Uncategorized | girlonahalfshill

April 12, 2025

I’m an immigrant too

This idea is new to me. I was adopted when I was eight months old, so I have no conscious memories of South Korea. The choice to bring me to America was made by my adopted parents who I never thought of as “adopted parents,” but simply my parents. Now, mind you, the fact that I was adopted was never concealed from me, nor would it have been plausible. I’m obviously Asian and they were White, but I spent a limited amount of my childhood peering into the mirror for answers. More accurately, the question of who my “real” parents were wasn’t a question that interested me very much.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t curious. I was painfully shy as a child, but curious about the world around me. My father, a fellow introvert, modeled reading as a safe portal to exploration. I didn’t find myself drawn to race and identity, but rather science, history, storytelling, performing arts and intellectual pursuits more generally.

I got married and divorced twice without thinking about myself as anything other than an American citizen. I voted for years, had children, worked and attended college without questioning it. It wasn’t until the Real ID requirements were rolled out that I learned I was actually a naturalized citizen rather than a homegrown one. My adopted parents had passed away without mentioning my naturalization papers, or where they put them. It never came up, but, suddenly, I had to scramble to find them in order to be allowed on an airplane or secure health insurance.

When my birth mother reached out to me several years ago, I did my best to communicate with her and tried to get to know her, but the gap between our cultures, languages and generations felt taxing to me. I’d finally reached a point of self-acceptance with the adult I’d become, and it was jarring to try to correspond with someone who wanted to drag me back to into my unconscious past. She was sorrowful and remorseful about my not growing up at her side: a version of my life that, despite my struggles, I’d never longed for and couldn’t find a desire to share in.

Although it seemed cruel to break contact with her, I tried to explain that I wasn’t and couldn’t be the daughter she dreamed of. Our separation happened too early for me to be Korean in the way she hoped. The idea of joining her to eat seaweed soup on my birthday sounded unappealing and foreign. I didn’t want to disappoint her in drips and drabs. It seemed easier to re-sever the connection cleanly.

But, despite my lack of thought about her over the years, she’d had decades to build expectations about the daughter she’d lost, to dream about the reunion she wanted… and she wasn’t going to give up on that dream lightly. She reported me as a missing person to the South Korean police. When I started receiving emails from someone purporting to be an inspector in their Missing Persons Division, I assumed it was spam, but the emails kept coming and I ended up reaching out to the adoption agency to authenticate the communication.

To my surprise, they were real. My birth mother who hadn’t seen me since I was two months old was trying to have me brought back to her – 46 years later. I declined the offer and did my best to explain the situation to the inspector.

Despite finding K-dramas intriguing and enjoying K-pop, South Korea isn’t first on the list of countries I want to visit and the idea of living there doesn’t appeal to me. For all the beauty and sweetness in their culture, I’m vaguely aware of a dark underbelly. They’ve had one of the highest suicide rates in the world for generations. They also lead the world in plastic surgery. Their societal focus on appearance feels perpendicular to my own. Despite working in fashion retail the last few years, I’ve done it without touching cosmetics or doing my hair. It’s not that I lack an appreciation for those who put thought into their appearance, but there’s a distinct difference to me between good hygiene and respectful attire and prioritizing superficial appearances above all else. There’s a difference when that’s the societal standard.

I’ve never been back to South Korea since I left on a Pan Am Clipper in 1977. The only nationality I know is American. I’ve never learned to like kimchi, not even Americanized versions like kimchi fried rice. Recent news articles have revealed widespread corruption, illegality and even human rights violations in the Korean adoption system which sadden me. More than that, they scare me. Denaturalization was a pet project of Trump’s first term and is expected to escalate this time. At a time when the United States, the only home I’ve known, seems adamantly set on expelling people from its borders, I worry this will become an excuse to add me to the list.

I’m not and have never been in favor of our current president. I haven’t hidden this. I’ve donated to Democrats, volunteered to support Democratic candidates. While I’ve been quieter about voicing my dismay about the state of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank for fear of alienating friends, I had strong feelings about that long before October 7th. I believe that suppressing dissent and humiliating those weaker than you never nets capitulation or peace. The party made vulnerable by those efforts will simply become more desperate, less rational, less risk-averse. And the instinct to live and survive is born into us and can’t be extinguished.

