The Sweet Place

Jesus said, "Let the children come to me and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."  Matthew 19:14

            A friend read my blog and suggested that I start blogging again.  I asked her what I should blog about.  She said she wanted to know what the field of immigration would look like after the quarantine.  I answered truthfully:  “I have no idea.”  Our lives in a pandemic were as uncertain now as they had ever been.  So many people we knew, seemingly healthy a month or two ago when we last had any contact with them, were now dead or in comas.  Family members, who had been seemingly healthy a few weeks before, would catch a dry cough and fever and all of the sudden jump off a cliff of rapid deterioration where they had trouble breathing and would then find themselves in the scramble for a test or a ventilator to breathe.  The lucky ones survived and developed an uncertain immunity.  The rest were induced into comas or died alone, only to be accompanied by the hospital staff and possibly one or two family members who could risk contamination through physical proximity.  In the flurry of unexpected death, sons and daughters were not even able to share a last hug, “I love you” or say good-bye.  And because we were in quarantine and could not hold gatherings larger than 10 people, loved ones were forced to bid their last farewells on funerals telecast through social media. 

            As for the rest of us, all we could do was hole up in our homes as helpless bystanders and watch, our own lives a game of Russian roulette every time we stepped outside our homes.  I walked Huey three times a day and on every walk, he is relentlessly dragged into the middle of the street on several occasions, when confronted with another approaching pedestrian.  By now, most people have their faces covered with masks and scarves, but it is only the careless few who wander freely through the streets, giving us all an insight to the indifference in their own lives while risking all of ours.  Yesterday, I bent down for a split second to fix the Velcro on Huey’s shoe, and by the time I bent down, it was too late, a man I had caught in the corner of my eye and had wrongly estimated would go another direction, made a quick turn and was now passing by me and my dog in close proximity. 

            Both Huey and I were geared up, him with his raincoat and rubber dog shoes and I with my baseball cap, surgical mask, a glove and a rag dipped in bleach.  However, the man had a mask dangling off his chin, something he surely pulled down with his germ-contaminated hands so that he could be actively smoking while he walked by.  This type of cavalier indifference in the face of a nasty virus that filled your lungs up with fluid and literally asphyxiated you to death, had become scarier than any potential mugging, rape or robbery.  I crouched down towards the ground for the excruciating moment when he walked by, praying that he would not cough or sneeze.  However, while I kept my face down, hovered over my dog, he turned and looked at us and said, “cute dog.”  I panicked, wondering about what potential droplets he might have released into the air and washed over me and which one of these droplets had gotten my cap or worse, a little section of my hair that was sticking out of the back of my cap.  I said nothing back to him but ran home and took a hot shower, thinking about this man, already imagining that he was an asymptomatic carrier, trying to kill people with once-innocuous compliments. 

            So, yes.  Things are a little different from four years ago.  From a month ago!  I left my firm a few months ago, at the end of August to be exact.  I’ve been picking up cases as a per diem, of-counsel.  Everything seemed to be going really well.  I even made new attorney friends and it felt like we had formulated some unspoken, remote law firm.  Dues had been paid and every day I was tired, somewhat surprised, but happy.  I was in court almost every day, picking up different hearings, assignments, appeals and briefs that I believed in or felt were interesting to me.  And because I cared nothing about marketing or making a name for myself, I could work from home, keep the costs low and rely on the connections I had made practicing at the firm for the past four years.  The results were job satisfaction and a sense of liberation. 

            When quarantine struck, I even considered myself lucky even though I had no income and could not even apply for unemployment.  But God was everywhere and he was providing.  The quarantine hit right before I had planned to not work and take a vacation anyway (a trip to California that I had to cancel lest, I pick up the virus on the plane or the airport), and somewhere and somehow, I would be provided for.  Money would turn up in places I hadn’t expected.  I had a cushion.  And quarantine forced all of us to save money as going out for anything but your groceries and for the brave few, take-out or delivery, was not an option.  Every morning, I slept all that I needed and would wake up and meditate, pray and read my Bible.  God spoke to me and I saw his presence everywhere, in the news, around the world, in the animals that were seizing this opportunity to play boldly in once-contaminated waters and forget the deathly fears we had instilled in them.  While the virus literally and figuratively asphyxiated us in our lungs and homes, wildlife was able to, at long last, have a moment to breathe.  

            And all of this in the midst of news of death and loss on a daily basis.  “Guys, my grandma’s in the hospital…,”  “Oh, so-and-so is in a coma…,”  “Guys, I found out that so-and-so was quarantined in his basement and never woke up this morning….”  We were becoming accustomed to the frequency of this news, coupled with the inability to really process any of it before it would strike again.  We grieved with our friends who still reeled from unexpected loss, almost disappearance.  I pondered over the gaping holes that were thrust upon their lives, praying for my own family’s well-being on a daily basis, calling and video-conferencing with them more than I ever had before, gripped with fear that tomorrow too, their ticket might be up. 

            All this quarantine, death and surprise also makes me think about my friend Rachel a lot and what she told us about dying, a few weeks ago, before this quarantine started.  Rachel was an attorney friend that I met in New York City through her best friend and a co-worker at my firm, Christina.  She was larger-than-life and hilarious, and at 33 years old, was traveling the world, about to marry her English fiancé, Dan, and then was suddenly hit with a diagnosis of very late-stage cancer that same year.  For three years, she tried to live her life in New York City as normal as she could through chemo, surgery and various trials which were being tested on cancer patients.  She soldiered through as best she could, working remotely and always trying to make sure the people around her were okay with her diagnosis, always trying to look and be her best as to remind the people around her that she was not her cancer and still very much present as who she actually was.  However, in November of 2018, she took a turn for the worse, was hospitalized, and passed on January 6, 2019. 

