Planning this wedding has had it's lighter moments, which are sporadically rare but oh so enjoyable- like our impromptu dance in the middle of Ikea's mattress section when we heard the song that we plan on having as our "first" dance. However, much of this process has been stressful- how in the world are two graduate students going to afford a wedding? Especially when one of said grad students grew up in the lolly-pop fairyland of East Sacramento with its aging hippie residents that have slid effortlessly into the petit bourgeoisie? Green and eco-friendly has a cost, friends. And that price tag is labeled for those living in the manicured lawns of the Fab Forties. Social awareness aside, the wedding planning has sparked an almost constant self-reflection that would make the psych grad students across the hall in Amador wizz with anticipatory glee. Because when you come down to it; weddings are about one thing- family. The spiritual, physical, economical, religious, and psychological merging of two distinctly separate families into one amorphous blob.
Family, for me, has always been an open-ended term to describe anyone who I hold dear to my heart. My girls in the cohort, Shawnie (I still feel weird using this term, dear!), "preggers" (who gave birth to a gorgeous bouncing baby of testosterone nearly a year ago, will always be nicknamed as such), Cha (my pint-sized hero who can do damn near everything), my newly seeing-able Christina; Sanhita, the sweetest person I have had the privilege of knowing; our newest member to the sleep-deprived cohort clan- Margaret, and many many more. I love you all but I don't want this post to challenge my thesis (which I should really get to...) so I am keeping it a bit short. So, for me, family does not just include those with whom I share a biological connection but rather an emotional connection. See- told you I am from the hippie commune of East Sacramento.
My "extended" family, however, has not been the cause of my introspection. Rather, as I have been trying to determine who to put on the ever changing guest list to the ceremony and reception, I have realized how little I know about those with whom I share genetic material. Last year, my grandfather ("Jichan" in Japanese) passed and I felt a strange lack of emotion or connection when I heard the news and also later at the funeral. I empathized with my aunt who had spent her entire adult life caring for her father but I didn't mourn the loss of my grandfather. Rather, I mourned for her loss. I am usually an emotionally-led person, so this seemingly cold-heartedness perplexed me. Months passed and it was not until I stepped onto the pebbled grounds of a Buddhist Church that he had once presided over as a minister that I truly felt his absence. It was a moment that stands out as it was in that moment that I realized that I never truly knew the man whom I called Jichan. Tonight, I browsed through archived bits and pieces of history that chronicled my Jichan and Bachan's ("grandmother" in Japanese) life in Toronto, Hawaii, Berkeley, and Florin. In the short hour in which I searched, I learned more about my deceased relatives than I did in their lifetimes. Granted, cancer took my Bachan before I was ever able to meet her but I shared twenty-three years with my Jichan and never truly knew the man.
If I don't know where I come from, how can I know myself? Maybe sociology was not my true calling- dare I admit that I may need to sit across an equally baffled Steve Martin in Philosophy 101? I have been struggling with this question for some time now and feel that amidst planning a wedding, a search for my history- my roots, is in order. How well do we know the ones we love? I know fragmented pieces of those that I love that come together like a ragged and age-worn puzzle but I know the completed image cannot be viewed.
Tomorrow, I plan on visiting the local university to find an oral history that Jichan gave back in the late 90s in an effort to piece together the man and in some way, myself. This is quite the deviation for me (both in this blog and in real life) as I tend to keep matters light but maybe I need to air some things out. Dust and mold can kill (see Brittany Murphy and hubbie Simon Monjack) and I don't plan to go down like that. Even when I'm trying to serious, the comedy oozes out; well, at least I see it as comical. I reign you in with the chuckles and then just when you think all you are getting out of this is empty comedic calories a la a Big Gulp of Dane Cook, I make you feel. Well, at least I got myself to shed a tear or two during the writing of this post but as Max says, I am a woman. So, [insert overtly chauvinistic and female stereotype here].
Back to my point- I urge all eight (or nine, fingers crossed!) of you to look inward and see if you know you who truly are. I know that I have no idea who I am. Maybe this is just a mid-twenties/wedding planning crisis of self but I plan on figuring out who I am along with those around me while we are still living. Do the same. I wonder if Oprah has offered such insightful and slightly psychologically damaging advice/mental cleaning orders? If not, I think I deserve her ma-billions. She carted out a wagon full of fat and I present my vacuum of family history. Mine is more salacious although hers is more savory.
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