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April 23, 2000 |
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Happy Easter!
No egg hunts for me today. Come to think of it, I don't think my family
ever celebrated Easter. Technically I was brought up with a Catholic
affliction, mostly because I attended a Catholic school when I was younger.
My parents thought of it more as a good education rather than as a source
of spiritual inspiration; they were also surprisingly lacking in spiritual
guidance. I remember every once in a while our school teacher would ask us
which church we attended… Note that we were never asked if we
attended a church. Naturally, this confused me, as I'm sure that it
confused my sisters. I suppose I was ashamed of attending a Catholic
school without attending a church. Everytime I was asked this question, I
wrote down the church at my school. It was only a block away.
In this school, religion was taught in conjunction with all other
courses… arithmetic, English, language, religion. That was
school. My home life had no correlation with this. We discussed as much
religion at home as much as other homes discuss thermodynamics, which was
fine by me, but at school we were still judged. At home, family was more
important… honor. I led a strange life as a child.
I don't remember the bunnies …or the egg hunts. The only thing I
really remember from Easter are the countless movies about Christ on
television. I don't even remember how many channels there were in Puerto
Rico. There may have only been one movie about Christ… it's just that
Terry would not change the station. It
had little to do with her wanting to watch the show, it was mostly because
she would feel guilty about missing it.
There was no joy in practicing religion. No uplifting spirits. No guiding
light. It was life practiced as a collection of procedures with little
explanation. Maybe this way of living was just the strange offspring of
being raised Catholic and Chinese. I can't hope to figure out how to
separate them.
I'm Chinese by blood and by culture; I'm also American. I was
raised Catholic, though now I'm agnostic. It's not that I'm
running away from who I am, maybe it is that who I am is not confined
by religion.
I spent much of the previous night continuing to cleaning up my place. I got rid of many things, though many things reminded me of days past. Maybe I should collect some of them for more entries for Material Possessions. I threw away many high school and college papers that I've kept over the years; how much do I really need to reference high school chemistry?
Naturally, there was Sunday Dinner with Len™. I called Len some time after six and he said he would be by shortly. Naturally, we didn't know where we were going for dinner when he arrived. I suggested going to Shamiana for dinner. Now I've been suggesting it for a few weeks now, but Len has been declining. For me it wasn't so much that I wanted to go there in particular. The last time we (as in Len and I) were there, they weren't able to prepare the naan, they gave us a coupon for a free naan the next visit. Naturally, Len has me hold on to it. Now every time he asks about dinner, I suggest Shamiana. It's a little game we play. He finally agrees to go. Cool!
As it turns out they were closed for Easter. I suppose that's what you get when Caucasian folks run a Indian restaurant. Indian folk don't normally celebrate Easter do they?
After that dismal attempt at trying to get dinner, we wound up going to Best Wok. I knew they were open because… well, they're Chinese. I'm not trying to sound prejudicial here, but I've worked at about a dozen Chinese restaurants, and none of them ever closed for Easter. I'm just playing the numbers …and I was right.
Dinner was good as usual there. The manager remembers my name, which I found a bit puzzling. I believe that Len and I go there at about the same frequency, though they don't seem to remember his name. Len and I go there so frequently that we can even order the usual and they know what that is. We talked about the kinds of things we always talk about… plus baseball, since it is baseball season.
Immediately after dinner, while he was having his smoke, we discussed a show that he watched recently where they enumerated the top ten muscle cars. Apparently the corvette does not qualify for a muscle car. I'm not sure precisely what the qualifications were, but we were chatting about it for a while.
We even stopped by this super expensive car dealer… Park Place Ltd., I believe. He noted a car a couple of days ago and was really curious as to what it was. It was a Lotus by the way. They seem to have a new convertible that looks like a cross between a more conventional roadster and a dune buggy.
I noticed that Pam had left her sunglasses in my car. I wouldn't be seeing her again until this Friday, which meant that we would have to be without her sunglasses for four days.
We can't have that.
To be truthful, I also wanted to see her. After dinner with Len, I got her sunglasses and also grabbed the pipe wrench that I borrowed from her a few weeks before. I started to head to her place. I put my headset on my cell phone and called her. As we were chatting she pieced together that I was driving, but I told her that I was driving to the grocery store to get bleach, which was a lie.
I get out of my car, while still on the phone, and make my way to her front door. I knock. She sounds startled over the phone. Who on earth is knocking on random doors at 9pm on Easter Sunday? In a cautious voice, she asked, "Who is it?"
I reply, "It's me!"
She is both startled and amused. I just wanted to stop by and see her for a few minutes, which turned out to be closer to an hour. It's okay, we hadn't seen each other for an entire day; we were getting withdrawal symptoms.
Besides, she needed her sunglasses… and her pipe wrench.
April 23, 2000