Fifteen minutes before court and my stomach is erupting with butterflies. I've prepared so thoroughly for this case for the past six months that I'm surprised how nervous I feel right now. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that today is the finale to a long drawn out matter. Under the butterflies is a pillow of calm. I've done my best.

A note to my daughter. One day, you will be ten years old and for the first time you will be big enough to feel your own individuality. Your highly evolved human brain will begin to mature with nascent cynicism and the sun that use to follow me will now be casting shadows. A restless atmosphere will overcome you on occassion. On those such days, you may want to sit alone and sit and stare out the window. I hope on those such occassions you ponder the world stretched out far before you but not forget that we remain connected. As you stretch your arms out, you may need to do so to push me away. For the connection of our souls may become burdensome to your confused heart. If you are my daughter, I know you will have to run away to learn the meaning of life. As myself, you will never stop asking. I don't want to spoil the fun by giving you the answers. We are together pieces on a chain, an ancestry of strong willed women. Each link measuring out the strength of our evolution. It is only natural for you to leave your origin in order to find your own reconnection point. I will be there with my hands stretched out when you come full circle.

It's February 14, 2010. Valentines Day and Chinese New Year happens to fall on the same day this year. To celebrate, I'm making a special - decievingly complicated provincial brined chicken with a ginger and scallion slaw. It's both traditional and our favorite since our first taste of unadulerated Chinese food in New York City.

New Year in Sheboygan is such a non-event. There is only a spritz (not even a sprinkle) of Chinese and Vietnamese people in this town. We know that the other exists through our connection at the Hmong Union Asian Supermarket. The Union market is the glue that bonds all eastern Asians within a 50 mile radius of here. It's a mystery to the store owner and I where these rare Chinese people reside though. They've only been sighted in the back kitchens of the Chinese buffet and to-go restaurants and a couple of the Thai restaurants restaurants around town. We suspect they live further north towards Manitowoc and Greenbay. On a day like today, I miss the buzz of people in the market shopping for prized flowers, fruits, vegetables and meats for the big feasting and celebration at home. I use to complain about the chaos found in Asian communities. Now, I feel lonely without its homely familiarity.

Kaolin celebrates her 17th month birthday today. The plan originally was to go all out with the traditional fare but the week got in the way. With two trials less than 6 weeks away, I felt a bit obligated to head to the office for a few hours this morning. But ofcourse, I didn't have my cell phone so I couldn't call my boss to figure out the new passcode to the office door and after the third try, was totally locked out of the key pad entirely. Maybe Grandma was telling me that I should really be enjoying this important spiritual day of my ancestor's with my new family. So backwards I went on my trail to the supermarket for plump chicken, spices and a bottle of Cakebread wine for honey. Inspiration got the best of me so I ran to the Union market and found a package of red envelope and a plate of sugar cured coconut candy to go along with the rare kamkuates that was on sale at Walmart.

I couldn't help but get teary eyed on my ride back and forth between stores. The more authentic ingredients I was able to obtain, the more old forgotten pieces of New Year and my childhood was resurrected. The day's homesickness started with an episode of Anthony Bourdaine's travel through Los Angeles' Thai town. For the first time in my life, I missed being surrounded and lost in a sea of Asian Americans. For better or for worst, I want to relate with my ethnic peers again. Times have changed and we have become our own people in the United States. I am now a mother, a professional and a part Asian - part American woman. The period of identity crisis from a decade ago is come and gone and today, we look at each other with a sense of knowing and with less likelihood of judgment. We are grown up now and I want to share the better part of the coming experiences with my familiar, those who can laugh at the inside jokes.

I know only 3 sets of Chinese people in Sheboygan. A distant Kohler colleague of Clay's in the marketing department, a Kohler engineer and his wife-kids-mother who live down the street, and the Thai-Chinese woman who runs the Thai Cafe. I discovered for the first time that she is in fact 100% Chinese except that she grew up in Thailand. Her husband is American and she also has lost touch with New Year celebration primarily because she has no other family nearby to celebrate the tradition with. To cheer each other up, we wished each other happy New Year in our familiar language and for a second, was standing on the footsteps of our mother's and grandmother's kitchen door way, smelling boiled brined chicken and hearing the clangs of women working for hours over pots of gastronomical delights.

So Gung Hai Fat Choi and San Lien Fai Loc from Sheboygan.

Monday, Tuesday Happy Day

The sun is brilliant this morning. But there's no doubt it's winter, as the large thermometer out front of my office marks the temperature at 34 degrees. I am just thankful for the sunlight, since it seems we were shortchanged this summer. Right now, two of my girlfriends are getting ready for a play date. I'm imagining lots of running around, hot tea, cookies, and happy babies. I wonder if I should have taken the morning off to join them. It's going to be a long day and long week at the office. I pray that I can work out at least one day off this week.

