Fantastic! I am beside myself with happiness that women are the frontrunners after the first two debates. I’m surprised at how happy I am. Personally, I don’t feel a strong affinity for identity politics mainly because I try to identify myself firstly as human – just like you are human and thus we are 99.999999% the same with minor differences that makes everything interesting. Being cisgender, a scientist/engineer, female, she/her, Asian, short, passive-aggressive, American, pro-choice, mother of a disabled child, child of Chinese immigrants, introvert, risk-averse, lover of mountains, hater of phone calls, doesn’t really separate me from you very much (I acknowledge this might come from a lifetime of privilege, but also my personality. Just ask Jeremy.) Actually, I think there are only two groups of people: people who are assholes and people who are not assholes. Most of us flutter between the two categories depending on the situation, but have a tendency towards one or the other. The worst are the people who are assholes but think they are are not assholes. I have a glimmer of hope that perhaps I will not be completely embarrassed to say that I’m American in a few years.
I’m looking forward to this movie (go Awkwafina!):
I’m spending my extra time starting to delve into college applications for Vince. Like which ones are the common applications and what the general due dates are. Jeremy said – do not deluge Vince with college crap the minute he walks into the door. I said – I will try, I will try. This is very difficult for me. Vince is talented in many ways and I know this because (well, mainly because I see/talk to him a lot, but I do discount my own personal interaction with him because I’m clearly biased, how can I possibly have an unbiased opinion?) I have many, many other parents/teachers pull me aside and tell me – you know what Vince did? and they tell me some heartwarming story and then they say – he’s a good guy. But none of this is measured in GPAs or SAT scores which I care about TREMENDOUSLY for myself, but to Vince it’s something to work at, but not something to obsess over. Which is fine rationally speaking – I understand this and I’m intellectually ok with this, but emotionally and ego speaking, it’s really hard for me to be at peace with this. The only way I managed to stay out of this measurable crap and self enforce my own personal pact to not Asian-mom and hover over Vince all junior year was to be out of the house trapped in the bathroom with someone else’s grandmother who needed help so she wouldn’t fall and smash her noggin on the cold, hard tile (there is crap there too). I know if Vince had spent the time getting 4.0 with a 1550 on his SATs I would have been like – OMG, he spent too much time studying because there is no chance he’d get into any of the top 10 schools anyways and wasted all the time he could have used to have fun or make friends or fall in love, or we could have had the other problem which is that he hates school and didn’t show up and has no friends and is on the internet all day delving into who knows what trouble. Jeremy is like – we have no problem. And I know we have no problem, but it doesn’t answer the question for me about what college will take an Asian male who wants to study engineering from a wealthy/competitive school district who got Bs in hard science/math classes and has a kind of decent, but not standout SAT score which in my head seems like a big problem – but I acknowledge is not really a problem. (Did I mention that Vince, in a moment of high emotion, told me that he wasn’t going to identify himself as Asian on any of his college applications? That he was white and that’s who he was. I was shocked and hurt. (Did I just say that I didn’t care about identity politics?) Vickey was like what exactly do you want? I said half joking & half seriously, I want him to declare that he’s Asian and get into Harvard anyways. Do you think they have the asshole/not asshole category on college applications? They should.)
I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul
Where I’ll end up, well, I think only God really knows
I’ve sat upon the setting sun
But never, never, never, never
I never wanted water once
No never, never, never
I listen to my words but they fall far below
I let my music take me where my heart wants to go
I swam upon the Devil’s lake
But never, never, never, never
I’ll never make the same mistake
No, never, never, never
-Cat Stevens
I just picked up Vince from summer camp where he was the senior patrol leader and was in charge of corralling a bunch of middle schoolers for a week. I started talking about college even before we pulled into the driveway. As we walked into the house, he laughed because I had told him that Jeremy had told me to not do the exact thing I was doing at that moment and said – mom, I’m ready to do my own thing. I said to him – I hope I’m doing right by you. He gave me a big hug and lifted me off the ground and swung me around in a circle. He said – you are the best mom ever. Thanks for letting me live my own life. I’ll tell you guys all the stories when dad comes home tonight.