war against christmas?

i am a terrible gift giver.

i've never been good at it and especially don't enjoy it during this time of year.

please let me explain.

growing up in the philippines, i didn't get gifts for christmas (or my bday for that matter). the holidays were all about going to church, singing carols, eating late at night and visiting people we loved, who gave you a bit of cash on christmas day. the focus was on being together and when our family migrated to wisconsin when i was ten, the holidays continued to be about spending time with people we love. instead of getting up early on christmas morning to open presents under the tree, my parents packed us up in our van and drove four hours south to chicago, where we spent christmas eve and day going from home to home visiting family and friends. we would laugh and eat and laugh some more. gifts were rarely exchanged.

that's not to say we didn't get gifts. following american tradition (like having turkey for thanksgiving), my parents bought us new stuff around the holidays, which we often picked out and wrapped for ourselves to be opened for pictures on new year's day when we were actually home as a family. through the years, our family tradition stuck: travel to visit people we love for christmas and be together for new year's, which has made the holidays super easy now that we're all married. our parents don't expect us home for christmas but we better be there as one year ends and a new one begins.

as our family grew with spouses and children, gifting became even less significant. we've been picking names for secret santa for so many years i don't even know when we started. i love this so much because i'm literally responsible for one gift... and we all write wish lists, which fyi get shared later and later every year because everyone's super busy. also, we're adults and buy ourselves what we want/need when we want/need them.

my nieces and nephews all get gifts from everyone.

well, everyone except me.

more explaining.

because i'm the only one no longer living in the midwest, i'm the only one who travels home for the holidays. i take at least a week off from my life during this time to be with the people i love and, instead of gifts, i like to take the kids out for a movie and/or a meal. while i'm there, my focus is on spending time with my little loves and happily babysit them all for the week... i have a sister who gets it and one who pointed out that i only have four nieces and nephews last year. why are you so bad at giving gifts? she asked.

oh, i don't know. maybe because it costs fraser and me $1200 in plane tickets (plus two weeks' worth of time off from work) to spend the holidays with both sets of families? i've spent some serious dough on flights to visit my family over the years and consider it money well spent.

i do get it though and gifts have been ordered for our nieces and nephews this year… and fraser's family. and the our two secret santas for my family.

which brings up another thing: every single boyfriend i've had came from families who really do it up on christmas and fraser's family is no exception. the moms of these families will always say it doesn't matter if i bring gifts but i know better. i've been condescendingly spoken to more than once and asked when do we ever not do gifts? even after a boyfriend's reassurance that it was fine for us to show up with one gift for each person instead of two dozen (not kidding. i swear that woman goes to the toy aisle at any given store and buys everything in the girls' section for her granddaughter). it's uncomfortable and wasteful and i'm happy to report, fraser's mom is not like that... now that i think about it, only one mom really was. phew! dodged that bullet.

listen. i love the holidays. i love how festive people and places are during this time and appreciate those who go all out to celebrate the ones they love. that said, the holidays are not all love, laughter and joy for everyone. not everyone has the means to buy their loved ones the latest toys, gadgets and fashions. even worse, not everyone has loved ones to share the holidays with; people lose loved ones to death, divorce and tough luck throughout the year and this time of year is no exception. and must be especially hard for them.

i'm no angel but i do pride myself in being a good, loving person. i smile at people when i pass them on the street and treat people with respect. and while i may not buy gifts, i make sure my friends and family know how much i love, support and appreciate them as often as possible. every day when i can. i meet friends for coffee and give long hugs. i remind anyone who will listen that they have a story to tell and that their story is important. i teach my students (and my nieces and nephews) the value of kindness and compassion. i show them love through my words and my actions.

for the record, i have nothing against gifts as long as they're given out of love and joy (so nice!) and doesn't feel like an obligation (don't do it!).

i am not good at gift giving but love, laughter and joy? those are my jam.
i am never shy about showing love, laughing loudly or spreading joy.

six months to go

two and a half years ago, i started this blog to wrap my mind around dating again in my mid 30s after a ten year hiatus. six months in, it evolved into a falling in love blog and, another six months after that, a wedding blog. just shy of a year from our first wedding anniversary, fraser and i found out that i am pregnant (yey!) turning my focus to motherhood.

