Category: Living

Flight

BettyLeave a comment

*Bringing back some old stuff I removed, just to remind myself that it exists. 

In a few days my boss will leave on vacation. In his absence, I am to drive to his house twice a week, once to make sure the main water line is on (horizontal) and once to make sure it is off (vertical). Before his departure, I must see that his dog Fluffy (one cannot make up such a creative pet name) is safely boarded at a dog hotel and that his housekeeper is driven to her home in South Central LA, worlds away from her “office,” just as my mind is often, at the office.

When I first interviewed, the woman asked me if I would be okay doing the occasional personal tasks for my boss. I nodded gamely, thinking that personal things wouldn’t occupy more than twenty percent of the job. My main station, after all, was still at the office, at the massive desk right outside my boss’s office. I had my own printer, was just a stone’s throw away from the fax machine, and had drawers stocked with office supplies and company swag. But things change. Or more accurately, certain situations reveal themselves slowly…. roses bloom then wither and fade. Job descriptions can do that too. 
Here’s the sad part. I’m pretty damn good at the personal stuff because it doesn’t take much brain power. Driving to and from my boss’s house is easy. Making sure his wife knows when the Kogi truck is in town so I can stand in line and buy fifteen burritos, fifteen tacos and four quesedillas before she comes to pick them up is easy. Making sure his kid has a ride to and from tennis camp is VERY easy. But when you’re tired all the time and you just don’t want to do it- any of it, regardless of whether it’s personal or for the company – everything becomes hard. 
This afternoon my boss gave me a brief lesson on booking flights. The itinerary itself was slightly more complicated than his usual LAX – wherever – wherever – LAX. It was something like LAX – wherever – wherever – wherever – wherever -wherever – LAX. I showed him several options for the whole trip, then he started to ask questions about specific legs. 
“What about from wherever to wherever? And what if I left at this time? How much is first class? How much is business class? Can I fly direct from LAX  to wherever? Are the business class seats completely flat?” 
None of this in one go, but in spurts. So I started to answer his questions in spurts and in doing so, confused the shit out of myself. I wasn’t blessed as my boss was, with razor sharp memory. I hang on to the tiny morsels – crumbs, really – of memory that I have and pray, like I did in high school biology, that those morsels would be exactly what he wanted to know. But of course it never is. Booking these damn flights took me a week. 
“I could pick up the phone right now, call the agent, and get it done in ten minutes,” he said, “But you need to learn how to do this. You need to learn how to make it simple.”
He strolled to the easel he has in his office for grand ideas and quickly wrote down the route options I’d given him with the corresponding times. I watched in awe – I had read the itineraries over and over and still did not know a single one by heart. 
“Look at it,” he said, “You’re making it too hard for yourself. I don’t know what you do that.” 
The only thing he was missing now, he said, was the price for each route, “That’s the only information I need you to get now.” 
I had gone bleary eyed trying to give him details about the shorter flights in-between, confusing myself and irritating him in the process, giving him B, C, D, E, and X, when really he just wanted to know the three different options from A to Z and how much each would cost.
He drew a squiggly line in between the A and Z and said, “All that shit in the middle is important, but you can tell me that later, when I’m done deciding the big picture, how to get from A to Z. When deciding A to Z, I need to know two things: how long, and what does it cost.” 
He held up two fingers and said, “It’s all very logical when you think of it this way Betty. Time and money, right? I have money, so sometimes that allows me to save time. But I still want to know what it costs. How can I get there in the shortest amount of time and with the best value? Those are the two most fundamental things when it comes to making decisions in life: time and money.” 
My boss doesn’t know it, but he’s quite the philosopher. I agree wholeheartedly with his statement but will add another fundamental: energy. 
It seemed that this particular exchange, above all others, underlined to me exactly why my time at the Company is drawing to a close.  