Planning for War

Strategizing for life and happiness is very similar to the methods for winning a war. Strategy is the key component for both planned and spontaneous moments taking us from one point to another. We were having breakfast at the Family Diner just this past Sunday and I overheard a family who seemed to be in the midst of an intervention for their niece, a heroine addict. The tone of their conversation was very encouraging. When asked what her thoughts were for her future, she replied that she believed that everything happens for a reason. The fact that a friend contacted her out of the blue and referred an open job at the local factory felt preordained. The timing and unexpected nature of the opportunity colored it fate in her mind. Calling it all fate was the best, only acceptable way she could cope with the reality of her own poor decisions. In her uncle's attempt to agree with her in order to keep the positivity flowing, he failed to contribute any real wisdom. Her grandfather, a shrunken man over age 80, shook his head and muttered an indecipherable comment. The uncle interpreted it to mean that in grandpa's day, the ideal situation would have been for her to find a nice man to marry and pay her bills. In truth, I believe the 80 year old man probably meant more than this and wanted to give real pearls of wisdom but was paralyzed by the tragedy and apprehensive hope that his granddaughter could escape the drug world and survive the next 20 years being self sufficient. In any case, this last weekend took on a tone of desperation of someone at the brink of loosing total control over her circumstances.

I was visiting with a girlfriend of mine this last week on a play date with our two baby bears. Like all new mothers, it was a matter of time before her bubble of self expectation would burst and she become exposed to her new uncontrolled reality. I've read articles in several parenting magazines that exposed this bubble. Our post baby life is so incongruous with our pre-baby life that all our prior experiences become inapplicable. All of a sudden, it's a lot of chaos. The chaos in fact that never ceases to end. The hardest part is being able to see beyond the fog of self denial and witness the clear picture that we are in the process of changing identity. No one has made the comparison that becoming a parent is like the process of a worm molting into a butterfly. You are no longer your prior self in physical form, though your spirit remains the same but changed. The goal is to regroup and reorient. The goal is to form new goals and get rid of old ones that no longer work.

What's most difficult for us Kohler-Designer moms is the fact that we're not from around here. There is no family support. We're all on our own. Our husbands are the main bread winners and they work at Kohler, one of the most demanding companies ever to exist. Therefore, if we are to succeed in making this picture work we must identify, strategize and attack.

My friend and I talked about our own respective future plans as parents. Possible second babies in near future. How to hasten our husband's metamorphisis into parenthood. How to regain control of our own current life so that we can walk out of our doors more often without so much worry of the uncontrollable. The best thing we got out of our conversations was knowledge that we weren't the only ones going through this and that we weren't going insane as our husbands would have it. it was vindicating to find confirmation for how we've been feeling. Baby steps in the right direction but undeniably steps in the forward direction.

Accepting the Uncontrollable

"Motherhood means accepting the uncontrollable."

Clay had planned a weekend vacation to celebrate our sixth year wedding anniversary in Chicago weeks before he left for London. The thought of traveling 4 to 5 hours from Wisconsin through Chicago city traffic and staying 3 days in an unfamiliar environment sounded like too much work to be fun. In fact, the closer the day came the more I thought about the mountain of things to do: buy a new car seat that faced foward, pack food supply-diaper supply-traveling supply-clothing-toys-medicine for baby, bring bathing suits for everyone since Clay suggested swimming at the hotel pool, bring medicine for Clay's cold, pack Midol and maxi pads for me (just in case), coordinate and drop off the dogs at the kennel, map my way to the hotel, and get out of work early enough to beat rush out traffic.

Sunday night, I was close to a panic attack and wondered if this weekend was going to turn into the year of our divorce with images of travel induced stress causing blow up arguments. I even began making a list of excuses to avoid the trip altogether. I mentioned my concerns generally to a friend of mine who has a little baby as well. She responded with congratulations and well wishes for the trip. And it occurred to me suddenly that I have become the biggest self-defeatist I know. Only seven months ago, baby and I flew to and from California, Pittsburgh and drove 6 hours to Tucson within a three month period. Nothing had stopped me before from spending entire days at the malls and restaurants in Milwaukee with my little k-bear. When did I develop this mental block in my mind with such fear of disaster? Just because things go wrong doesn't mean that disaster is pending. A bad incident can also be a memorable one if you survive it by rolling with the punches. I had to drop the wall completely and allow myself to roll with the punches. Suddenly, I had dreams of authentic Chinese cooking and stylish home decore. By Thursday, I felt like a teenager on her last day of class before spring break.