            Before she passed, there was an unspoken agreement that even in the dying hopes that she would make it, that if she didn’t, she would still be ever present in our lives and communicate.  In so many ways, she has already made herself known to us, in times of sadness, need, surprise.  But by now a year had passed and Christina, another friend Ashley and I were now ready to have an actual conversation with her.  So on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in early March, I hiked to Brooklyn that day to have brunch with friends and then head over to Christina’s apartment.  My friend Ashley drove down from Ithaca to join us.  All of us, in some shape or form, had been there with Rachel at the end.  Ashley and I both showed up at the same time, and by the time we called Melanie in Buffalo, Rachel was also there in full force.  At that moment, we were still oblivious to the pandemic that would take over all of our lives just a few weeks later, but what she said to us that day has given me so much comfort when thinking about everyone who is being called early and unexpectedly. 

            Melanie Rimkus is a psychic medium from Buffalo, New York.  When Ashley was nine-years old, she was living with her mother and went to spend the weekend with her dad.  On that Saturday, she had a bad feeling about something so while on the phone with her mom, she forced her mom to say “I love you” simultaneously with her and had her mom hang up the phone instead  of actually say the words “good-bye.”  That night, her mother died abruptly of an epileptic seizure that caused her to have a heart attack.  Ashley was then forced to live with her abusive father for years while her mother’s family fought unsuccessfully for custody of her.  The day she turned 18, she fled her father’s home, never looking back, leaving all her belongings in her room, and went to live with her mother’s family in Buffalo, my hometown and where I met her.  In the beginnings of our friendship a few years back, she had always mentioned to me that she still communicated with her mother through a medium but I had no need or greater interest in the subject matter at the time.   

          However, over a year ago, Ashley made an impromptu trip to New York City and it happened to be my birthday as well.  We went out for dinner and she stayed over.  At that time, her and her boyfriend were about to be engaged and were looking for a ring.  She told me all about how they had gone to a festival in Lily Dale, a famous village of psychic mediums, about an hour from Buffalo.  She told me of the personal readings and group activities that were offered.  She said that on one of the last days, her boyfriend and her joined a group reading because it was one of the more affordable activities.  The psychic went around the little group, holding every person’s hand and just reading the energy off of them.  It was pretty happy and light-hearted and when she held Ashley’s hand, she said to her, “Oh, your mom is here, she’s wrapping gifts and she’s very happy about your engagement…” 

            Then it was Ashley’s boyfriend’s turn.  As soon as the psychic got to him, her face fell and a sadness came over her.  She said, “okay, well, it’s taking a minute for her to come over…but your mother is here.”  But that moment was fleeting as the psychic then proceeded to say, “okay, she’s leaving now and an elderly, male figure is coming in and telling me that your mom wants you to do this in private.”  After the session, the psychic approached them separately, grabbed Ashley’s boyfriend by the arm crying and said, “Your mom told me what she did, come see me privately.”  Ashley’s boyfriend’s mother had also died when he was young.  He had known it was a suicide.  But what he didn’t know most of his life and found out only about a year prior to that day was that she had ended her own life in a very non-forgiving and brutal way.  The only other person who had died in his family had been his grandfather on his father’s side. 

            However, Ashley found out about Melanie, a local medium, around October of 2014.  Since then, Ashley has gone to Melanie to communicate with her mom and accurately convey and interpret certain events that were to happen or were already happening in Ashley’s life.  I met Melanie a little over a year ago when I took my friend Grace from my firm in NYC to Buffalo.  Grace had also just lost her mother a few months prior.  I could tell she was struggling with the loss of her mother so I asked if she wanted to come home with me to Buffalo and try to contact her.  She said “yes” because she missed her mother but also said that due to some traumatic experiences with the occult in Puerto Rico when she was a child, her mother would “hate it.”  I said, “let’s try, you want to talk to her, I know someone,” thinking of Ashley and her experiences with Melanie.  We went and I met Melanie for the first time with Grace.           

             Melanie is a middle-aged, jovial, and unassuming woman.  There are no theatrics about her and when you walk into her office, the first impression you get is modern-day spa.  She wears normal clothes, has short hair and glasses and if you saw her walking in the grocery store or the mall, you would never peg her for a non-local.  She has a husband and kids and at the time I was scheduling my call with her in March of this year, she said that the only conflict she had on a Saturday was taking her kids to the museum. 

             The only thing that possibly might be different about Melanie is her energy when you go near her.  She is warm, you feel empathy but at the same time, there’s a quirkiness that I want to describe as indifference, but not a cold indifference, just unaffected, equanimeous but super friendly at the same time.  When we walked into Grace’s appointment, she gave us both hugs and I explained the situation, that Grace’s mother had passed a few months ago and we wanted to see if Grace could talk to her for some comfort.  However, we also let her know Grace’s reservations, that her family was against these types of things, essentially, that Grace was hesitant and scared.  So scared in fact, that Grace wanted me to do the reading with her. 

