LALATOWN LIFE

This photo was taken by my sister.

She was at home drinking highballs with our cousin when they got hungry and made some spicy ramen. Somewhere in the middle of eating, she suddenly remembered:

“Oh, right. My sister told me to take a picture of this thing.”

And that is how I finally got this photo.

Out of more than ten objects I ordered, this is the one and only real-life photo my sister has managed to send me so far.

Seriously.

But looking at this ridiculous little ramen photo somehow sent me much farther back than I expected.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my childhood.

And about my sister.

My sister once asked me,

“Seriously. Where does that positivity of yours come from?”

There was a tiny bit of sarcasm in it.

But I think there was also a certain resignation—the acceptance that this is simply what her older sister is like.

I am strangely positive.

Not the kind of positive that sits comfortably on the sofa saying, Oh, everything will work out.

No.

When something difficult happens, my brain immediately starts doing this:

Okay. Then I can use this time to do this. And if I do that, maybe later I can turn it into this. Actually… this might be better.

I change things.

I rearrange them until I can find somewhere to stand.

I don’t think I learned it anywhere.

It is probably just my personality.

Maybe that is also why I have always been able to celebrate other people.

When someone was brilliant at math or science, I genuinely thought, Thank God for people like you. I certainly can’t do it. Somebody has to.

Competition, in my mind, was something for the kids ranked first through fifth.

What was I going to do, sitting somewhere around fifty-something?

Compete?

Please.

Maybe in drawing.

People sometimes mistake that for being carefree.

I’m not.

I’m actually quite realistic.

My version of realism is simply this:

I don’t spend much time wanting what belongs to somebody else.

I can be genuinely happy when someone succeeds.

And when someone hurts, I tend to hurt with them.

That has probably been both a strength and a weakness in my life.

My father worried about it.

Sometimes joking, sometimes scolding, he would look at me as if to say,

How on earth are you going to survive in this rough world?

My sister, meanwhile, was very different.

She was smart. Good at school. Ambitious.

When we were little, children didn’t have closets full of shoes the way they often do now.

If my sister wanted new shoes badly enough, she would throw a fit.

Once, I watched her grind the shoes she was wearing against the concrete until she damaged them.

Our grandmother thought this was adorable.

So naturally, she bought her another pair.

Meanwhile, my turn had a mysterious tendency to disappear.

This time my brother needed a computer.

This time Grandma’s hospital bill was too high.

This time something else had happened.

And somehow I just kept walking through that little tunnel.

Is this a sad story?

No, no, no.

I don’t do sad stories that easily.

Because years later, my sister had a son.

My beloved nephew.

And here is where the universe apparently decided to make a joke.

He looks absolutely nothing like me.

Not even one percent.

Not his face. Not his coloring. Nothing.

Inside?

Almost a photocopy.

Starting, unfortunately, with our complete lack of athletic ability.

As a child, I was the kid who got hit directly in the face during dodgeball because I couldn’t even manage to avoid a ball coming straight toward me.

I was always one of the first kids eliminated.

Sometimes I cried.

Not because I was a sore loser.

Because getting hit in the face actually hurt.

My nephew, after spending almost eleven of his twelve school years in New Zealand, somehow managed to get hit in the head during a baseball game badly enough to get a concussion.

Now, here is the truly ridiculous part.

His mother—my sister—was a national champion swimmer.

She later taught swimming at a university.

And somehow she produced this child.

My child, spiritually.

I mean.

Come on.

My sister looks at this child and practically loses her mind.

She knows exactly what kind of person he is.

When it came time to arrange his living situation, she told him,

“Even if it costs more, don’t share a room. You’ll keep giving things up until you can’t live your own life. Even when you’re uncomfortable, you don’t know how to insist on your share.”

I heard this and couldn’t help laughing.

What is this?

Some sort of cosmic administrative error?

The little girl who once destroyed her own shoes on concrete to get another pair now has a son who needs to be instructed to please, for the love of God, take up some space.

And that son somehow understands me almost without words.

We have the same empathy. The same ridiculous little jokes. Sometimes we say exactly the same thing.

He spent many of his long New Zealand summer vacations here with me—which, of course, meant Colorado winter.

There were days when the snow came down so heavily that cars couldn’t make it up our steep road.

But if Bongu wanted a walk, we went.

My nephew and I would watch Bongu’s little butt wiggling with excitement as he bounced through the deep snow like a dolphin.

And inevitably, one of us would say what the other was already thinking:

“How can we not take him? Look how happy he is.”

So we’d climb until we were nearly out of breath, throw the ball until Bongu was satisfied, and eventually drag ourselves home.

I don’t tell my nephew how to live.

I don’t tell him to study hard.

Why would I lecture a kid who already studies harder than I ever did and is doing about a hundred times better?

When I give him spending money, my advice is much simpler:

“Don’t save it. Go eat Thai food and have beers with your friends.”

Don’t worry. Drinking is legal at eighteen in New Zealand.

There is only one piece of real advice I remember giving him.

If someone keeps treating you badly, don’t keep enduring it.

Give them a chance.

Maybe two.

Then turn around and walk away.

That’s enough.

And maybe this whole ridiculously long story came out of one photograph because there was really only one thing I wanted to say:

I am happy that my nephew inherited this strange positivity too.

When the two of us start making one of our absurdly optimistic observations, my sister sometimes just stares at us.

Completely baffled.

Probably wondering how she ended up surrounded by these people.

Right now, I am somewhere between things.

Processing.

For a while, everything felt stuck.

Paused.

People sometimes tell me they don’t understand how I can be doing what I’m doing during a time like this.

But being angry doesn’t make time move faster.

Blaming someone doesn’t produce a better result.

So I’ve been drawing.

Trying things.

Knocking on doors in fields I’ve never tried before.

I even reopened a fabric-pattern account I had started much too casually a long time ago, looked at my old work and thought,

Ohhh.

I really didn’t know what I was doing.

So I started looking again.

Learning again.

Making things again.

Maybe my father was right to worry about how I would survive this rough world.

Maybe my sister is right to occasionally stare at me like I am completely ridiculous.

And maybe my nephew and I really are missing some small but apparently important piece of equipment everybody else received.

Who knows.

Anyway.

Welcome to my clueless, oddly positive, la-la world.