I grew up believing in the magnificence of our imperfect democratic republic, in the balancing nature of our three branches of government, in the rocky struggle of America to surmount our darker impulses and reach toward the betterment of ourselves and others. I never wanted to be anything other than an American.

These have been my thoughts, feelings and beliefs for most of my adult life. I’ve worked hard and raised my kids with the aim of helping them grow into conscientious, thoughtful adults and responsible citizens. I’ve found friends who expand my heart and awareness, rather than focusing on shared interests. I am someone who’s volunteered at a prison, but has never been arrested or prosecuted for anything; someone who has a checkered work history and love life, but who has stayed on the “right side of the law,” there are very real ways in which I have little to worry about – even in the current political climate. If I’d been brought here from Venezuela – or any of the other countries in Latin America rather than east Asia, it’s likely I’d have been dancing with the complexities of my citizenship long ago.

And yet, going from nothing to something is noticeable. There’s nothing quite like thinking a thought you’ve never been exposed to before to draw one’s attention. For many, the SAVE Act will be our first reckoning with enfranchisement in several generations. (Passport anyone?) For the first time in my life, I’m aware that I’m an immigrant to this country. This awareness and its corresponding vulnerability have made me want to cower – even as my friends have begun to stand up. I’m someone who’s been called brave – fairly often, but not this time. I’ve felt muted and quietly scared – without even feeling fully entitled to the nervousness inside me. I know how hard anyone would have to look to find reasons to deport me, and I recognize the improbability of a jump from the present to a world where I find myself on a one-way flight, eastbound across the Pacific, reversing the trip that brought me here nearly 48 years ago. I recognize the dangers of giving into slippery slope arguments, and, at the same time, I’m attached to the life I now have – yes! as a result of having grown up in the United States of America, to the degree that I’ve been afraid of jeopardizing it.

Yet, there’s never a good time to step up. It’s never convenient, and if I wait until it is time to help fight for the country that I’ve believed in – it’ll be too late. I’m grateful I’ve been able to live here, and I’ve loved it –despite its imperfections. If you’re insulted that I’m admitting the country has imperfections, well, for starters, I’m surprised you made it this far through my post. Second, people and things that we need to believe are perfect aren’t real. It may be radical, but, in my experience, love isn’t a devotion to perfection, but an acceptance of imperfection. It isn’t brittle, but flexible, evolving and forgiving.

I’m unwilling to give up on the idea of America as a place that can overcome its complicated history and reach for something better, but I don’t think betterment can be achieved through censorship, pandering, temper tantrums and oversimplified narratives. I’m not sure how to get there from here. Not anymore. But I’m also deciding to be brave again. I’m not sure how, but this feels like a start. I’m no longer seeing immigration or the other challenges our country is facing from the outside. I’m an immigrant too.

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October 30, 2024

In contrast to my last two posts (and at the risk of distancing those who’ve signed onto following my writing project)…

I haven’t been writing very much since getting back to California, but something’s been increasingly bothering me and for whatever (extremely) limited say I have at present, I need to share them now.

I’ll admit that I tend to prefer facts and figures to anecdotes. While I realize the power of personal experience, I see simplified narratives vaunted over facts on a regular basis to obscure a larger picture – and I don’t want to contribute to it. That being said, the following is all about how one woman changed my life – for the better.

Last year, my older child who was 21-years-old at the time, let me know that she was trans. I greeted the news with tentative support and tried to mask my concerns and even skepticism. I can be honest: it scared me. It was something I didn’t necessarily foresee and didn’t understand. It felt like a product of a particular moment and trend. I was concerned about my daughter making permanent decisions that would affect her body, her long-term health and safety, in order to resonate with her generation.

I took these concerns with me when I decided to temporarily move out-of-state. I thought about whether I needed to stay close by in order to support her through her transition, but I eventually decided that voicing my support and leaving her to step into her independence was a way of trusting her. At least, that’s what I told myself.

One of the first friends I happened to make when I arrived in the Midwest was a woman named Liara. At the time, she was a crisis counselor for the Trevor Project. She was also trans, having begun hormone therapy four years before I met her. From our first visit, we resonated with one another and became fast friends. She was thoughtful and fanciful and complicated. We got into heated debates about politics and societal norms, but we also broke bread together, went on hikes and shared our triumphs and heartbreaks.