Unconventional Roles

This week Clay is away on a Kohler trip to London for 10 days. I'm not jealous at all because 10 days alone with baby means eating left overs the entire week straight, having total control over the remote and the computer, watching junky reality chick shows in defiant enjoyment, spending weekend time cleaning at my own pace and vegging at my own pace without interruption or interference. I know, you'd think Mr. Hubby was the biggest ogre to dominate a household. Only half true. The other truth of it is my own self imposed rules and restrictions.

The house needs to meet a certain minimal level of cleanliness. I used to expect this 7 days out of the week. I kept that up for maybe a month into our first year of living together. By the end of the stretch, I felt near suicidal while still waiting for him to follow up on a two week promise to wash the dishes. Hmmm. We didn't have a mechanical dishwasher at the time. Lately, I've parred it down to 4 days out of the week, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Wednesday, with one week per month off. Usually we have at least one super hectic week per month. Further, it is acceptable that the house be a total wreck on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Those usually follow the busiest days of the week.

When the baby was born, the demands piled on. Many not self imposed. I found myself cleaning nearly 15 bottles and accessories every other day, mixing, labeling, etc. The whole process would eat up 20 to 30 minutes out of my night. This doesn't seem like much, but considering the fact that we would arrive home by 6pm at the earliest and go to bed by 11pm, 30 minutes is a lot of time. K-bear and I would arrive home by 6:30pm. Immediately dropping groceries on the counter, K-bear would eat first. Then I'd start cooking dinner by 7 or 7:30pm. We would eat by 8 - 8:30, clean the dishes by 9pm, prep the bottles around 9 - 9:30, give baby her snack at 9:30, play with baby for 30 minutes on the floor, pick up stray items and get stuff ready for work the next day, put baby to bed between 10:30 and 11. I would have 15 precious minutes to myself which often I would prefer to spend in quiet solitude away from daddy's man-shows or the noise of the t.v. in general. The schedule was so hectic that I found myself skipping showers every other day and giving K-bear a bath only once a week. And I was only working full time on an hourly basis.

All came to a head when my boss proposed I switch to full time salaried billable hours working 5 more billable hours a week than I was currently making. The conflict I felt between the pursuit of my career and the needs of my family suddenly darkenned by the abysmal depth of the question to be answered. Where is the balance? Quickly the ugly word I had been hiding from since becoming a new parent started to lurk beyond the periphery: Compromise. I have been equating this word to failure and counter-survivalism. I had fought hard against three long years of depression in Sheboygan due to the difficulties of establishing my career and social network here. I fought hard to get to where I was and all of a sudden it was moving too fast.

I don't know if because of the traditional roles we play as men and women, husbands and wives that somehow the rising success of the wife is more challenging to a family than that of the husband. We can agree that until recent time, the working world has been a man's world. There should be no debate that if dad decides to head off to the bar and join his boss and coworkers for happy hour, he should do so in order to remain competitive. Never mind that Mr. Boss made the call at 5:30 p.m. or that dad forgot to call mom before 8pm because his cell phone was dead. The source of all their livelihood hinged on this good social raport. It becomes business as usual. Daddy stumbles home, dinner's in the microwave, baby's playing on the floor, t.v. remote's where it always is, and the dogs are all lick ready. All mom really wants to hear at this point is, "Thanks honey, you did a great job with the house and the baby. I really appreciate your hard work. Food's delicious. I'm so glad to be home."

When mom experiences rising success and increased demands from work, I wonder whether it would be acceptable for her to call dad past 7pm to inform him that she is currently at a bar with her co-workers and boss. That she may be snacking on appetizers to avoid drinking on an empty stomach and that she won't be super hungry when she gets home. Just stick the food in the fridge for lunch. She'll be back no later than 8:30. Daddy may have to watch the kids again tonight. It shouldn't be a big deal that she didn't call sooner. After all, the livelihood of the family hinges on this job and she has to do what is expected of her to remain competitive. It's really beyond her control and she should not be punished for complying with the social demands of her job. I wonder which situation would lead to divorce faster.

It was tough figuring out the right decision for myself and my family. How do you say "Thanks but no thanks" to your boss who's offering you a promotion and a raise? What will happen to your reputation in the small legal community of Sheboygan if you move backwards in your first year of introduction. What's a debutant to do? Ultimately I reflected upon the lives of the people I most respected whom I considered to be most successful. I also reflected on the lives of those whom I thought failed in making the right choices in life. In all cases, the right decisions pointed towards the center. The center being based on love and those people whom should be most important in one's life. In mine were my family and my daughter. I needed for them to be the focus of my spiritual center if I had any real hopes for success and balance. The decision then became clear and easy.