My father has always liked to root for the underdog. He went to Creighton, a small college in Omaha, Nebraska, and regularly travels by car or even airplane to support his Jays. Sometimes they succeed in sports and sometimes they don’t. They are often matched up against bigger schools with more money and bigger athletic …
Continue reading “Things I l Learned from My Father (#6): Root for the underdog”
My father was good at his job but he didn’t particularly enjoy it. He would rather spend time with family than time at work. When we were little, he had to work the night shift and he would record audio tapes for us of him reading stories to us. We listened to them before we …
Continue reading “Things I l Learned from My Father (#5): Work isn’t everything”
My father is perfectly happy eating bologna sandwiches. Or bread and butter. Or fast food for his Father’s Day meal. Or cake without icing. He has a wide range of ‘good enough’. He still appreciates cake with icing and a steak instead of a hamburger but he’s perfectly happy keeping things simple. It’s a good …
Continue reading “Things I l Learned from My Father (#4): Have a wide range of ‘good enough’”
My father has been known to be a bit of a worrier. His best friend said to him once, “You know, you should have been born a bump on a log, then you would have nothing to worry about,” and I think my dad kind of liked that idea actually. He thinks about this constantly: …
Continue reading “Things I l Learned from My Father (#3): Consider the worst-case scenario”
I grew up watching my father take care of his family. He always walked arm in arm with his 100 year old grandmother so she made it safely across the street and now he visits his mother, who is now 100 years old, very regularly to check in on her and try to lift her …
Continue reading “Things I l Learned from My Father (#2): Take care of your family”
If I said one thing about my father, or if there were only one thing that you knew about my father, it would be that he’s a nice guy. He’s the friendly guy in the elevator who strikes up a conversation with you and leaves you feeling good about the clothes that you picked out …
Continue reading “Things I l Learned from My Father (#1): Be nice”
One experience I remember is being on stage in the spotlight performing a poem and not being able to see the audience because the spotlight was so bright. I could feel and hear them listening to me but I couldn’t see them in the dark. I proceeded to do my thing. Sometimes you’re in the …
I wrote this poem when I lived in China, after experiencing racism while being mistaken for being a race that I am not. I’m Chinese American (ethnically Chinese born in the US, like my parents, most of my grandparents and some of my great grandparents who were born in the US in the 1800s) and …
Continue reading “Would you love me if my skin were purple?”
It’s hard to look at a seed and see a tree. But if you want a tree, then you have to prioritize the seed—no matter how small it is. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” —Chinese proverb
“Plain vanilla” is a phrase I thought about differently after I had ice cream in Ecuador that was plainer than vanilla. What flavor was it? It was like vanilla ice cream without the vanilla. They called it milk flavored ice cream. And you know what happened? I tasted the milk, and the cream and the …