And, she became a very safe person for me to express my concerns to about my daughter, the ones I was afraid to share for fear of not seeming supportive. She was able to address those with, not just her own experiences, but the tragedy, challenges and acceptance she’d found within her community and work at the Trevor Project, with other transpeople and within her personal journey. She opened up to me about the relief she’d felt in finally being able to resolve the discrepancy she’d known existed within herself since her teenage years, but also the fear she had in the world and the hate she’d seen directed at her.

Through these discussions, my fears subsided. The surface support I’d offered my daughter deepened into something real and, while my fears weren’t gone, they shifted from concerns about her health and whether it would be a phase, to concerns about her safety amidst an ideological clash that’s focused on her newfound demographic as a flashpoint – in many cases, for political gain.

I will also say that, in “red” Iowa, I found a tremendous number of people who didn’t raise an eyebrow when I shared that my daughter was trans. I found people who believed in supporting their kids and families, regardless of their choices. Who agreed that you’ve got to love your kids no matter what and who stood behind acceptance as a primary virtue.

I moved back to California in February and Liara and I stayed in touch. We talked about her visiting me here and discussed the possibility of my bringing my daughter to meet her when she played a DJ event at Pride in NYC in the summer. We had plans and hopes that our paths would cross again and talked regularly.

Then, in June of this year, she died tragically and violently. The details aren’t relevant here. While I don’t believe her death was the result of a hate crime, I hate that it happened. I hate that her beautiful soul isn’t among us anymore and that I won’t get more walks and animated talks with my very dear friend. And while I’m careful not to whittle her down – she was complex and I appreciated her for that, there is a new thing that’s happened for me in the months since she’s been gone: the demonization of transpeople (not new in and of itself) – something I previously understood – it’s a topic many of us, even those who’ve liked to think of ourselves as relatively progressive, I think, find is outside of our comfort zone… I can’t hear those arguments without mourning my friend. Not only her death, but also the fears she lived with – and fears for my daughter.

Let me be clear: I’m triggered by the word “triggered.” I think that being thin skinned and overly sensitive is its own issue. Despite having a trans-daughter who I embrace and want to see thrive, I still haven’t adopted the practice of announcing my pronouns because I believe that it often does more harm than good. I believe that our society isn’t necessarily antithetical to change, but that it does need to be allowed to do so at a pace that people can bear.

And, at the same time, I’m grieved that those changes didn’t arrive soon enough for my friend to enjoy safety and security in her own skin. I now fear that acclimation will be too slow for my daughter to avoid harm.

When I hear that the Trump campaign is hammering swing states with fear mongering about trans-athletes… I fully admit that the challenge of what to do about trans-women in competitive sports is a clusterf*!%. It presses against a lot of nerves and we in the US care a LOT about our sports. I don’t have an easy answer. I’m not saying that we won’t have to grapple with the complicated question of how to handle sports. But I also think it’s a terrible distraction and the use of a tiny fraction of a tiny minority to denigrate and demonize that minority in the eyes of people who don’t know them. For a lot of people who’ll never get to meet a Liara.

Mind you, this is a demographic that the Harris campaign isn’t even claiming and embracing. It’s not like the Harris campaign has been outwardly pro-trans-rights. But that’s enough for us. It’s enough that they’re the party that isn’t trying to tell ugly falsehoods about the imminent dangers of navigating this latest tangle of biology being less binary than we’d like it to be, medical science being more advanced than we’re ready for it to be and our societal norms being what they are – within a democratic republic that’s quarreling over its fundamental character.

It’s enough for me that the Harris campaign is willing to abide by the legally mandated levels of support for trans-rights. It’s enough for me that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, although they haven’t hugged the trans community, aren’t demonizing them either. In fact, it’s one of the issues they really haven’t touched at all, despite the amount that it’s being used and leveraged by their opponents for fear of confirming fear. I’m sure, out of fears that they’ll “prove” themselves as the “radical liberals” they’re accused of being. Still, they’re my choice, by a landslide – not only because of this, but for so many other reasons.

That being said, I’m deeply troubled about the toxins that are being pumped into the bloodstream of our social media “feeds.” I’m concerned about the way they’ll continue to deepen mischaracterizations and fears about an already vulnerable part of the population.

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March 2, 2024

Synopsis

“Content Warning” is a book about resilience through perseverance and empathy. It’s an unflinching look at my life through the eyes of those around me. Our lives don’t offer us a single hurdle to surmount. One success or failure doesn’t define us, so why should the stories we tell encourage such oversimplification?

