Birth and Death

I have had a very pivotal year this year. Not that major life changing events have happened in my life, but I have seen things happen around me. A number of folks I know have had babies in the past couple years but a few months ago, I learned that my best friend is pregnant. We have been friends for 22 years now. As an only child I have the gift to be able to choose the people I get to think of as sisters, and she is about the closest thing to a sister I will have. So, in spring next year, I will become an aunt!

On an opposite note however, I have seen the family of some good friends struck with some unbelievable tragedy. A friend of mine from graduate school was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 29, a few months after we graduated and a week after she married another classmate of ours. In May, 3 years after a great 35th birthday celebration at her parent's home in NC, five and a half years after she was diagnosed, she lost her fight with this disease. I have been meeting to write about her, her wonderful spirit, and the joy with which she embraced life for months now. And I will do so soon.

But tonight I wanted to write about another friend of mine, who I mentioned in an earlier post. Ryan was living his dream, getting the recognition he deserved and being able to earn a living pursuing his passion --- opera singing. Ryan attended Morehouse University as a voice major and was a proud member of the Morehouse Glee Club. After graduation he went on to pursue a masters degree at Ohio University. But after school he struggled to earn a living singing. He secured a few regular paying gigs, including parts with the Atlanta Opera and as a featured tenor with a church in the area. But after numerous rejections, he started to give up on his dream. In a last attempt, he decided to audition for the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artist competition, a yearly competition that whittles down approximately 11,000 applicants into the 6 most promising young singers in the industry. The cut off age for the competition is 30 and this was Ryan's last year of eligibility. And in 2007, at age 30, Ryan became one of the winners of this pretigious competition. As a winner, he finally started getting recognition for he talent. He performed in a couple Met performances. He won an internship to the Summer Opera program in Sante Fe, New Mexico, something analygous to Summer Stock for opera singers. Agents were starting to take notice of him. He won a position this year as an ensemble member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and started in the cast in April of this year. As an ensemble member with a regular salary, he was finally able to make a living solely from pursuing his passion and also given regular opportunity to audition for larger roles in Opera performances.

Unfortunately, Ryan was diagnosed with stomach cancer in late March of this year and started going through treatment while in Chicago. Initial accounts were encouraging. Burkitt's Lymphona is considered one of the more treatable forms of cancer and he was expected to recover quickly and be back to singing at the Opera. He went through 2 rounds of chemo and was back at home recuperating and started attending rehearsals again. Then, he got an infection and had to return to the hospital since his immune system was so compromised from the chemo. He did not end up leaving.... At first, I would talk to him pretty regularly on the phone. And then, the calls became less frequent. Me and his best friend discussed going to visit him. We were not able to go the same week, so he and some other friends went up one weekend and I went up the next. I am not really sure what I expected when I got there but I have to say that I was startled when I first saw him in the hospital.

Honestly, I could have walked by him 5 times and not known it was him if he hadn't opened his mouth! Ryan had been working out and losing weight before he went off to Chicago but he had probable lost another 50 pounds since then. Also, apparently, an affect of chemotherapy can be the darkening of skin because he was probably 4 shades darker than he used to be. Also, the shape of his face and facial features had totally changed. He had very little soft tissue on his face so his nose was even shaped differently. His teeth had an orangish hue from the medecine he had been taking. It was startling. But he was the same Ryan. I sat there with him and his family all day. He dosed in and out and we watched the documentary from his MET competition. To see and hear him perform was amazing! It was just beautiful! Such a gift! And to be watching it in him hotel room was particularly poignant. We all teared up..... It was hard to know what to do other than just be there. His parents were upset by the latest discussions with the doctors which seemed to not give them much hope. They had started trying to sneak herbal therapies into his room. A friend from NY had sent a reiki therapist over to do a treatment on him. I came back to see him the next morning on my way to the airport.

Three days later, on my birthday, I heard that the doctors had reported that his tumor has shrunk 40% so they were encouraged and were going to try to boost up his immune system for another round of chemo. It never happened. Ryan died a few weeks later. It was awful...... so much promise unrealized..... so young, only 32......