            Melanie nodded in comprehension and said she was fine with a joint reading as long as we understood that wires might get crossed and some messages might come for me and some for Grace, and she might not always be able to tell whose message was for who.  We had already come to the point of no return so we said sure.  During that reading, she began to describe the first person that appeared: “there’s an older lady here, she is bent over and has a hunchback.”  My grandmother.  “She’s here with another older man.” My grandfather.  My grandparents on my father’s side.  From Taiwan.  They are the closest relatives that have who have more recently crossed.  They have only been to the United States once or twice, but it was so long ago that I can’t even remember.  They lived their whole lives in Taiwan and died there.  I only have one developed photo of them and it’s sitting on my desk in New York City in a frame.  The last time I saw them was in 2010, on my last visit to Taiwan, but I never went back and they had both passed since. 

            “She is showing me money.  Did you get some money recently?”  Surprised, I answered “yes,” recalling a conversation my father had with me just a few weeks before, telling me that they had left me some money and that I would be able to receive it in the near future.  Melanie continued, “okay, they are telling me that this is going to help you be pushed forward…I don’t know exactly what that means but that’s what they are saying.”  I just said, “okay.”  (Fast forward more than a year later and the money came through, just as I decided to leave my firm.)  On Grace’s side, her mother never showed.  Melanie explained, “I’m sorry, sometimes they don’t come for various reasons.  It could be because she doesn’t vibe with me,” and shrugged.  But, Grace’s grandfather came through and Melanie said, “he has a message for someone with the same name in your family.”  Grace laughed and said, “ugh, it’s for my Tío Junior…he’s so messed up I don’t even want to talk about him...” and shut down any further lines of inquiry.  Afterwards, I apologized to Grace, telling her that I was sorry that her mother had not shown up.  She said, “that’s okay Tina, she would have hated me doing this anyway.”  So, I guess in a way, her mom did make her statement. 

            Fast forward to the end of 2018.  Rachel’s health is rapidly declining, her burning desire to survive coming up against a tsunami of cancer that was rapidly spreading throughout her vital organs and body.  Rachel fought and fought, putting her already weakened body through even more turmoil as she resisted and resisted.  Part of this resistance, however, was fear, because she did not know what lay ahead if she died.  Rachel was an empath.  There were still so many people she still wanted to help, so many things that she wanted to do still.  How could she do this in death?  This is where I felt I could help.  Calling on Ashley and Melanie, I could help Rachel prepare for what very well might be, what lied ahead.  

            Ashley is obsessed with this topic, the afterlife.  She does research, incorporating all her experiences with the many times her mom and another friend of hers who died young of cancer have contacted her.  One time, she met her mother in a dream.  Her mother was beautiful, Ashley said, she looked like the best version of herself and she stood in front of a house, gardening.  Ashley said that all she could feel was absolute peace, an absolute lack of a sense of time and any mundane worry or stress that she might have had was just not there.  Ashley begged her mother to let her stay in this place with her, but her mother simply told her that it wasn’t her time yet, that she still had things to do.  And just like that, Ashley woke up in the physical world with all its burdens, snatched from the overwhelming sensation of peace and serenity that she had felt in her dream.

            So at the end of 2018, I had Ashley meet Rachel through the phone and began telling her about the afterlife and her long-time experiences with it.  She told Rachel that the afterlife did not mean that it would be over.  That she would live on in an even better place.  We put Rachel in contact with Melanie who did a reading over the phone with Rachel.  The first person who came through was Rachel’s grandfather, Larry, whom she had been very close to.  Melanie asked Rachel:  “Why does your grandfather keep showing me dimes?”  Rachel answered, “oh, that’s because my grandmother used to be a waitress.  My grandfather would go eat at the restaurant where she worked all the time and leave her a dime as a tip.”  Rachel told me this story in the hospital and on my way out while waiting for the elevator at Mount Sinai, a dime literally fell out of my jacket pocket.  Melanie also told Rachel that she saw her fully recovered with her family in Fargo, North Dakota (her hometown).  Also, during Rachel’s reading, a hummingbird flew into Melanie’s house. 

            Right after she died in early January this year,  Ashley told me randomly on the phone, “you know what I was thinking the other day, Tina.  I was thinking that I hoped Rachel sent us dimes whenever she wanted us to know when she was around.”  (It should be noted that, when  Ashley said this to me, she knew nothing of the story of Rachel’s grandfather or the dimes.  And yes, dimes will randomly appear in the most extraordinary times and places, whenever we think about Rachel or ask her to make herself known.)  There is no room in this blog to recount the countless times Rachel has appeared to us since she has passed, through dimes and hummingbirds or other even grander gestures but some of them are worth telling because they were just so, her.  

            For example, she sent a Beatle once to her English husband at the airport when he was traveling back to England from her memorial in North Dakota.  Yes, at the fancy waiting lounge at the airport, her husband bumped into Paul McCartney himself,  whom, as it turns out, has also lost a wife to cancer and not only began consoling Rachel’s husband, but also told him that just like Rachel, his wife’s ashes were spread in not only England but randomly, Arizona as well.  Before Rachel died, we tried to get her to a cancer retreat in Sedona, Arizona.  She never made it but her ashes are spread there, in England where her husband is from and in her hometown in Fargo, North Dakota.  Christina, Rachel’s best friend and I laugh about this.  Because in true British form, he had been the biggest skeptic out of all of us, in all of this “signs and afterlife” nonsense so obviously, Rachel had to go a little bigger with him. 