While we continue to introduce ourselves by stating our job titles, the average American nowadays will hold more than twelve jobs in their lifetime, and for every person who finds a company job that lasts for decades, someone else doubles the average. We’ve never confronted a time when stability felt so out of reach. In an age of hyperconnectivity, when authenticity has become a buzzword, many of us feel increasingly isolated and cynical about the world around us and our ability to find meaningful relationships.

My life has offered me plenty of opportunities, extraordinary moments and adventures, but most of them don’t fall within these pages. If you want to hear about them, we should sit down to lunch. What I’m sharing here are the difficult moments that don’t get talked about over coffee, the times we usually face alone. The stories are fictionalized and anonymous because I want to ask as many of us as possible to stand in the room, to see ourselves among the people in each situation and try to accept that we’re all human.

I hope there’s something here for everyone to relate to — because who hasn’t lost someone precious to them, felt violated, hurt someone they tried to care for, found ingratitude when they expected fulfillment. There are also plenty of reasons for anger and sadness, for offense. It’s in the title, after all. But I’m not aiming for offense as a rallying cry for censorship. I believe it’s worth the risk to be offended on occasion because it helps us figure out what we care about and where the boundaries of our known world lie.

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February 13, 2024

Update 2024

Hi there,

Well, I think I’ve proven that I’m not a blogger, given that my last post was in 2020. That being said, I have been writing. I’m in the midst of finalizing a manuscript and headed toward the terrifying step of searching for a publisher, which translates to finding a literary agent. It makes me (almost) want to tear up half a ream of paper so I can go back to writing instead.

While I haven’t considered myself a writer in my adult life, I’ve known how to write. Marketing myself to literary agents and learning how to successfully query or cultivate an online presence for my writing – feels like a much different project, but I figure this is a relatively painless first step: resurrecting my little blog and using it as a gathering place for all the people I’ve talked to in recent years who’ve asked me to let them know when my book is published. Instead of spelling out my name or simply letting the moment pass, I’m going to direct them here, to what’s currently a tiny digital parking lot with grass growing out of the cracks in the pavement.

Still, I have to start somewhere, so if you’d like to help, subscribe. Help me tackle this daunting infrastructure project. I won’t be bombarding your inbox with posts because I only write when I have something to say, but it will be a place to find out about progress on the book and to help me toward that end.

Thank you in advance.

~ Emma Si Nae

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September 19, 2020

Please

Dear Friends, dear Americans, dear Fellow Citizens,

I tried reaching out to you recently and I may have reached a few of you, but it’s hard to make it through the noise. There’s such a swirl of noise out there and that noise is just about to get so much louder and worse.

I want to start by talking to those who have tuned out though – because it is necessary for all of us to do that sometimes, right? I get it. I do. Take a minute, take a day, take a week even. There’s a lot to try to cope with these days and I’m right there with you… almost.

For those who say that you’re just not political, that you hate politics, I want to remind you that politics happens with or without you. We can’t reshape it into something less alienating, more civil, more relevant without you and people like you. Politics isn’t just people in offices and century old buildings with columns making speeches. It determines whether we have the resources to fight fires and repair after tropical storms, whether some are given legally recognized marriages or not, whether jeopardized species go extinct, whether we pursue peace or war. Your right to download an app or mail a birthday card to your friend, the cost of vegetables at the supermarket – these are all in their own way political acts. Our standing in the world and as individuals depends on the functioning of our democracy.

Please, do not wait for the moment when one of these laws deprives you personally of something vital to recognize your power.

For those of you who say that it won’t make a difference, this isn’t a butterfly effect kind of thing. Whether you live in a swing state or not, this election is shaping up to be close. Votes will matter – across the country. In the local elections, state and nationally. If you spend two hours reading your election booklet, I bet that there’s one ballot measure or proposition or candidate that you’ll connect with, that will matter to you. Find the issue where you can really make a difference and then while you’re marking your ballot, please fill in a vote for president too.

Please. Every district matters this time. Every state.

For those who feel you don’t know enough, there is still time. I know that you’re busy, maybe you’ve got little kids. Read about the candidates with them. Sure, maybe they’ll think it’s boring, but it might help them take a nap and then you can finish reading. Or maybe you’re busy with work, but it’s worth burning some midnight oil to get this right. Check your sources. A lot of these candidates are depending on us to stay disengaged or they’re betting on us being dumber than we are. I don’t think we’re dumb.

