The Mirror Has Two Faces

Every once in a while a good Barbra Streisand title sets you on a path of reflection and as fate would have it, the Jewish New Year rolled through just as my boyfriend and I talked at length about faith.  He has held a constant belief system that has kept him and seen him through most of his life.  It's a strong and beautiful facet of him.  When the question arose to explain my own, I found myself both stupefied and tongue-tied.  I'd rarely discussed it openly, especially to someone I was dating.  Furthermore, I hadn't gotten to the point where I could fully articulate it to someone outside myself.  It's wondrous that the topic presented itself at that very moment, because I had spent the better part of the past year and a half really understanding and deciding what I believed.  Here was my chance to boldly state it.  Suffice it to say I babbled my way through it like an idiot.

When I moved to New York three years ago, a change began to take place.  An awakening, as it were.  Faith had always been a strong component of my life, but it was always tempered by a deep questioning, perhaps even skepticism.  As I had grown up in a household that embraced both Christianity and Buddhism, I merely accepted what I found to be parallel faith paths.  Yes I gravitated towards Christianity, but Buddhist principles constantly found active applications in my life. Moreover, I noticed that the basic tenets of mutual and individual respect, a search for inner tranquility, and an active love of others were common throughout.  However, I often found it hard to negotiate what I felt was a narrow view of God within the congregations I actively attended.  I couldn't understand the constraints put upon the nature of God.  Nonetheless, I stayed along my path and kept my focus, absorbing aspects of both faiths that spoke to me, inspired me.

Then my teens came in, and along with it confusion, anger, and general doubt in who I was.  The divorce and the fact that I liked boys didn't help much, either.  As it were, much of that belief system crumbled.  I went to church and played the part, continued meditating, but found myself increasingly unmoved.  Apathy is worse than aversion in faith.  You no longer care one way or another for what you previously believed.  You merely exist, just slogging day by day ignorantly unaware.

Then, as my teens gave way to my twenties, my apathy gave way to my struggle and determination to feel, indeed believe, in something.  And to my enormous surprise, I found that my faith in something greater than myself hadn't died.  Merely gone into hibernation, waiting for me to wake up from my paralyzed sense of identity.  What a great joy, but a great sorrow, for having not seen it or realized it was there for so long.  But this time, it was different.  It came with an understanding of pain in confluence with bliss, sadness with happiness.  Both exist within and inform each other.  And there was a new duality of faith, an appreciation of my beliefs as a Buddhist and a Christian, which now tied completely with the duality of being both bilingual and bicultural, and having to straddle two existing ideologies and sets of customs.  At least for me, all of them enrich each other, trauma providing insight into the vastness of joy, language offering more complex and precise forms of expression, and each culture increasing an understanding of the human condition.

So now I'm at a new point in my odyssey with faith.  Having the question asked of me has put me on the path to succinctly define it for myself, to open myself up to what I really believe.  One thing is certain: throughout this journey, I am thankful for rediscovering a faith that is uniquely and wholly my own.

The American Dream...according to my Mother

Anyone who knows me knows I tell stories about my mother.  A wise sage in sensible Nike Shox and recycled pants I wore when I was 12.  She endlessly amazes me, in that stories come flying out of her that always stun me, make me think, bore a little (she does get long-winded), and always elicit a smile.

A few days ago we were sitting watching the Golf Channel (actually, that's all her), and reminiscing about a trip my mother had made to visit me in New York around the Fourth of July.  Her first trip to the Big Apple.  The first of many that seem to always bring me back to myself.  To seeing the world through my awed mother's eyes.  For example, take her first trip to the Statue of Liberty, that quintessential representation of New York and its unending sense of promise.

It was a day like most in summer here, lit brightly yellow and sticky.  The AC in my apartment did little to help with the humidity, despite the cool air that now pervaded the room.

"Hey, we going to the Statue of Liberty today?"

"Yes, Mom.  Like I promised."

"Oh man!  Okay!  I need to go get ready.  Need to look nice for the Lady!"

If a grown woman could go skipping from a room, she was it.  She tends to get excited by life, but that day there was an unusual bounce in her step.  More akin to Tigger than anything else.

We made our way out and soon found ourselves on the ferry that would transport my mother and I to the island.  As the ferry glided closer and closer, my less than composed mother became positively kindergarten-esque.

"Oh, I see it!  I mean, her!  Oh man!  Hey Kav, look at her!  She's so big!"

I looked on in amazement.  Not just at the statue, but at my mother.  I had forgotten that awe for a good long while, and much of the city's grind and hustle had creeped in.  To recapture it in a moment of unexpected jubilation coming from someone I loved greatly plastered the hugest grin on my face.  By the end of the day, my cheeks hurt.

Reminiscing again the couple of years later, sitting on the couch, had done little to diminish my mother's giddiness.

"You know, when I saw that green lady with the big feet.  Oh man.  That made my day.  No, that made my LIFE!  Now I understand how all the immigrants felt when they saw her for the first time, because that's how I felt."

My mother moved to the US for the first time when she was nineteen to live with her sister with very little in the way of money, and a lack of English skills.  By sheer force of will, since my aunt abruptly moved back six months after my mom arrived, she carved out a life for herself alone here, getting an Associate's degree and taking ESL classes in the evening before finally returning to Thailand some four years later.  A blushing wallflower she is not.

To me, she embodies the true promise of the American Dream.  The sense of exploration and deep awe that flows throughout my entire being.  I used to question it, and have certainly done so here, but that little conversation opened my eyes to the fact that a unique sense of wanderlust is in me.  Not flippant or flaky, but incredibly curious and open, with a world bounding in possibility.  That is the essence of my mother's sense of self.  Looking on the world anew each day, with an open heart and an enormous sense of humor.  Thanks, Mom.  I raise a glass to you.  Even if you don't drink.

PS.  Another example of my Mom's sense of opportunity.

"Wait, I have a surprise for you.  Close your eyes.  Hold out your hands.  Both hands.  Okay, you can open your eyes."  Two five-dollar bills sit in my hands. "See, there you go.  A gift.  Five dollars for Super Lotto, and five dollars for Mega Millions!"

I think I'll go out and buy some today.