            Rachel was also a hilarious prankster who would never want us to be sad about her passing.  Right after she passed in New York City, her closest friends and family were walking around NYC, visiting some of her favorite places.  They walked into a church she loved where a young choir was singing an angelic hymn.  Rachel’s mother couldn’t take it anymore and broke down crying in the back.  Right in that moment, the angelic hymn the choir was singing ended abruptly and instead, they broke out in, “OH WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR…WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR…WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR…EARLLLLLLIIIEEE IN THE MORNING????”

Pure Raquel.  In the hospital a few weeks before she passed.

         On her one-year crossing anniversary, it was a Monday night and Christina and I decided to have dinner at Rachel’s favorite restaurant in lower Manhattan, Rubirosa, and have a drink in her honor.  We both painted our nails in the bright red color Rachel loved, we call it “Rachel’s Red.”  We knew that she would be there.  But what we didn’t expect were the pranks.  I don’t know why this was unexpected but when they started happening, I got a little scared.  On that day, Christina’s mom in Fargo randomly got pulled over by the police.  On the way to the restaurant from work in Manhattan, Christina’s cab got pulled over by the police.  By the time Christina was texting me this, I was getting out of the subway station and started to freak out a little.  I tightly clutched my bag and checked all the cracks in the sidewalk on the way to the restaurant.  “Raquel,”  I muttered under my breath, “you seriously better not fuck with me.”  I made it to the restaurant unscathed. 

            Christina and I sat at the bar, ordering pasta, pizza and a salad.  I had a beer, we had a Prosecco (Rachel’s drink) in her honor and we asked the bartender to make us a tiny cocktail in Rachel’s honor with a prosecco base.  Three drinks.  Granted, I am not a big drinker but I do the occasional happy hour with friends and can handle three drinks.  I should be tipsy, yes, but not wasted, especially if we are simultaneously carb loading.  But somehow, I was wasted.  I didn’t even notice until the end when I could barely walk back to the bar from the bathroom, how wasted I was.  Christina walked out of there fine and I was wasted.  How could this be, I thought?  As soon as we walked outside, I spotted some chairs across the street, stumbled towards them to sit down, and then proceeded to bend my head over between my legs, and puke all over the sidewalk.  A black dude on his bike standing in front of me looked at me with disgust and said, “UGH, WHY would you do that there?”  Christina just laughed and laughed and slowly walked away with our leftovers.  That bitch got me.  And funny enough, by the time I got home an hour later on the train, I was fine. 

            So on the afternoon of Saturday, March 6, 2020, Christina, Ashley and I convened in Christina’s apartment in Brooklyn with Melanie on the phone from Buffalo at 4:30pm.  When we got on the phone with Melanie, she told us more or less that Rachel had been making herself known for over an hour already but Melanie was pretty much ignoring her nonetheless because it wasn’t time for our call yet.  The first thing we did was “validation” where Melanie said that she would confirm her presence for us.  Then slowly but surely, through the phone, Melanie began to describe the room around us, from the kitchen island to the snacks that were on the table.  She described the shirt that Christina’s three-year old son was wearing that day, who, by that time, had gone to the second floor of their building to play with her husband. 

            Melanie started by saying things that we pretty much already knew, that Rachel loved us, that she was always watching over us.  Then Rachel told us something we hadn’t expected, that she had met Ashley’s mom and that she had “known her before.”  Then Melanie started with a series of questions to Christina, who had grown up with Rachel and knew her family the best.  “Rachel is telling me that she loves that you guys made some type of doll from her old rags…is there something like this?”  Christina said, “yes, they made a doll out of her old clothes for Rachel’s young niece, Adley.”  Melanie continued, “She’s also talking about a lake where you scattered her ashes.  She says she loves being scattered there, that she “sparkles” there…”  Christina also confirmed, yes, that they scattered her ashes in one of Rachel’s favorite lakes in North Dakota. 

            Rachel wanted to let us know that she was okay.  Then Ashley asked what it was like to cross over.  Rachel answered that once your physical body dies, it’s immediate, quick, and was like a vapor, there’s no pain.  But then she proceeded to tell us that it was “amazing” and “beautiful” and even how great the weather was over there!  And then she made a point to tell us twice, almost in surprise, that there were so many kids running around there and that this made that amazing and beautiful place, oh so very sweet. 

            The session lasted an hour and was mostly about our three separate lives as we conversed with Rachel about her observations.  I can assure you that it was full of things we wanted to and did not want to hear, as it should have been from a friend who cared about us.  In this conversation, I asked if she had been at Rubirosa on her one year and Melanie laughed, “yeah, that was her.”  At one point, Christina and I began to dominate the conversation with Rachel and Ashley sighed and mouthed in a whisper, “I want to ask something.”  Almost immediately, Melanie paused and said, “Rachel is saying that Ashley is feeling left out.”  Somewhere in the conversation, Rachel also told Christina to “watch out for her lung health.” 

           After our phone session, I can say that I was a little disappointed.  Not because I questioned whether we had been talking to Rachel or not but honestly, because I thought she would care a little more, intervene a little more, make things go more the way I would want them to be.  But she honestly seemed to be too caught up and preoccupied with how amazing it was in the place that she was to be burdened or even bothered with our worldly minutiae.  But she had shown up for the bigger events to slap us in the face when we needed to and of course, prank us because that’s important.  But my favorite part about the conversation was what she said about the children.  After a lifetime of pondering the world's sufferings and what type of place we were leaving for the most vulnerable ones we loved, it still gives me great relief to know that the children who did not make it or were dying senselessly, ended up in such a beautiful place and were running around. 