Please, find the time because this is about us and our kids and our neighbors and their kids and the people hundreds of miles away and their kids.

We are so lucky and I know a lot of us are tired of this word “privilege.” It feels like a weight around our necks that we didn’t ask for and don’t have time for, but it is ours and ours alone. This vote doesn’t belong to people living in the European Union or Iran or Israel or South Korea. It doesn’t belong to the nearly 35 million lawful permanent residents who have come from all over the world to work in our businesses, pay our taxes and abide by our laws, who may live here for years without ever being able to vote. It doesn’t belong to the billions of people around the world who are affected by our military decisions, environmental decisions, diplomatic choices, and who, when we’re at our best, look up to us and the stable democracy that we have perhaps resided in for so long that we have forgotten how fragile governments can be.

And no, no one asked you whether you wanted to be born here and the condition of our individual lives spans the spectrum. I know that there are so many of us who would be hard pressed to feel fortunate at the moment. And others of us who are sick of being called it in an era when our lives are unfamiliar and disrupted and we can’t operate under the weight of it all.

… but we can, and we do. Think about it. We can and we do. It’s almost frightening to think about, but we’re all survivors of something and our bodies and minds persevere even when it feels like our hearts may give out – and they can carry our hearts along with them.

Please vote. I am trying to do what I feel suited to – reaching out to those who feel tired and done and disengaged. Admitting that I myself feel tired and done, but that I cannot allow myself to be disengaged. I don’t want to add to the text messages that you’re getting on your phone or the email in your inbox. I don’t want to be one more person raining ultimatums down on you. I want to encourage you. Please ask questions. Please, don’t be intimidated. Please, don’t wait. Please – VOTE.

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September 9, 2020

Dear Conservative Friends

Hi. This feels like a risky move, which says something. In an era when I see more and more of my friends asking you to unfriend them, to keep your content away from them, when you are seen as the crystallization of ignorance and hatred, when remaining friends with conservatives has become complicit with hatred, and familial to it: bigotry. I’m not here to defend your decisions, but I do think I understand you – at least a little bit.

A number of you aren’t defending everything that the current president has done or stands for. You’re not against all social distancing or mask-wearing, but you’re tired of feeling like you’re the only ones calling things into question. You’re tired of the hypocrisy that you see on the other side. Really, really sick and tired of it. You’re tired of being painted as backward and out of touch and ugly when you see just as much ugliness on the other side of the aisle. Yes, there are stories that are getting buried these days and some of those stories involve black people doing bad things. Those stories aren’t getting as much traction right now. Stories about liberals being violent aren’t acknowledged by many, but you see them and the fact that no one in that wider audience of public opinion is getting as angered by these events as you see when the reverse happens is all the fuel that is needed to stay defensive.

There is a bias at the moment and a hell of a lot of hypocrisy. People are aligning, for the most part, along party lines to gather in the same tribes that feel familiar and – and nothing is familiar. I’m in California and, at the moment, it feels like the entire world is on fire. It’s 10 AM and the sun is nowhere to be seen. It’s obscured to the point of ambiguity behind a curtain of smoke. I drive into Mill Valley for errands and see telephone junction boxes tagged with “Black Lives Matter” in one of the whitest communities on the face of the planet, outside of maybe Norway. Eleven million of us have lost our jobs, even more are hanging onto them with anxiety as our savings and security are depleted. And, oh yeah, the Coronavirus.

Right and wrong are and aren’t a subjective matter. We all pay attention to some of the news because the news cycle has never churned at a faster rate and we’re all only capable of taking in so much information before our heads explode. It makes sense that we’ve all tucked into our comfortable stories in an era of discomfort. Yes, stories about minorities in the wrong are less popular right now in many media circles, but that has not always been the case and giving stories about police brutality of minorities more exposure is a long, long ways away from actually protecting minorities from police brutality, but it’s a step in the right direction. Does it mean that everything is fair right now? No. Is it the whole story? No.