With all these tragedies happening amongst my peers, it has really gotten me thinking about my age. For me, there is not really anyone around generationally older than my parents. Death is a much closer reality for me now after this year. I reflect on what I have accomplished in my life and I don't really have regrets. I have had some great experiences, wonderful friends and learned a lot from the challenges I have worked through. I have not yet found the person I want to spend the rest of my life with and have children with but I understand that this is something that cannot be rushed. I don't particularly feel anxious about it personally. But what I am starting to comtemplate is that I really want to give my parents the experience of seeing me married and meeting their first grandchild. I know two friends whose mothers died right before they gave birth to their first child. So it is not for me that I feel anxious, but for my parents. However, my parents are not the kind to pressure me about these types of things and I know that they would not want me to rush into something that was not fulfilling for them. So, I will just concentrate in enjoying all my moments, my experiences with the people I love, searching for other fulfilling connections with new people and not taking any of it for granted!

It's not just black folks.... or Americans for that matter!

It's not just black folks who get a little too creative with their childrens' names. Check out this story from the USAToday about what a family court judge did in New Zealand!

Ugh!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2008-07-24-New-Zealand_N.htm

I have two first cousins....

Brunsli's post about meeting one of here 53 paternal cousins for the first time got me thinking about my family. I have two first cousins, on my father's side and they are about 8-10 years older than me. They also grew up in CA so I never got to know them all that well.

I have 8 second cousins, 2 are the children of my father's uncle and 6 are the sons of my mother's aunt. Yes, I have a great aunt who had 6 sons! My great uncle was good with those Y chromosomes! And just about all of these cousins have children who are older than me, some significantly.

And then we get to the 3rd cousins and this is when it gets a little harder to count but it still doesn't come close to 53! My father's side is still pretty easy. One second cousin had 2 children, the oldest is 16. But on my mother's side, each of those sons' of my great aunt had multiple children, except one. I think I can count just about all of them because they all pretty much stayed in the city where I grew up, except for the kids of one of the older ones because he lived somewhere else and didn't come back that often. So third cousins equals 9 plus maybe 2 or 3 from the cousin who I don't know well. But the thing was a bunch of these cousins were the same age and I was about 4 years younger than the youngest of most of them and at least 4 years older than the 3 youngest ones.

Four years is a big difference when you are a kid. It is the difference between 2nd and 6th grade, 5th and 9th grade, 8th and 12th grade and that is a big difference! So I never really felt connected to those older 3rd cousins, who were all pretty close. Same thing but the opposite way for the younger ones, plus they were all boys which added another dynamic.

So this, combined with the fact that I am an only child (I have mentioned that before, haven't I?) means that I have never really felt that close-knit big family feeling. I am not complaining and I probably have had a lot less drama in my life as a result but sometimes I think it would be nice....

Giving thanks....

So it is Thanksgiving time and you know I had to do some cooking. In fact, somehow, I ended up cooking the entire dinner, save about 2 things this year! Oh, and we ended up having 12 people.

After coordinating all the grocery lists etc. with my parents, I headed up to their house on Wednesday, complete with the other things I needed from my house to cook for dinner, and my dog. One Thanksgiving emergency was averted when I realized that I had left the hosue without all the brine that I had prepared for the turkey. Luckily, I was just about to pass an exit for a mall, the last one for another 100 miles, that had a Williams-Sonoma in it. It was right at 10am so I rolled up to the store right when they opened and bought some new brine. Whew!

My normally 3 hour trip ended up taking about 6 hours however because of what turned out to be a tractor trailer accident that blocked off the entire road. In true high tech fashion, while waiting in traffic for about 2 hours, I checked my email, IM'd Brunsli, and, when I couldn't take it any longer, searched for a traffic website that would tell me exactly what the problem was with the traffic! That was how I learned that there was a tractor trailer that had decided to fold itself in half across the highway about 4 miles up from where I was, spewing cardboard all over the place. After 2 hours, 20 miles, and a sorely needed bathroom break (it was touch and go there for a while!) I was able to continue cruising down the road at a regular clip.