            Afterward, Christina, Ashley and I hung out a little more until Christina’s husband came back with the kids.  Ashley and I decided to head out to dinner at Rubirosa’s.  Christina could not come but she warned us that we would never get a table after 6pm on a Saturday night.  We headed over anyway.  I showed Ashley the place I threw up across the street.  By the time we got to the restaurant, a little crowd had formed outside the restaurant.  We made our way inside to the hostess podium, hoping for the best.  Ashley, who had driven in from Ithaca just a few hours prior, was starving.  However, when we approached the hostess, she told us that there were over 100 people on the waiting list for table seating and the bar and the option was that we could come back in over an hour to see where we might be on this 100+ person list.  We were at a brief loss for a minute until miraculously, the hostess turned to us and said, “actually, I can seat you at the bar right now.”  We both thanked Rachel and had a prosecco in her honor.  But just one because my drinking trust with her was broken. 

            In my case, Melanie gets some things wrong about future predictions although they have always been right for Ashley.  However, I’ve never gotten a reading alone, always with other people.  So who knows if the messages get muddled?  However, when it comes to our loved ones who have died, wherever they are, it’s always been very right, vivid and clear.  Christina and I have discussed what Melanie told Rachel, about how she saw her perfectly cured in North Dakota.  She could have been just totally wrong in prediction, however, perfectly right in what she saw.  Maybe she saw Rachel’s spirit there, watching over her family?  Ashley did say that spirits where they are, look like the best versions of themselves.  In her last days and right before she passed, Rachel lost all ability to communicate and was unrecognizable as her body became bloated from disease.  Of course she would not look like that after death.  Rachel’s mother tells us that right after she died, in the deluge of condolence texts and communication, Rachel’s mother fell asleep and woke up to find a text response sent out to her previous mother-in-law that she herself did not write.  And it was odd, it said, “Hi Erna!  Thanks!  Ugh, I’m just so glad that that yucky stuff is gone now.”  

            So, here we are.  In plain pandemic where death comes randomly knocking and some of us are forced to answer swiftly and too soon while our family members are left bewildered to deal with its ugly aftermath.  No, it’s not exactly WWI trench warfare or of the dark magnitude and scale of previous pandemics in the past century.  But it becomes the biggest threat because it is our tragedy, affecting us and the lives we thought we were going to have and who would be with us as we lived them.  However, in all of this, these experiences with Melanie, Rachel and my friends bring me a lot of comfort and make me revisit my fears and wonderings about death, fate and all of their unknowns.  Because seriously, who should feel sorry for who?  Are we to feel sorry for them that cannot be with us in the physical or are they to feel sorry for us, who are stuck here slogging through this life, trying to fulfill our earthly destinies, fearful of the guy who tells you how cute your dog is?  Or fearful of the next wave of pandemic?  Or asteroid?  Or famine?  Or war?  Or fearful of what future lies ahead for all the children in our lives that we so deeply love? 

            Rachel did not want to die at 36.  She wanted to do so many things, love so many more people, help them.  She worried about her family who, over a year later, still reel from the big, gaping hole of her absence.  Nobody should have to endure the loss of their child.  We want to hug her, hear her voice, laugh with her.  But she’s still with us and afterwards, Christina met a shaman in Arizona when they scattered her ashes there who told her that Rachel was: (1) with another girl from Fargo who had passed shortly after Rachel died; and (2) wanted us to know that her death had been a gift to all of us and a wake-up call, to reorient us in our lives and push us where we needed to go.  This had been the purpose of her life and once she had fulfilled it, she left right on time. 

            To ask her to come back would be almost, selfish.  Because right now, she’s still with us, observing us, communicating with us, pushing us along.  But where she is, she’s at peace, she’s not worried about our mundane problems or tomorrow, she’s not worried about loss and she’s also hanging out with others who have been there or are also being called there.  And wherever it is, it’s “amazing,” it’s “beautiful,” the weather’s nice and it's full of children, who make it just oh so sweet. 

Angel

This was possibly the most rewarding Christmas ever.  After three of possibly the most insane work weeks of my life where I was pulling continuous 12-14 hour-days which included cameos at the New Jersey Federal Building first thing in the morning, a 40-page brief, a 276 page submission to a USCIS officer, endless asylum applications and four cases I brought home to work on, I seriously made a promise to myself that on Christmas, I would just sit at home, eat, play with my dogs and read nothing.  I actually forbade myself off of books, even when I wanted to crack one open.  "No Tina!  Don't do that."  Go watch Netflix, your brain needs a break.

I can barely describe how radically my life has changed in the past four months, let alone past four years.  For one thing, I could not pass the NY State Bar for almost two years.  That's two years of being in my mid-30s, still living at home with my parents and trying to pass that damned thing.  Internally, I couldn't bring myself to do it.  I was scared.  The field of Law scared me.  Such high rates of substance abuse and depression, why would I go into that voluntarily?  Hadn't I gone through an almost permanently crippling depression and insomnia in my 20s?  Why on EARTH would I kill myself to pass an exam so I could jump right into that again?  No thank you.  Paralegal life seemed just fine for me, thanks.  Even serving tables seemed more appealing.  What better place for a foodie/socialite than at a restaurant?  But of course, God had other plans.  No matter how I resisted, through a series of interesting life events, I was placed under the conditions where I could face my fears, buckle down and finally pass.