but first things first. pregnancy.

real talk. getting pregnant was not easy, especially in a society that tells women in their early 30s to start thinking about it before it's too late. women who are lucky enough to get pregnant after 35 are automatically considered high risk regardless of their health. that would be me. we found out about my pregnancy a month before my 38th bday. we'd been trying for over a year.

the truth is, i didn't think it would take us so long. in spite of close friends and acquaintances who've had difficulty getting pregnant, i blindly believed i would be an exception rather than the rule. i have a sister who had multiple miscarriages before having her children and one who naturally had twins without complications. still, i naively thought it would be relatively easy. after all, i'd taken good care of myself and am totally in love with my husband. of course, it would happen.

just months before i took my very first pregnancy test, fraser and i realized we'd been trying for almost a year and getting my period began to take its toll. my initial excitement, which had turned to nonchalance (in an attempt to cover how hard it was hitting me emotionally) became impatience. frustration. anger. there were times i actually cried when i got my period. it didn't make sense and i gradually became sadder and sadder about it. at some point, i asked my closest friends not to bring it up unless i initiated the conversation because it hurt to talk about it.

the fact that i am pregnant is an incredible gift. fraser and i know many other couples who deserve the same and haven't been yet. to say that i'm grateful for the life growing inside of me is an understatement. i have to admit, however, that i had no idea what i was in for as i hoped, prayed and dreamed about being pregnant.

pregnancy is no joke.

i am in awe of every woman who's survived pregnancy. every single one. to be fair, i recently worked in an environment where pregnant women took indoor cycling and/or yoga classes like it was the most natural thing to do. a few of the instructors taught these same classes throughout their pregnancy, inspiring roomfuls of people to sweat it out and/or keep their zen. i admired these women for keeping up with their normal workout routines as i took their classes or worked out alongside them. today, i would give them all gold medals.

i have to be very careful here because i don't, in any way, mean to complain. that said, fifteen weeks into my pregnancy, i'm finally beginning to feel like myself again. working out exhausts me. i take pilates twice a week and have to nap after. i need more sleep than i've ever needed before. there were days when i'd sleep for ten or twelve hours a night and take a two hour nap in the afternoon. luckily, my schedule allowed for such luxuries; i cannot imagine holding a full time job and going through the first trimester.

with all that sleep, you'd think i'd feel refreshed and ready to take on the day. not so. i was nauseous for about six weeks straight. i never actually threw up but always felt like i was on the verge. having nausea 24/7 was numbing. everything smelled really bad. eating became i chore, which is disappointing because eating is one of my favorite things in the world. i assumed i'd have cravings for weird food combinations and enjoy consuming them. sadly, the opposite happened. i craved nothing. in fact, i lost my appetite but was constantly having to eat in an attempt to avoid full-blown nausea… the nausea eventually subsided and i only got nauseous when i waited too long to eat (thus the non-stop eating).

headaches are my new thing. for awhile, avoiding salty foods later in the day and drinking water helped. unfortunately, that's no longer true. i wake up with a headache every morning these days no matter how much water i drink. even though i'm not sick, i also have a runny nose and occasionally get nosebleeds. my appetite is still not the same but at least i can eat meat again. the only thing i've really craved is sushi, which i can't have. (yes. i know i can have california and tempura rolls, but i want the real thing. raw salmon. raw albacore. raw yellowtail.) oh. and i feel like i'm gonna throw up whenever i bend down now. all normal symptoms and not all in my head. i have a friend who is due three months ahead of me and sis-in-law is a month behind me, who both assure me that all of it is normal... and that more is coming.

i had conversations about pregnancy with each of my sisters recently. bells, who hated being pregnant, teasingly asked me how it was going, knowing full well how blindsided i was physically. she laughed knowingly as i told her how much i didn't enjoy it in spite my excitement about being pregnant. ate, on the other hand, dismissed my inquiry when i asked her why she didn't tell me how hard pregnancy was, simply saying that she kept her focus on the end result: a baby.

my baby.
our baby.
peanut.

