Story #30 - Birthday Drunk, an Adjective

After a full day of tequila birthday drinking, my boyfriend had the unfortunate task of taking care of me. These were sentences I repeated all night:

“Where am I?”

“Where is my car?”

“Where are my pants?”

“Please give me water.”

“Why are you giving me water? I don’t want it.”

“I love you sooooo much.”

He bought me a quesadilla, but when he asked if he could have a bite, I kicked it away from him every time he got close.  I refused to walk in our apartment and traveled from room to room sliding on my knees, giggling.

Story #29 - Float On

The same week I went on vacation in Malaysia also happened to be a popular week for Arabs to vacation there. Malaysia became a popular vacation spot for Arabs after 9/11 because it was a Muslim country that was accepting of Islamic practices. The women wore traditional abayat – long black cloaks that covered them from head to toe with only an opening for their eyes. But that didn’t stop them from participating in water sports like jet skiing or parasailing while wearing their abayat. From a distance, when the women swam in the ocean, they looked like black jellyfish floating.

Story #28 - On Foreign Ground

It always felt like an ordeal going to a doctor’s office in Japan. Only one smiling male nurse could speak a few words in English. A team of nurses would always come to my rescue because I was the foreigner. The office felt like a hospital with individual cots all in a row in a room separated by curtains. No matter what ailment I had, they would start me off on a machine where I would breathe through a tube for half an hour - even when I had foot pain.  I never found out the purpose of that machine... 

Story #27 - Old Habits Die Hard

When I was in college, I told my parents I wanted to eat healthier food. My family tended to eat a lot of meat and deep fry everything. That Christmas, they bought me a deep fryer, with loving thoughts about saving me time on deep frying all my food. When I recently became a pescatarian, I was surprised how supportive they were about it. They went out to grocery stores to buy me vegetarian food and cooked meals full of fish and greens. But at the end of every meal, they’d bring out a meat dish they’d insist I’d eat.  

Story #26 - What Dreams May Come

My mother fled with my family to Vietnam in the 1970s during the Cambodian Genocide. She was separated from her mother, who soon passed away from falling ill without readily available medical resources. Without knowing that my grandmother had passed away, my mother dreamt about her a few days later. She told my mother that she was pregnant with a girl and told her what to name her. Unbeknownst to her, my mother was pregnant with my sister at the time and gave her that name. That was the last time my grandmother came to my mother in a dream.