As American as Pain Au Chocolat

Twice lately I have been reminded of how lucky I am to simply have been born where I was.

Understand this right off the bat - I am not particularly patriotic, not at all really. I have no “Go USA” bumper stickers. I do not fly an American flag. I am not saying I am ANTI America – I am just not a gung-ho “America is the only good country” and “The USA is the very best and no one can ever beat us” kinda gal… I have traveled to several other countries and am open minded enough to realize that the one I currently live in is not the only one that has a lot to offer its citizens.

But TWICE lately new friends I met from China have given me pause – and caused me to not be able to speak for a moment. They reminded me what good fortune I have simply because I am an American.

The first was at an opening night party for a theatre festival. His name was Wangkai and he spoke almost no English, but was totally enthralled by my husband David. They had no common language but by the time I walked up to them they were well into a lengthy conversation about, well, about life! There was a Chinese/English interpreter present but she was a total slacker (frustrating for me as a professional interpreter) – sometimes our new friend would speak for a minute or two and her “interpretation” to us would be a sentence… Hmmm – I KNOW he said more than that… Our smiles and our gestures seemed to communicate more genuine meaning that what she could provide. At the end of the exchange (and the photo taking – many photos on his phone) – I said, “Let’s be Facebook friends!! Are you on Facebook???”. THAT caught the interpreter’s ear, “No. No Facebook. No Facebook access in China,” she answered FOR him, without even interpreting my question.

I was floored. Sure, I had heard that on the news. I knew that China is not an open society like the one we

are privy to. But Facebook – it seems so innocuous, so simple and frivolous. Yet I also know from the news how strong of a tool it can be to support an uprising. How it can be a channel to both learn what is happening in other countries and to share what is happening in yours. And our new friend’s government had deemed it off limits.

Then tonight, a new friend from China, Chong, caught me off guard. He just arrived and is staying with us for a couple of months. In the normal “get to know you” banter I asked if he had brothers and sisters. “No – China has a one child policy,” was his reply. He didn’t sound like he thought less of me for not thinking of that before I opened my mouth (though part of me thought, “I KNEW THAT – WHYYY did I ask that?”). He was just stating a fact. But what a bizarre fact for an American – a person who lives in a country where a family with 19 children is “famous” and has their own tv show and the “average” family has 2.5 children… So, even though I do not have children, I have the RIGHT to have them. I am grateful for that.

So, am I going to put a big flag pole in my yard tomorrow? No. But I will keep quietly tearing up as I sing along to the National Anthem when I hear it, and I will be grateful to live in a country where things like social media and children are not regulated by my government. *

*And don’t start dissing the NSA about spying on me, yes, I know they are reading this. HI NSA!

We Ride At Dawn

I can’t be the only one feeling down. And stressed. And nervous. And angry. And confused. And just about every other negative emotion that could be listed. There is just so much ANGST in the world right now, especially with the upcoming elections in the US. And sometimes (at least for deep feelers like myself) it just feels like a little too much to bear. But then I get a reminder. A reminder that even in the midst of all of these sleepless nights and fret – there IS good in the world. I got 2 reminders recently, and I thought I should share them in case you haven’t had any. I don’t know, I guess with the hopes that the reminders I came across will help boost your spirits a bit, too. Here’s the first one. This hat. We came home the other day and this was hanging on our front doorknob. Now, we have had a LOT of things left on our porch over the years – rusty cans of soup, brand new snow boots, and everything in between – ...

Content to Live

This is 59. Birthday photo 2025 - National Arboretum in the rain It is a strange age. It’s older than my sister Annette ever got to experience. It is on the verge of “old”. Or wait, is it old? Is it just that what “old” is keeps getting pushed back further and further, so actually we hit it a long time ago? I don’t feel “old”. But, as always for a decade or so, I feel “resolute”. I feel “accepting”. I feel realistic . I know my time on earth is limited, and I know I have used up over half of it. Some of it I wasted – watching movies but not really paying attention, sleeping, dusting (though to be honest I have not wasted much time on that one, one look at our house will tell you that). Some of it I relished - skiing down mountains, splashing in waterfalls and ocean waves, looking out at cornfields, clouds, and forests from high in the sky. Some of it I suffered – watching loved ones die, witnessing friendships fading away,...

Separation of Church and Donuts

Blessed. Ugh. I have had issues with that word since before I can remember. Blessed. It makes me feel so, I don’t know, cringy. To me, it signifies that I, as the “blessed”, am in a better position than someone else. More elevated. More healthy. More rich. More children. More talented. Whatever IT is – I have more of IT – because you see, I. Am. Blessed. Because when you think about it, for someone to qualify as “blessed”, someone else has to be lower, beneath them, “unblessed” you could say. Because if we were ALL blessed, then we would be equal, and then that sort of defeats the purposed of blessed , right? I dislike the term so much that once my sister gave me a tacky hot pad from the Dollar Tree that said “blessed”. Only, because she knew my opinion of the word, she used a black Sharpie to cross that out with a circle and a slash, signifying “unblessed” I guess. I liked it. ...

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