We currently have a president who distills this world into digestible bites for you. He literally calls out who he deems to be “good” and “bad” and in a world where we can feel overwhelmed shopping for groceries, or clothes, where the money that we may have earned working for a bank that invests a portion of its funds in oil companies that have dodged environmental regulations, where our strawberries were reliant on undocumented labor and our artichokes were flown in from Chile with a larger carbon footprint and more globe trotting experience than we’re managed in the last ten years, when our clothes were purchased through the labor of women in Cambodia or Malaysia because China’s labor costs have risen, women who will never own clothing as expensive as the items they make, who work in cramped, un-ventillated quarters and who know that if they don’t show up for work, they will be replaced. When we know that our land was once lived on by generations of Native Americans and we don’t really want to know the full history of which tribe. Because we are exhausted trying to do our very best today and to figure out how to take care of what feels manageable today and the people shunning you for not caring have set their own limits on how much they can care and they’ve erected that fence and set you outside of it.

The world is more complicated than Trump pretends that it is and it’s more complicated than most of us can comfortably acknowledge on a daily basis. It’s not all clear cut lines and pretending that it is will lead us to the wrong conclusions. I know a number of you and, sure, there are some conservatives out there who are holding to their flags and screaming, but there are a lot of you who are just trying to do your best and this is what your best looks like right now. I want to let you know that I’m here with you – every bit as much as I am here with my friends who are black or LatinX or gay or straight or the admittedly majority of my friends who are white and straight. I’m just going to ask you to try to let go of that anger that you’re feeling toward the media, toward the injustice that you see, toward the hypocrisy – that you take a step away from it for a moment and that we all admit that we’re scared.

But we don’t have to be scared of one another.

And, dear liberal friends – for those of you who are upset that Joe Biden isn’t progressive enough, that Kamala Harris was a DA and then Attorney General and that her tough on crime background disappoints you and who feel betrayed by the left again since Bernie was your guy and you think he was iced out of the nomination again, and who feel disoriented and betrayed by the inclusion of Republicans in the DNC, kindly, GET OVER YOURSELVES. Pretty, pretty please. Our next president needs – correction, we all need a national leader who can stand before the American people as a whole, who can acknowledge our differences and begin to weave us back together. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party does not represent the majority of this country and while it’s easy to believe that it does, or it “should” from the comfort of our homes in Marin County, Marin County and San Francisco are not representative of the nation as a whole and we need to shake off our myopic pride and help ourselves and our fellow citizens step back from the edge of this cliff with understanding. It’s a good thing that Joe Biden isn’t as radical some of us might want him to be. It’s a good thing that Kamala Harris has a law enforcement background; do you think that a Democrat from California would belong on a national ticket otherwise? It’s an incredible thing that so many life-long Republicans had the guts and the ethical commitment and patriotism to break ranks and speak at the Democratic National Convention. They are all answering the moment. We need to as well.

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June 6, 2020

My racist moment

I’m going to tell a different story this morning and it’s not one that I’m proud of, it’s not one that you should “like.” I’m not telling it to be congratulated. Some of you will read this and think that it’s nothing and others will find it horrible. I’m telling it because it’s honest and because I’m NOT proud of it and because it says something bigger than I’ve ever wanted it to. But, more than anything, it’s my way in to seeing where I can improve and own my biases and begin – begin to improve.

A number of you know that I’ve volunteered at San Quentin off and on over the last decade. It’s work that I’m proud of and work that I’ve loved, but this is a story that only maybe my ex-husband knows because he was there when I got home that night and he helped me push away the discomfort and reassured me that I didn’t mean it.

In the program that I’ve worked with, Prison University Project, (google them, donate, all of that!) we work with incarcerated students to help them earn transferable units from an accredited institution. All well and good.

I can’t tell you the night that it happened. I’ve totally lost track of the date, but one night when I was tutoring students one-on-one, I had finished with one appointment and went to the whiteboard to see who was signed up next. Now, as happens semi-regularly, I wasn’t able to find the student. I looked in and around several classrooms calling his name, to no avail. As I walked back toward the main classroom, an administrator walked into the education building in street clothes and I asked him – a black man, whether he was “____” and whether he was the student I was looking for.

There are no female prisoners at San Quentin and thus no female students, so I cannot guess as to whether I would have asked that question to a female administrator in the same position. I can justify, and HAVE, that there aren’t many people other than students who move in and out of that building during those hours and that I genuinely didn’t mean anything by it.