Practical Advice: Father Knows Best

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Two years ago around this same time, I found myself back in California looking for a job. I had just returned from a long weekend trip in Carmel, celebrating my Uncle Louis’s second, for-real retirement (at the eyebrow-raising age of 70) from an aerospace company. Before Carmel I’d been in Asia for a two month-long “waiting” period in much the same vein as I now await graduate school admissions decisions (more on that later) though back then it was for a Fulbright. The Fulbright didn’t come through and I went home to celebrate my uncle’s retirement and mourn my own entry into corporate America, hoping companies wouldn’t ask what I did immediately out of college.


“Well, I was banking on getting this scholarship thingy that would allow me to continue dicking around Asia.” 

“Please leave.” 
I clawed at my face, “What does this mean?” I asked my friends, most of whom were well into graduate studies or about to be or had been working full time for a while. 
“Get a job,” my friends said, “Get real.” 
I didn’t panic, but rather listlessly sent my resume out to random, underpaid Craigslist listings with job titles all containing the word and or variations of ‘assistant’ which I have now come to recognize as a synonym for ‘underpaid, sometimes severely.’ For a few weeks, nobody called. My parents knew the hunt was hard – it was hard for their friends’ children, most of whom were more accomplished and goal-oriented than their daughter – so it was perhaps wisest to inquire politely from time to time and give me no further pressure unless I started looking at plane tickets again. 
One evening, having sent out two dozen or so resumes and cover letters (do people even read those things) to companies that I knew vaguely about, I shut my computer down and went to the living room where my father sat with his feet up on the round glass coffee table, watching the Taiwanese news. He did this every night and mostly did not like it when I tried to speak to him over the pretty news anchor with the light but forceful, staccato voice. I needed an ego boost, something my father, he of the “you could stand to lose about ten pounds,” or “don’t stand like such a man,” or “girls who roll their eyes at their fathers usually stay single forever,” was unlikely to provide, but he was a working man and more importantly he supported me with his work. As of late, having sent more than a hundred resumes out into cold black cyberspace and hearing only radio silence, I realized the possibility that he’d need to do so for a few years more. I needed to know that my father would be okay if I were to be unemployed forever. 
“What,” he said, not bothering to look up from the TV screen.
“The job hunt.” 
He looked up, and kudos to him, read my face, “Not going well?”
“Not at all.” 
He sighed, “I’ve been telling you and telling you. Nothing in this world is easy. You’re the only idiot your age who didn’t rush into the job hunt out of college. You should have started looking in school.” 
“I was applying for a Fulbright!” I sputtered, incredulous though not deservedly so, (applying for a Fulbright is quite different from completing a Fulbright or discovering a cure for Lupus), “I didn’t want to get the job and then get the Fulbright and have to be like, ‘Oh sorry, psych! I have to go and be a Fulbright Scholar now, ha ha.'” 
My father shook his head, “Who cares? It’s always easier to say ‘no’ to a job offer than say ‘yes’ to nothing. You should have started looking a long time ago.” 
This was not the ego boost I was looking for. I did not want the conversation to continue down this particular path, nor did I want to go back to my room to continue the job hunt, but to do anything else would have seemed frivolous. Apparently I should have been making up for lost time and been trolling job postings 24/7, but at that moment, I wanted my dad to make me feel better. Mostly because my mother wasn’t home. She was playing badminton. If anything, I could have used a pep talk and decided to prompt one. 
“Sometimes,” I said grandly and with as serious a look as I could muster – so serious that it was borderline comical, “Sometimes I just want to marry a rich man.” 
My father looked up at me with a sudden, grave interest. He leaned forward and turned off the TV, something he almost never did unless we were arguing and I yelled at him to turn it off. I was mildly surprised and I thought, “Here we go, here’s where Dad goes, ‘Hell no my daughter won’t think like that. I raised her to be a smart, independent woman who will work hard and not have to rely on anyone else to take care of her.” I braced myself, it was a fatherly monologue I needed to hear. 