when i think about peanut, i am overcome with love. gratitude. even a bit of grace… i'm not gonna lie, i worry every day that i'm not eating enough of a variety, am drinking too much coffee (i'm allowed 12oz a day) and not enough water, am not sleeping enough or pushing too hard in a pilates class. i talk to peanut and imagine what she looks like (fraser commented the other day that we're going to need to pull a major switch if peanut is, in fact, a boy because i've been calling her a girl for weeks now. for the record, he wants a mini version of me and i want a mini version of him, but i have a strong feeling peanut is a mini me).

bells told me that the love she has for her twins is beyond anything she'd ever known. knowing how much of my heart belongs to my nieces and nephews, she assured me that my heart will expand and love in new, inexplicable ways. i can't imagine loving anyone more than i love my family, my friends and fraser, but i look forward to giving peanut everything that i've got.

it's been a long time since i've posted one of these. the past several weeks, i've simply been too tired. the months before that, however, i felt too defeated by the whole trying to get pregnant thing. now that i am, i will power through the symptoms and keep my eye on the prize: peanut.

our very own little peanut.

success 101

yesterday was my maternal grandmother's birthday. she would have been a hundred.

growing up, i was her obvious favorite and she was mine. when she got really sick several years ago, i didn't go to see her. she died after a massive surgery a few weeks later and, still, i didn't go... i didn't want to see her like that and made every excuse not to. at the time, i truly believed i was doing the best thing. i see now that what i did was, in fact, the best thing. for me. i allowed my fear of losing my beloved grandmother to be a selfish excuse to not be there for her or my mom.

i haven't been back to the philippines since we celebrated my grandmother's 85th birthday fifteen years ago. there is a part of me that never wants to go back because she won't be there anymore and her death will be real... obviously, it is but i haven't been back there to see it. to experience the world of my childhood without her. it breaks my heart just thinking about it.

her picture graces my messy desk. i cry when i look into her eyes. her love for me shines through her eyes even in a photograph. i have many memories of her protecting, encouraging, teaching, defending, spoiling, taking care of me. she used to braid my hair every morning for school and was so proud of everything i did. i often wonder if she'd be proud of me today.

there's an exercise we do in the non-profit i work in that asks our teenage students to stand before their peers and declare the things they love, hate and dream. it's the last exercise we do in each class before they start writing their show because it reminds everyone in the room that, in spite of our differences, we are all similar in our desire for love, reasons for hate and dreams for the future. to be successful is almost always a part of everyone's dreams for themselves. most of our students equate making a lot of money with success. the more enlightened ones focus their dreams on being happy.

wouldn't it be wonderful for the world to recognize being happy as an essential part of a successful life?

my sister, bells, travels the world with an expense account and has beautiful three-year-old twins at home (4bed, 3.5bath, 3car garage) with her husband. we had an interesting exchange over the phone recently.

me: i babysat the other night. so much fun.
bells: i wish i did random, fun jobs like you.
me: you make six figures, live in your dream house and have healthy twins. i wish i had that.
bells: it's not all that. i wish i live in warm weather.
me: true. i wouldn't trade being in shorts in february but hustling is not glamorous.
bells: it sounds fun.
me: going to europe sounds fun.

the grass is always greener on the other side.

that said, i've never seen bells happier than she's been since having her twins. i've also been much happier lately... would bells like to live in warmer weather and have more time to sing and dance? of course. would i like to make more money and be a working actress and a mother already? absolutely. but the fact that we're both happy with what we have (my 1bed, 1bath, tandem parking with fraser is awesome) makes each of us a success in our own right. it looks different for everyone. what makes each of our lives beautiful and worth the fight is our individual passions and the happiness we create when we live up to our potential.

i dream of a world where success is not measured by the amount of money you make or the things you possess but how kindly you treat yourself and others, how much happiness you hold in your heart and how much love and creativity you express to the world.

my grandmother loved to sing and dance. she had lots of friends and was a pillar in our hometown; she was really good with money. i'm very much like her with a bit of my paternal grandmother's compassion and hustling ways. they were both successful in their own way... i hope they're both proud of me.