Literally three seconds later it felt like, and through endless prayers to God to ask where I could be used best, I became a practicing Immigration Attorney in New York City.  It almost felt ordained because it happened so fast and I had barely even time to think right after I got sworn in.  After a first round of interviews, I landed a job at a firm that had been following me for a year to see if I had finally passed the Bar.  When I did, everything fell into place almost instantly and I got a job offer.  I left my home, my beloved dogs, moved into a converted garage in Queens and work insane hours all day long to fight for my clients who are mostly poor and undocumented.

My job is very intense, but I know that somewhere in my heart, I enjoy it or else I would not dedicate my spare time to making sure my cases are on the right track.  And on the days when I feel overwhelmed and literally begin to gag from exhaustion, I invoke Kimberly L. Smith and I think about her book, Passport Through Darkness, and how she left everything behind, her husband, her children, all her first-world comforts to live in the Sudan and start an orphanage there.  Because that's what God asked her to do.  And there were days in that book where all she could feel was exhaustion and futility as children literally died left and right in her arms.  But she kept at it.  Because she had asked God, where would he like to use her and through a series of serendipitous life events, she got sent to the Sudan. No matter what.  No matter how difficult it was, how unlivable the conditions were, how often she lost the ones she loved, she stayed and remained passionate and committed to her calling.  And she still remains.

That my friends, is the Lord's work.  And, okay, it sucks to live without my dogs for the time-being and yes, I don't have real windows in my converted garage/apartment but it's NYC, not war-torn Sudan.  And I press forward with the words of Mary Previte burned in my mind: "if you take care of the things that are dear to God. He will take care of the things dear to you."  I have never seen this more evident than in the past four months.  For example, since I'm on a first-year Associate's salary in the lovely world financial capital/money black hole of NYC, money has been a little tight. Yes, I get to go to my favorite dirty eating spots in Flushing which I love once in a while but I'm definitely not living the Manhattanite life of happy hours and swanky brunches.  My saving grace is that I know how to cook and I live close to Aldi's.  However, since I have come to New York, some expenses are non-negotiable.  I need to come home to Buffalo at least once a month to check on my dogs, they are expensive.  They need food, medical attention, toys etc.  I've been putting off Huey's annual vet visit for months now.  And my mother tells me that he has an ear infection.  I've started to save but it's never enough.  But not a problem I tell myself, not a problem, God will provide.  

So this year, because I'm a new associate, I didn't get a bonus.  But my managing boss has been there when I have stayed well into the evening calling my clients, writing letters on their behalf, doing endless hours of research for their cases, fighting hard for them.  So instead of a bonus, I got a Christmas card that my boss swore was not from him but from his pit bull rescue that he always brings to work all the time, Angel.  I love this damned dog.  She brightens my day every time I see her.  Just her presence alleviates the pain of not being able to have Huey or Kumo with me and not being sure when God will find it appropriate for me to bring them.  Anyway, so my boss says it's from Angel, I thank him and open the card to find a nice little bonus on an American Express gift card.  Much needed.  I almost cry, now I can take Huey to the vet and make sure their food and needs are covered for the next few months.  I've been killing myself to make sure that my clients who have gone through their own life tragedies, have at least a fighting shot to get their cases resolved.  And low and behold, Angel swoops in and helps me get my beloved fur-babies sorted.  The irony is not lost on me that this is a gift from an Angel.  Once again, "if you take care of the things that are dear to God.  He will take care of the things dear to you."  

No matter how tired, I begin to tell myself that I can face whatever work I'm dealing with and with the grace of God, I've been able to do it so far.  And the supposed onslaught of depression and insomnia?  Well, when I can, I actually sleep better in NYC.  God can be funny and I guess, all he asks is that I work hard and keep my eyes on him and he'll take care of the rest.  It's not my battle, I'm just supposed to show up and work hard.  And despite everything,the truth of the matter is, I am blessed and so lucky.  So lucky.  No complaints.  Forever grateful.

Outsider

What lies under,
what lies beneath,
is the love wrapped in fear,
we do bequeath...

            When I was 22 years old, my father said something to me that I will never forget.  “Tina, you can’t change things as an outsider.”  At that moment we were having a heated debate about the newly elected president of Colombia.  I had just come back from my year there, revved, up, ready to take on the world.  I would be home for a month, barely recharging from a year in Colombia before I would soon pack my things again and be off to grad school in Cambridge where I would finally be with the policy makers and have the power to change the world.  (Oh, how little did I know of what was really in store for me there!)    

            “Tina, you can’t change things at an outsider.” 

            This threw me off a bit.  What do you mean dad?  If you can’t change things as an outsider, then how is anything supposed to get done?  Okay, that is totally imperialistic, but these countries need outsiders to come in and point out the problems, donate funds, regulate their elections, their peace commissions, run their NGOs.  What exactly are you talking about, dad? 

            It was difficult for me to accept what he was saying, it didn’t make sense.  Most of this was due to sheer selfishness seeing as I had spent most of my adult life (and I’m realizing more and more now, my whole life) as an outsider.  I had spent most of my 20s living outside of my comfort zone, four times in foreign countries and one time in a city that sometimes seemed more foreign than any of the other countries I had ever lived in; Miami.  Everywhere I went there was some “problem” that needed to be fixed, some suffering that needed to be addressed, and the implications of what he had said were far reaching, (meaning, that they wholly impacted me), and meant that there was nothing I could do about any of it. 

