunately, we don't like family guys at all. The private copy of movies we got from Mexico is not working at Dell computer. Sucked. Glad Quinn is so active, she must be extremely cute now. I envy you. Have a fun week. Missing and Loving you, Mom

Coco Banderos, August 4, 2008

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Dear Sweeti, How are you? Come back to work? Hope you had a wonderful beach days. Today is our last day at Coco Banderos. We are moving to Porvinir to check in and stay at Lemmon Cays for a week. Coco Banderos has such pretty water. Yesterday, we sat in water for hours. Millions of little fish swimming by us which is really cool. We had a nice lobster dinner since fishermen dumped their last catch to us. When we threw lobster shells to water, there are 2 baby sharks who were so delightful to eat leftover shells. It's so much fun to watch them. The water is so clear to see everything. Anything special happened at beach? I know you will be so down to come back to work, but labor day is coming really close now. :) Cheer up! Missing and loving you so very much, Mom

Beach Week, July 27, 2008

My greatest tragedy: after I graduated from college in May 2007, I was supposed to go to the Bahamas with my friends from high school. We're a tight-knit group, and it was supposed to be a great last hurrah before we all parted ways. Because of a complicated mix-up between Travelocity and the airliners, I was unable to attend. A year later, I triumphantly went to the Outer Banks with them. This is the oldest email I have from my mom on her trip.

My stepfather had written Em a lengthy email at the end of June, explaining why he was upset. By the end of July, Em still hadn't replied.


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Dearest Jo, How are you?

Imagine you are at beach enjoying beautiful water and nice breeze. Hope you have lots of fun there. I really don't like hot weather, but good girl to keep up your workout schedule.

We are at Niadup which has a little traditional Kuna village. People are semi-friendly. Every time we went into village, there are kids following us always which is quite odd. There are a few stores to sell eggs. Eggs are quite pricy, a dozen for $6, much more expensive than lobster. An old Kuna woman tried to sell me a Kuna dress even it's too small for me. She insisted to put the dress on me, and almost killed me. :( My Spanish is still bad, no one can understand me. However, I can understand them a bit, so I'm happy. :)

Not sure why Em was mad at us, maybe some misunderstanding. Just want to say hi and hope you will have wonderful beach days. We had lots of storms here, hope outer banks is ok.

Loving and missing you, Mom

Some exposition.

Our biggest family drama is undoubtly the pregnancy and motherhood of my sister Em. In early May, she gave birth to a baby girl, Janaya. Her biological mother was in the room with her. A month later, in early June, my parents came to visit both the baby and the boy who had sired her. Our only contact with him so far was a voice mail that he had left on my cell phone while were in in Puerto Vallarta: he called himself "Big Sexy" and told me that I should tell Em, who had left her phone at home, that he "missed his Boo Boo."

When my parents came to visit, their first act was to take my siblings and Big Sexy out to lunch. They were greeted with a large young man who declared that he couldn't order from this restaurant, because the menu didn't have pictures. We found out later that he wasn't joking. Later that night at dinner, Big Sexy declared that he and Em were going to be engaged. My stepfather, who has a notoriously bad temper, flipped out. Later, he found out that his possible son-in-law was both a reforming drug user and a kid from a bad family, two things that my stepfather could empathize with. But when he brought Em home from lunch one day only to find his granddaughter's house filled with pot smoke, he panicked.

GChat log, February 28, 2007

I was born on Valentine's Day, which is a pretty awesome day to be born on. I desperately wanted my mom to call me, but because of spotty phone service and internet (she was using Skype at the time), I missed all three calls. My mom, en route to El Salvador, couldn't find a better internet connection until two weeks later. At the time, I was living with an ex while dating a new boyfriend. I had asked my dad if I could live with him (he had remarried and has a baby boy). My dad refused, leaving me out in the cold until my lease ran out.

For Christmas 2006, all of the kids and Carl's sister's family went to Puerto Vallarta to visit my mom and Carl. It was there that Em revealed her tummy: she was four months pregnant. Despite getting a few of my parents' emails, she had not told them about the baby; she wanted to tell them in person, I'm guessing so she could control their reaction better. My stepfather was alternately enraged and despairing; for a while, they decided to shift their plans dramatically to help take care of the baby-to-be. However, after a week together in Mexico, my sister reined them in, and they found a way to compromise. As soon as they could, my parents would sail through the Panama Canal to the east coast of South America, so they could fly up to Virginia more readily. It was heartbreaking on both counts. My mom's original plan had been to sail further south, then make the very dangerous crossing to Australia.

4:22 PM
May: hey sweeti, are you there?

me: Yep!
I got my bonus today!