Instead, over the barely audible buzz of the darkened TV cathodes, my father nodded and say, “That’s okay too.” 
Excuse me. 
My father nodded at me, “I said, that’s okay too.” 
“Dad!” I looked at him with a confused grimace and he at me with eyebrows raised and eyes wide, a strange, hopeful smile on his face as though I had just presented him the solution to the world’s oldest riddle. 
“No, I’m not joking,” he said, “some girls don’t aspire to much, at least career wise.”
“I have aspirations!” I said. 
“You say you want to write! You’ve said that forever! But I don’t see you writing!” 
“I do!” though in fact at that point, I hadn’t, not very much, and not very seriously. I was saving my creative juices for the Fulbright, though in fact I just needed an excuse to not do anything at all for a while. 
My father shook his head, “Look, that’s beside the point. I know you don’t have huge career aspirations. But Jesus, look at you, you don’t even have huge feminine aspirations! You want to marry a rich man but where are you going to find him? And how are you going to find him looking like that?”
He waved at my person, tsk-tsking at my limp hair and pajamas (uniform of the unemployed), sallow, uncared for skin, and just general lack of feminine mystique. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but then again, I am my father’s daughter and it seemed more appropriate to laugh.
“What are you talking about?” I said. 
“Invest in yourself if you don’t see yourself investing too much in a career,” my father said, “Go buy some makeup! Lose some weight and get some new clothes!”
“Dad,” I said, “You’d have to pay for the makeup and clothes.” 
“Okay!” he said, getting more worked up as he spoke, “It’ll be an investment! Make yourself pretty and for God’s sake go out more with your friends to where young people go. All you do is sit around at home and eat and tell me not to eat. You think you’ll meet a rich man loafing at home all day in your pajamas nagging your dad?”
I did not, but I was also still stunned by the conversation in general. What had happened to all that talk before about hard work and self-reliance? Did something change in me or in him? Did my father see (or not see, perhaps) something in me that made him think “investing” in my physical appearance would somehow lead to a more secure future? 
“Do you think I’m incapable of supporting myself?” I wasn’t angry, just curious to know. If my father was anything he was honest. 
He leaned back into the couch and turned the TV on, though kept the volume low. 
“I don’t think you’re incapable,” he said, already beginning to tune out, “My daughter was born capable. But I’m saying you need to set some goals and work towards them. Don’t waffle. Don’t wait. Act. Act now, act fast. You want a job, you prepare for it, right? You want a rich husband? Well, there are preparations for that too.” 
I lay on the couch and watched the news but didn’t listen or register any of it. I was thinking. Slowly, the volume crept back up and five minutes later looked at my father’s face; his eyes were back at their usual after-dinner diameter. 
I pushed myself up, and looked back down at my father and smiled. He smiled back. 
“Thanks Dad,” I said, “I’ll go invest in myself now.” 
“Good. You made a decision.” 
I did, but not fully the one that was implied. As my father began to nod off, I walked away smiling to myself with the memory of the time in the sixth grade, when all the cool girls were wearing Lucky Brand jeans that cost $60, an obscene amount of money to spend on jeans, especially when most of my clothes were hand-me-downs. 
“I’d really really really like a pair of these jeans that everyone at school has,” I had said to my dad, whose clothes are almost exclusively from Costco (polo shirts) or JC Penney (trousers and Hush Puppies), “But they’re kind of expensive.” 
“That’s okay,” my father said, taking out his wallet, “Go buy yourself a pair. How expensive can they be?”
Before I could respond, he took out a twenty dollar bill and pushed it into my hand with the self-satisfaction won from being a father who knows he can always provide for his daughter, “That should do it, no?” 
Back in my room the computer stayed off. The job hunt would continue, that was for sure – better to invest with my own funds than shock my father with the brutal truth of what beauty and its upkeep cost – but for now, I needed my beauty rest. That was free. 