            Okay, so I’ll admit, a lot of this is perspective and my totally arrogant and privileged, first-world, bleeding-heart naïveté.  Something I became attuned to early on in my adult experience.  On the day of my 21^st birthday I took myself to a fisherman’s beach in old Cartagena, Colombia to catch some rays.  I was alone and before I knew it, I was approached by two young street children who had spotted a random Asian girl on the sand as swiftly as they would have a beached whale.  It was a boy and a girl and the girl, quite confident, began, somewhat in awe, “Are you from China?”  I laughed as this was not an uncommon ice breaker for me in Latin America.  Through it, I got to spend the afternoon with them on that beach and learn their stories.  I don’t remember the girl’s name.  But I remember that she was 12 years old and very talkative.  I highly doubted that this was the first stranger that she had ever verbally ambushed.  (We probably sensed each other and secretly bonded over that camaraderie.)  She kept telling me stories about herself and the boy she was with, William, who was ten and kept riding his bike in circles around me and would on occasion, look up at me and smile. 

            “Yes Tina, we are not from here.  William is from Antioquia.  It’s about ten hours from here.  He lives here alone.”

            “Really?” I said, “How did he get here?” 

            “He took a truck Tina.  He jumped on the back of a truck and got here.”

            “He has no parents?” 

            “No Tina.  Can you believe that yesterday, William spent the whole day working as a mime and made $14,000 pesos and the older boys stole it from him for drugs?”  I looked at William and he just nodded at me and continued circling me with his bike.  Cartagena is full of street kids like William, kids with painted faces, miming for change from the rich tourists.  From there, my little friend went on and on in her matter-of-fact way and slightly indignant tone about yes Tina, can you believe it, these older street boys, they are so bad, most of them drugged all the time.  They do such bad things. 

            “So where are you from?”  I asked her. 

            “I am from the Valle.  I live with my dad in the streets.”

            The Valle is probably about 15 hours from there by land or truck or however they reached Cartagena.  I did everything possible to hide my privileged shock and be cool.  Just be cool, Tina.  “Oh really?  How do you survive?”  Okay, not so cool, but I was curious. 

            Unperturbed, she answered.  “Oh, we get by.” 

            And of course I persisted, doing my best not to react.  “Well, why are you guys here?

             “Porque los paracos joden mucho.”  Roughly translated, this means:  because the paramilitaries probably committed some heinous atrocity in her village which was enough to drive her father to take his daughter by any means necessary to a city where living in the streets amongst rampant poverty and delinquency would be the safer option.  

            I was paralyzed but still trying and failing miserably to be cool.  “Wait,” I began, without thinking, “Don’t you ever get sad?” 

            Perplexed, she looked at me.  “No Tina, what is there to be sad about?” 

            Instantly, I realized that it was time for me to shut the fuck up.  “You’re right,” I said, "let’s go swimming."  And the rest of the afternoon went swimmingly as I swam in the ocean with my little friends and we helped a fisherman’s boat that pulled up, reel in their net.  Afterwards, when the beach began gleaming with the smaller fish that were left behind and still alive, I made it a game to see who could throw as many of them back into the ocean.  (Just like in the starfish story!)  When it was time for me to go and catch my plane, the little girl gave me a shell from the beach and said, “Here you go, this way you will remember us.”  I had brought nothing to the beach with me that day.  The only thing I had was the sarong I had wrapped around my bikini bottom to walk to the beach from my hostel.  I gave it to her and we said our good-byes.  It was a glorious birthday but of course, that night when I returned home to Bogotá, I called my mother and I cried.  I cried and cried and cried because yes, this world was completely unfair. 

            Funny because even though I know what the lesson is, I have never really learned it properly.  The lesson that my young little 12 year old friend I made on my 21^st birthday already knew at 12.  The: yes Tina, this is life, so just accept it.  The: don’t make us sad over what we cannot change.  The: unless you plan to stay here forever and help us Tina, you can’t change our lives as an outsider. 

And yet, I keep trying because some part of me wants to keep believing that it can get better, that it will get better.  It must get better.  I insist, even when I know I shouldn’t, and that inevitably, it will be me that is hurt in the end. 

And now, before you judge me as silly and unwise, I must say, that sometimes I feel like, I honestly, can’t help it.   Last summer I spent three months in Taiwan, studying Mandarin and one day I came home crying from a day of visiting my aunt and my little cousins.  When I got back to my apartment, I was so sad inside and it was seemingly over nothing.  My German roommate Nadine listened patiently as I told her what was wrong with me.  “It’s just that, Nadine, my aunties, they have no choices.”  My aunt is a housewife with the two most beautiful children.  She takes care of them all day long.  She loves her family so much and is so beautiful, open and happy.  I love her so much.  But after a day with them, I was still sad.  Her and my baby cousins’ lives were completely at the mercy of one man.  “She told me today, ‘Tina, my plan is my husband’s plan.’  And Nadine, this made me so sad.  I don’t know why.  But it made me so sad.  I mean, yes, she’s happy, but her sister [my other aunt] is so miserable and resents me for all that I was able to do.  I don’t know why Nadi, but this all makes me so sad and it’s none of my business and she is happy and I hate that I am this upset about this.”  Tears streamed down my face as the self-loathing began to creep in.  The:  Tina, really?  This is what you’re crying about?  No one else seems to see it this way so stop it you freak.  STOP. 

Nadine nodded, added her quick German two cents about how the whole “housewife” situation was a little crazy but nodded in comprehension.  Even after a short time of knowing me, she understood my hurt and said to me, “that’s just because Tina, you want to change things.”  And she’s right, and there’s so many things I cannot change.  No matter what. 