May: how are you?

me: Pretty happy, now that I got my bonus today.
My dad's still being a dick, though, so that's a little sad.

May: congrats
oh no
called you a couple of times
we are at el salvador now

me: Did you? I'm sorry I didn't hear.

May: that's fine

me: I don't know if my phone's ringing for you!

May: i called you at 4:30pm on your birthday which is the time you were born

me: You called me 3 times on my birthday, and the second and third time I literally had my phone in my pocket. Like, right against my leg.
And I didn't hear or feel a thing.

May: oh well
anyways, my cingular phone is not working anymore. the only chance to talk to you is via skype

me: Yeah, I saw in your email. That kinda stinks.

May: it's ok. the marina is very pretty, but outside of marina is extremely poor
we had security guy carrying machine gun to go shopping with us

me: Wow... That's kind of intense. D:

May: we walked in the woods and saw lots of money today
they tried to hold carl's hand and bit him :)

me: .... The money? XD

May: luckily carl's still alive
sorry i mean monkey

me: OH! MONKEYs. XD

May: how are you going to spend your bonus

me: Rent is due this week. I was thinking I'd spend it on rent. Woo.

May: did you get a new car?

me: I sure did. XD

May: oh cool

the nisaan you were talking about ?

me: Yep!
It's got a sunroof and leather seats. ^^

May: sweet
did you get a loan ok?

me: Yeah. TERRIBLE financing rate, but I'm planning to pay it off pretty quickly by selling my eggs, so that's okay.

May: any buyers for your eggs?

me: Yep!
I start fertility meds tomorrow, and the actual donation will happen between the 23rd-26th.

May: oh wow

me: Yeah, right?

May: hard to put a comment. you will have a child but not a mother

me: Not really. It won't be my child, really. :>

May: :)

me: Don't worry. Emmy will still be the first to make you a gramma. XD

May: :)
how about the car insurance? will your dad help?

me: No.
Duh.
It's 440 for six months, which is better than expected.
It just kind of sucked, because in order to get that on my dad's policy, I had to lie to the insurance company and say that I'm living with my dad. Which really stings.

May: sorry about that
oh well, you have to survive

me: Yeah, I know.
He sent me an email today that was like, "Complain complain complain. My boss isn't giving me a raise. Oh, by the way, how's your housing situation?"
And I told him, "I'm getting a 9.6% bonus today, and that was the rudest thing you could ask someone you essentially kicked out."
But I think I've got new housemates for when my rent runs out. We're going to live in Falls Church.
I think I'll have to be in a new place by the time you guys come visit Emmy.

May: oh wow
keep me informed so I know where to find you :)

me: Oh, of course. ^^

May: honestly, hope everything works out

me: Well, it's gotta. I don't really have many options if it doesn't, you know? ^^;;

May: maybe you should start saving money to buy a condo -- eventually

me: Yeah, well, I don't know if I want to stay here for more than a couple years. >.>

May: oh i see
make sense. but still save some money

me: Working on it. ^^;;

May: i think we will stay with grandma king when we come back and visit va by car

me: Now that my car isn't making me hemorrhage my paycheck every month, I think it'll be okay.

May: awesome
how's fat boy

me: LOUD.

May: hope he didn't suck up your money

me: A little bit, but it's not so bad.

May: oh good

me: I'm pretty sure he sleeps all day just so he can be really irritating at night.
Brendan has started trying to "train" him to shut up, which mostly involves yelling at him, then spraying him with a squirt gun.
(I don't think this is working.)

May: oh no. how's the tension between you and brendan

me: Kind of bad still.
But we've mostly started ignoring each other, so it's manageable. :>
We just don't ask each other to do anything anymore, which works out.

May: hang in there only a few months
my poor baby
is it your quitting time?
if yes, i will let you go

me: Yeah, kind of, but I wasn't gonna go home anyways. XD
I'm gonna meet Ryan at Ballston mall at 6:30ish, so I've got plenty of time to kill until then.

May: oh i see.
i think i will go swimming and then jump into a shower
it's really hot here

me: Man, that sounds like fun.
It's something like 30, here. XD

May: sorry to hear that. we are 100, felt like 200
i got sweaty even with typing :(

me: Aww, that stinks!

May: totally

me: Yeah, I'm doing the trick where I put my hands underneath my laptop to warm them up.
Last week, we had not one, but TWO freezing rain storms.

May: oh my poor daughter
be careful to drive, ok?

me: Yeah... I'm extra-super careful now, because I'm terrified that Capital One will come and break my legs. XD

May: :) I will go now sweeti. will talk to you soon
love you so very much

me: Okay! Love you too. :>

GChat log, December 1, 2007

When she can, my mom steals other peoples' wireless to check the news and email the kids. That's the only time she gets to log onto her gmail account. In 2007 and early 2008, I was taking care of our family cat, whom we had had for 18 years. He was pushing 20 years old, but thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, he kept on going. My mom asked about Tiger's health in each one of her emails.