Taking my Grandpa to the Cerritos Library

BettyLeave a comment
Grandpa reading.

The Cerritos Library employs a small army of vigilant volunteers who patrols the stacks with straight backs and stern expressions that become sterner if its bearer spies a prohibited Starbucks cup or neon bag of Cheetos. They interrupt the quiet yet unfocused studies of various sleepy, glum-faced students and say, “Sir/Miss, you’re not allowed to have that. Please throw it away outside.” It is no wonder the Library, though having been renovated nearly a decade ago, is still pristine. Continue reading “Taking my Grandpa to the Cerritos Library” →

Because Other People Do it Better (Writing about New York Edition): Adam Gopnik

Betty2 Comments

Very Highbrow New York

In my personal statements for certain schools, I’m asked to list authors who’ve influenced me – and even though I’m afraid of the admissions people reading my list and then reading my writing sample and saying, “Well here’s a shameless imitator,” I have to be honest. Influences are influences, and of the many essayists I read and love (David Sedaris, Betsy Lerner, Joan Didion, Joseph Epstein, et. al.), Adam Gopnik stands out above the rest.  Continue reading “Because Other People Do it Better (Writing about New York Edition): Adam Gopnik” →

Return to Sender

Betty1 Comment

“I’m sending you back to your parents,” my boss said.

It was my last day at The Company.

“Sorry?” I said, “I still live with my parents.”

He chuckled, “I know, but go home and tell them that I say, ‘Your daughter is going back under your care.’ My responsibility for you ends here.”

I laughed, wondering what he meant.

“This whole time, I felt like I was parenting you.”

Portrait of the Artist’s Father, Paul Cezanne 1866 Oil on canvas.

 I recalled an awkward moment at one of my boss’s events, where after he’d accepted an award a mob of people swarmed our table to congratulate him. His wife was seated on his left and I to her left. Their daughter had taken the seat on my boss’s right but had gone to the restroom. His wife leaned towards me, asking me one thing or other as was cutting through my filet mignon. A man appeared over my shoulder, patted me on the back and said to my boss, “So is this young lady your daughter?”

I shook my head a little too hard and said five “No’s” in rapid succession so that the pink slice of steak I had so carefully speared quivered and loosened from the tines of my fork. It belly-flopped like a tiny, shitty diver onto my dress.

My boss’s wife laughed and my boss pretended not to see my little mishap. Though to my surprise, he didn’t falter or vehemently correct the man, who also pretended not to see though it was his stupid assumption that ruined my dress.

“Oh no,” my boss said, “She’s my assistant,” then pausing to think about it for a moment, “Well, yeah she could be my daughter.”

I dabbed at the steak stain, (thank god my dress was purple) and smiled in what I hoped was a winning manner at the man, who seemed less interested in me now that he found I wasn’t a blood relation to my boss. My boss’s daughter returned to the table and was immediately accosted by the man and a few elderly women wearing too much makeup.

“Of course she’s your daughter!” they squealed, “Look at the resemblance!”

My boss’s daughter, ever polite and modest, smiled and said thank you. Thank you, thank you.

———

In his office, my boss leaned back in his chair, “I hope you learned a few things from me. And I don’t mean all these tasks I gave you, but just as a person.”

I mentally ran through a few of our key lessons, but my boss did an oral review.

“You forget this and that, don’t plan ahead, pass information around before processing it…”

I nodded, “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll try not to do that in my personal life, or in my endeavors to become a writer.”

“So you don’t need a reminder to brush your teeth, right?”

I laughed and shook my head. One night a few months ago after a particularly terrible streak of forgetfulness my boss had sent me what was most likely his angriest text ever: “I feel I have to remind you to update my calendar when you make changes every two or three weeks. This is your job! I hope you don’t need me to remind you to brush your teeth!” 

I read the message at 10PM on Monday night – only Monday! – and wondered how I ought to respond. Should I even wake up the next morning or would he write an email to me that night asking me not to come in anymore?

In the end, acceptance seemed to be the best reaction. I typed, “No, you don’t need to remind me to brush my teeth. And you remind me much more often than that.”

He didn’t write back, not because he was furious at my response, but because there wasn’t anything else to say. What can you do when the person you are angry/disappointed/frustrated with knows exactly why you feel that way and they accept it? You let them bathe in the frustration and hope they remember the shame and the resulting exhaustion. You hope they never let it happen again. 

“Nope,” I said, “I can definitely remember to brush my teeth.”  

My boss grinned, “Good. You learned something. Hopefully you can remember all the other important stuff.”