Here’s the thing: I no longer care about my justifications. The man in question didn’t answer me for the longest time and I’m embarrassed that I needed it ALL spelled out to me. I stood there blinking while he pointed out his street clothes and his degrees, had him read me his CV and then he asked me whether I thought that he was my student.

He stood there with poise and dignity and pride and rage as I curled up in a vat of shame and for all of my talk of being open and transparent, I haven’t told that story to anyone since that night, but that hasn’t faded my memory. I’ve had racism pointed at me and I have some idea of how ugly and horrible the slightest tinge can feel. I HATE and have hated that I put him in that position that night. I’m grateful that I was only armed with words because they were bad enough. I’m sharing this because I see a lot of solidarity out there, but very, very few admissions.

I knock myself for not being among the protesters, for being an armchair jockey – still using words instead of anything stronger or more effectual. My sons have me at this point. I don’t feel like I can responsibly jeopardize that – at least not until they’re launched. The part of me that feels that they would be benefited by the example of me protesting or protesting alongside me has been arguing against the part of me that hopes I’ll find a job that will give me means to donate again and where I can support and serve my community and encourage others and, when the pandemic subsides, I hope to be able to return to my volunteer work there because as shameful as that moment was, I know that it’s not the whole story and that I have done meaningful work there and want to continue.

But there you have it. I’m more racist than I want to be. I want to learn and be better.

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June 4, 2020

Today

I’ve been silent on this. I’ve been aware of being too quiet. It’s not because I don’t care. I don’t have an “excuse.” I grew up in Sebastopol. I didn’t grow up around racial diversity and I didn’t even have a connection to my own diversity.

I woke up in 1999 when I learned about the tragic shooting of Amadou Diallo. I’ve never forgotten his name or his story. It is a large part of my dream to finish school and become a public defender. It is part of how I’ve raised my sons… And it’s a story that has never stopped being relevant. It wasn’t the beginning of any story. It’s just the point where I caught on…

As hard, as hard as it is to listen across the divides right now, as justified as we feel shutting one another out… I don’t think that’s how we get out of this folks. We share this country with one another. We can’t and shouldn’t even dream of the elimination of our others.

The only way out of this is through it and we don’t get to choose our fellow passengers for the trip. We are angry. We are hurt. Too, too many vulnerable people have paid a price that was far too high, that should have been more than enough to have bought and paid for understanding and empathy and justice and yet we are still HERE.

I think, I think from my privileged, limited vantage point – that we on the left are demanding that people face their ugliness… but that’s rarely how people grow. That’s not how they expand, not as a group, not en masse. We are calling them ugly and asking them to own their shame. It seems like such a small price to pay for the destruction that has been wrought on generations. And we feel responsible and complicit and we are trying to distance ourselves from all of that. So we hate those who hate.

We need compassion.

It isn’t the antithesis of being fed up. We need to be fed up enough to dig deeply into our compassion for one another. I think it’s the only way.

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April 23, 2020

HPC Donation

4.18.2020

I haven’t mentioned this to many people because, well, honestly… I just wasn’t sure it was going to happen. Tomorrow, Tyler and I are flying to Boise, Idaho so that I can donate stem cells (and possibly bone marrow) for a leukemia patient. And yes, it’s the craziest time in the world for all of this to be happening, but it’s still happening.

The story of how I got involved isn’t grand or impressive. Yes, my life has been touched by cancer and I’ve lost a lot of people, but how I got to this point was that I stopped at a kiosk one day a dozen years ago while I was attending UC Berkeley and they had me give them a cheek swab’s worth of DNA and about a month and a half ago I got a phone call… And, given the uncertainty and times, I really didn’t think I’d be packing a suitcase, but that’s what I’m going to be doing tonight.

4.22.2020

Hi there. In response to the beautiful messages of encouragement and support that I’ve received from everyone, I am grateful… and…

I am not an angel. Just ask either of my two ex-husbands. No, but seriously. I’m not an angel. And I’m not selfless either. I wish I could claim such a mantle, but it doesn’t fit. I donated BECAUSE it fit with my identity, not in spite of it. It fit how I want to model community and participation and volunteerism for my sons and it gave me more validation than I could have asked for personally.

And, at the same time, it’s been a strange experience, getting SO MUCH validation for one of the least active, least challenging days that I have had in the past year or more.