Then it was crunch time. My mother, who had gotten more and more OCD about cleanliness as she has gotten older, has decided that she wanted her kitchen to be clean and most of the dishes clean and put away by the time guests arrived and had called me about 6 times over the course of the week prior to me coming to bug me about various aspects of the meal preparation. I finally had to tell her to "stop micromanaging my Thanksgiving cooking!" Here is what was on the menu and what I had to prepare:

• Brined Cranberry Glazed Turkey
• Stuffing with Duck & Cherry Sausage and Porcini Mushrooms
• Smoked Corn and Grape Sauté
• Collard Greens with Golden Raisins
• Triple Cherry Pie
• Maple Bourbon Pecan Pie with Wheat-flavored crust

My mom made Monkey Bread, a holiday tradition, and other guests brought macaroni and cheese, baby artichokes and green salad (a green jello salad with pineapple, pecans and cream cheese, Yum!)

After the guests left, with all the cooking....and eating, I had to take about a 2 hours nap! It was a good day!

Celebrity sightings....

I got stuck in a middle seat....

in the middle section.......

on the plane out here....

and in the second row of coach! The woman in front of me also reclined her seat a little. Can you say skwooshed!?!

But because I was all the way towards the front and could see in the curtain for first class, when we were getting off the plane, I saw a familiar face getting out of her seat up there.

It was Eve

and the woman skwooshing me happened to be her assistant. (How does one get one of these jobs??) She looked good, just like on TV, with reddish-brown hair and all the makeup and she waited at the carousel for her bags with the rest of us, although she didnt have to pick them up.

Then, later that night, at dinner we saw the Hiphopapotomus, Jemaine Clemant from Flight of the Conchords, although since I had to look up his name to write this blog post, I am not sure if he classifies as a true celebrity.....

And then..... nothing...... (of there was that Nobel Laureate at the Caltech Athenaeum Club... um, okay.... I am pretty sure that doesn't count for anyone except perhaps scientists...)

Although, this wasnt really a paint the town red, clubbing type of trip (I did not go to one club! Oh, I am getting old!) where were all the celebrities out getting their smoothies and shopping on Melrose and eating Cuban food???

I did manage to get one more celebrity sighting in thanks to some old family friends. Some of my parents best friends from St. Louis live in LA, Sophie and Harry, and we got to meet up with them for dinner. The next day I met up with Sophie again and went with her to her office. She is a VP at a major TV production company and I got to go over to the studio and hang out for a little bit.


I got to watch a couple TV pilots for new TV shows this season (Journeyman seems like it could be an interesting new one, although a few points were just a little too corny or contrived) and got a tour of a few of the sets for their premiere show in production. I got to see the courtroom set and sit in the judge's chair and also see the office set. There also happened to be a marking rehearsal going on with 3 of the major stars from the show, one of whom just won an Emmy for his role, so I got to see them run through their lines for this particular scene before heading over to the makeup trailer. My major impressions were this:

1. The actors are shorter than I thought
2. We get the best of it when we see the final product. The actual filming of the scenes is extremely tedious and boring. There is a lot of hurry up and wait. It did not seem very glamourous at at! For example, this was maybe a 1-2 minute scene.

• First, they talked through the scene with the actors,
• then practiced dialogue,
• then walked through the scene and marked their marks on the floor where they stopped during the scene,
• then they talked about the camera angles and placement with the director while the actors were still there.
• then, the actors went away and the crew started moving around the walls and stuff needed to support the scene and started to place all the lights
• Apparently, at this same time, the actors went to the makeup trailer for 40 or so minutes of makeup and hair
• then they come back and film the scene 40 bazillion times so they can get all the camera angles....

All this might take about 2-3 hours..... for a 2 minutes scene! Can you imagine?!?!? I think I would tear my hair out! And they do this for 12 hours each day (on a short day). So, as I said, we get the best of it when we watch the show. Although, I guess we don't get paid.... Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the actors. Cameras are not allowed on the set, of course.

I wonder if anyone will be on my flight back!?!?