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11:15 AM
May: hey jo
are you there?

me: Yep! What's up?

May: i'm at mazatlan
how are you

me: Cool!
Sleepy. I just woke up. XD

May: oh ok
we are at marina and they have wifi. so cool

me: Sweet!
I'm going to see Emmy tomorrow. I'm making her lamb curry. ^^

May: oh wow
:)

me: Yeah. I was going to make veggie curry, but lamb is sooo good.

May: so everything is good with you?
are you there?

me: Yep! I've been Christmas shopping, and I'm going up to visit a friend in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

May: hey jo

me: You got disconnected. ^^

May: i know. still on and off :(
oh no, it happened again
jo are you still there?

me: Yep. xD
I'm just eatin' lunch, too. :>

May: oh i see
so is everything good with you?

me: yep!
I get to go visit my friend Tobin on Wednesday. :D

May: oh cool

me: I don't get to apply for grad school this year, though, so that kinda sucks. :(

May: why no?
i meant why not?
i thought you did

me: None of my recommenders are returning my emails or calls.

May: oh no. that sucked

me: Yeah. True!

May: maybe next year?

me: Maybe. We'll see.

For now, I'm trying to start a band, I'm trying to write a novel and a couple short stories. XD

May: oh good
a band?

me: Yes. XD
Don't even ask.

May: i'm off again
what type of band

me: Don't ask. XD

May: ok
how's tiger boy

me: We're still just two people, and we haven't written any music yet. But we're thinking about it REALLY hard!
Tiger's a butt.
Since we toned down his thyroid medication and keep pumping him full of water, he seems to be enjoying himself more.
He actually plays with the rings around milk jugs now, and it's reaaally cute. He's also putting on weight a lot. :D
Now it's like he has some meat on him!
But he also wants to wake up at 5:30 am EVERY DAY.

May: oh that's so cute

me: And since he's so... energetic, he won't give up.
EVER.

May: :)

me: But he sits around watching us play Rock Band, and that's pretty funny.
He begs for food all the time now.

May: that's great
i dreamed of him one day and i thoguth he's dying

so glad he's doing so well
i will let you go now. we are going to explore city of mazatlan.

me: Okay! Have fun!

May: have a great weekend and i love you

me: Love you too!

May: :)

GChat log, December 6, 2006

11:33 AM
May: hey sweeti
just want to hi to you
hope everything is good
love, mom

Introduction

Once upon a time, my mom and I didn't get along very well. She had divorced my dad when I entered high school--I was the witness on their divorce agreement. We moved into an apartment where we lived with her boyfriend. My mom and Carl were married August 2003 on Duck Island in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. In one fell swoop, I got a stepfather whom I didn't much like and a stepbrother and sister I didn't know too well. Things went up and down. I moved out, then back in, then went to college, then came back after a week, then went to another college, and amidst much turmoil, I stayed there. We were fighting at the time.

Fall of 2004, I went back to school enraged at my mom. Months later, during the summer, I got an email: all of my stuff was in a storage unit in Fredericksburg, VA, and she had moved from northern Virginia to Seattle. Two months ago. I was furious and suffering from serious abandonment issues. When I explained to my favorite professor and department chair why my work might be late, she stared at me and asked, "How are you normal?"

After some more sturm and drang, my mom and I stopped fighting, and she embarked from Seattle on what was hopefully a 10-year sailing expedition. She and Carl each wrote down lists of things they wanted to do before they died. His number one was to save a human life. Her top-ten involved seeing different beautiful places in the world. Finally, after hand-crafting the interior of their boat (my mother programmed for a software company working for Cingular; Carl worked on the boat 12 hours a day), they Christened their boat Monju and set sail for Vancouver, then to South America.

In the meantime, my stepbrother was caught with drugs twice. His biological mother threw in the towel, and he was convicted of possession with intent to sell. My stepsister also went to jail on eight charges of various misdemeanors. Martin didn't graduate from college; he was in prison in Blacksburg. He was finally released on the condition that he live with family outside the NoVA area and attend rehab. My sister had a baby at age 20. My brother joined the National Guard.

My parents were in South America somewhere. Their only connection was through sometimes weekly, sometimes less frequent emails. Limited to 5kb each with no attachments, they drink up the news of the world and the goings on of our family through less than two pages of text every week. My mom's slightly broken English comments go back as far as the beginning of their trip, but I've only thought to keep them starting Summer of 2008.