I used to think that relationships were enough, that love was incentive enough but my parents continue to teach me otherwise.  Even though they raised my sister and I here, they are confined to their traditions and are still bounded by what their community thinks, sometimes even at the cost of their loved ones.  My sister is happily pregnant with a man who she currently cohabitates with, but my parents cannot even stand up to their closest Taiwanese friends to let them know that their unmarried daughter is about to bear their first grandson.

“We don’t want to celebrate a mistake, Tina.”  It took me hours of literally screaming until I was hoarse for them to finally admit to me, “Tina, we’re ashamed.”

“How can you be?  With your own friends?  Your closest friends?  The people you have helped so much in these past few years and have given so much to???  The people with their own fucked up marriages and relationship problems??  You’re afraid of them judging you?  How dare they!  Dad, you are a Sociologist, you know better.  You know what feeding into those types of social stigmas mean for young women and single moms in your country.  Total and unnecessary social ostracism and exclusion.  How can you sacrifice your own daughter for them?!?!?” I lost my voice that evening from all the screaming, pleading and crying.  But even this too, was to of no avail. 

My father couldn’t take it, he screamed at me, he told me to respect their customs or leave.  I began hatching my escape plan.  The next day however, my father recanted and said, “Tina, we must do it my way.  My friends cannot celebrate an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but how can they deny life?  They will find out when the baby is here and then if they don’t like it, they know where the door is.”  No matter how ridiculous I think this notion is, the spontaneous, “Oh, who’s that random Blasian baby walking around your house?”  “Oh, he’s my grandson.  Didn’t you know?”  I want to believe my dad.  I want to believe that he’s willing to stand up, even if it is just when he has most of his cards lined up to the point where he won’t be slaughtered.  I want to believe that he isn’t just falling into the human strain of tribalism that keeps most of us from standing up when strangers or people that we love are being sacrificed by it.  I want to believe him.  I must.  

So here I am, the perpetual outsider, going through life with an innate need to change.  What does this mean for me?  A lifetime of blogs full of tears?  Because the only obvious answer would be unimaginable.  And that would be to stop caring, and not just to any functional level, but to really conform, to the point where I forget everything I am, everything I know, everything I have learned and just change myself completely in order to accept, accept, accept.  Do as the Romans do, even if this means gender- or genocide.  I may be part of the problem but at least I will have a lot less conflicts and be at peace, no matter how much this leaves my soul unease. 

But luckily, there is a middle ground, there is an answer, there is hope.  And hope literally has a name and that name is:  Chelsea Wagner.  You have to be more like Chelsea Wagner.  Be like Chelsea Wagner.  Yes Tina, Chelsea Wagner.  Chelsea Wagner is a medical caseworker that I met while I was interning at a non-profit organization for refugee resettlement in Buffalo, NY.  Gorgeous white girl with endless tattoos and a nose ring, whose “About Me” on Facebook is: “I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of bubble gum” and another amazing introduction that begins with “I refuse to apologize for who I am…”  (sorry to stalk, Chelsea ;)  Chelsea speaks fluent Spanish because she had lived abroad in Panama for some time and one day I asked her, “Chelsea, how did you deal with living in such a conservative society where women don’t have as many rights as we do?”  I asked because in my experience working with a womens’ NGO in Colombia, a lot of time I was surrounded by staunch feminists who didn’t have any problem just confronting the system and their culture head on.  I wondered if Chelsea had had the same experience? 

           

Without flinching she gave my question some thought, as if it were kind of dumb actually, and then just began to nod.  “Hmmmm Tina.  Well, one thing I noticed all the time where I was in Panama was that the women were always pregnant.  They were always pregnant because they didn’t have full autonomy over their bodies because it was a social taboo to openly buy birth control.  So, I just went to the pharmacy and cleared out all the condoms they had at the store and told them that if they ever wanted any, they could come to me and I would give it to them secretly.” 

           

Chelsea Wagner!

Do you see why this woman is my hero?  One day I can only imagine to be as cool as Chelsea Wagner, the great U.S.-Panamanean condom dealer.  Chelsea had finessed the balance, between rebel and respectful visitor, who never criticized or lost hope with the people that she worked with, and the only way she could do this was because she had so much love, so much compassion, so much security and confidence in herself, that she knew innately how to achieve what she wanted without getting hurt, alienated or hurting anyone in the process.  In my lifetime, I can only dream of achieving even a fraction of this wisdom and contentment in my soul.  Incredible!  No tears, just sheer effectiveness. 

            So in the end, it really is about us and starts with us.  We first work on ourselves before we even begin worrying about helping others.  Actually, most people, such as myself, should not even be in the helping people department, seeing as there are so many things that I need to help myself with.  So therefore, self, I would like to be more compassionate and have a better, functional relationship with my ego.  Self, I strive to be like Chelsea Wagner where I act and do not judge.  But self, that does not mean that I can never ever speak up or be sarcastic, it just means that if I’m going to rail on everyone, I must begin with railing on myself first and make jokes with a good heart and know who will know what my intentions are.  And self, we will try to always have better intentions full of love and fun spirit and not just meanness and insecurity.  Also self, this is very important:  let’s try to accept people and ourselves for what we are and try to work with what we have, instead of what I wish we had all been given.  Got it self?

So dad says we can’t change things as an outsider? Well self, perhaps it is time to really step inside.