And if there are celestial beings among us, they might be those who have spent their lives in this work, rather than the days and hours that I have, it might be the teachers who have dedicated their lives to enriching our children’s lives, instead of the limited days that I’ve struggled to engage them, they might be the doctors and bio-engineers and scientists who developed the techniques or equipment or the early volunteers who risked so much more with uncertain odds – to push the science forward to the point where I could proceed today with the confidence of scientifically-deduced statistics.

And how it all comes out in the wash is far from clear to me. I took two airplane flights there and back, I ate out of more styrofoam containers than I’ve had contact with in years, I traveled at a time when the conscientious decision for most of us is to not. Even in this one instance, in the balance of these past few days, the conservation angel on my shoulder tisks at some of the actions taken for a greater good.

I’m no angel. I’m a very human, human being making choices and trying to make good ones – most of the time. And I only succeed in making good ones a fraction of the time… (Posting this to douse water on the kindness of my friends being a prime example of a potentially poor choice.) I’m grateful, very grateful for you. Don’t get me wrong. But I have to push back because while being good hasn’t been my strong suit, being honest tends to be…

Wishing you dear ones well.

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January 22, 2020

Delivery Disorder

“CRISPY” “Crispy PLEEEASE!” “Extra CRISPY!”

Well, everybody. Allow me to spread the news. Fries, Brussels Sprouts, Zucchini Fries… Our kitchen can and does make all of these crispy. What I can’t do is KEEP them crispy for you – while we wait for a delivery driver to arrive, while that same delivery driver weaves all over the map to find your house, and as they both cool down and are held inside of containers that try to preserve the heat, but which inevitably also expose them to a sauna of moisture. And the ALL CAPS and exclamation points don’t give me the power to reverse that.

There is actually scientific study of crispiness, inspired by our infatuation with doorstep convenience. (https://www.npr.org/2019/10/25/773305418/the-future-of-french-fries) But while we wait for Franken Fries to arrive, it’s worth pausing to realize that this is just the tip of a more dangerous iceberg. The delivery service model that’s ballooned is putting demands and strains on restaurants beyond the negative reviews that they field when the delivered products are soggy, limp or cold, or when the driver from the third party service they’ve contracted with drops the food before it makes it to your house, or goes for a joy ride.

Let’s take a step back and explain something that few people who aren’t restaurant managers or owners know: the food service industry has incredibly tight margins. I know that you sit down and look at your pizza and vino, shaking your head at the price tag, however, with the cost of the product (usually 25-30%), wages and payroll taxes (30%), workers’ compensation, rent in Marin County, building and maintenance costs for the facilities, packaging materials, liquor licenses, ETC., we’re lucky if we get out the door with 5-10% profit to show at the end of the day.

And that’s despite the fact that, yes, it’s true, those lovely staff members who welcome and seat you, the ones who patiently take your order and try to remember all of your dietary restrictions and the fact that you prefer your dressing on the side, and the bartender who remembers your order and has your drink waiting on the bar for you as you sit down – are all probably working for minimum wage + tips. That’s right. That doesn’t mean that they’re all mercenaries and are only being nice to you because they hope that you’ll tip them. Most of them are nice to you because the industry collects and cultivates nice people who choose to interface with others, who take pride in learning your order and helping you and your family enjoy your evening. AND they’re hoping that you’ll respond in kind by compensating them for their attention.

Now, enter the delivery service market. Duh, duh, duh, dum. They keep between 20-25%, of the ticket price of the meals that they deliver, often in addition to charging you, the customer, a fee. There is no gratuity for the restaurant or its staff, which now has to purchase additional packaging materials, hire staff to transcribe the orders from the delivery service into our point-of-sale system and pack the order, ensure that it’s correctly assembled for the driver when they arrive and field customer and technical issues as they arrive. Yet, without fail, restaurants have jumped on board because it doesn’t feel like a real option if we don’t. There is so much demand that delivery sales often exceed in house or phone orders for many locations. And if they don’t partner with these services, you’ll swipe through the options on your phone, maybe frown for a moment when you don’t find us, then move on.

And yes, I’ve done it too. On my day off, it’s incredibly hard to kick myself out of the house. My bones are tired and it’s so, so easy to feel like I “deserve” a night in. And who’s to say that I don’t on occasion? But, knowing what we’re doing, it becomes harder to justify. We are paying more for convenience – over community, over local business, and over quality.

But I know of a place where you can get crispy fries. Come on down! We’ll save you a seat.

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