daughters – hannah ananas

Nails

Having a father-daughter date tomorrow. We’re getting our nails done together, Jen going to lunch. And, as girly as that sounds, it isn’t. My dad has some foot fungus or something on one of his toes, and needs to keep it tidy and clean, so he has to get a pedicure about once a month. So, not so girly after all, ne? 😛

As for me, I’m hanging with my dad while also fixing up my feet and hands as best as possible in early preparation for the wedding. So, that part is girly. Much more so than usual for me. 😛

Thank you, God, for this opportunity. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Well, I passed(!)

I went early today and made up everything I’d missed last night and the night before. I was still definitely sick and under recovery, but I had to go, so I went.

It took a lot out of me just to hold up my hands, let alone do the self-defense techniques, and multiple times in a row. We usually yell on the last strike, and it felt really odd not doing that today (saving my throat from torture, you see, and helping me to keep breathing as a whole – even a deep breath would send me into a fit of intense and slightly scary coughing).

After that, people started showing up for the fight night. We each sparred 16 people for 90 seconds on ongoing sparring each. The ongoing part means that we have no break during those 90 seconds – the clock doesn’t stop, and neither do we.

It was tough, especially being so short of breath and low on energy to start the whole thing. But I made it through, and decently well. I even received several call-outs on having done a great job sparring, which was quite unique and cool. I don’t typically have a bunch of people watching me spar… nor do I have them watching me spar for 16 rounds…

For our last round of 90 seconds, when we are at our end of energy and have our last effort to give, we are meant to spar the person who has been the most influential for us in our karate career. Now, that can be interpreted in various ways, though most people choose their main instructor for this last match. Not all, but most.

When I thought about this, I wasn’t sure whom to request. It went weeks without my knowing what to say or do about it. Eventually, when we were discussing my predicament, my instructor asked whom I wanted for that match, “If you could have anyone, who[m] would you pick?”

Instantly, I knew. “Sam C—,” I said. She smiled sadly, and understood why I had had so much trouble. The most influential person on my karate career had been my original instructor, when I was in the junior division. His classes were the whole reason I returned to the organization years later as an adult, as opposed to going to some other form of self-defense or fighting training.

He also passed away a handful of years ago, and I had only learned of this fact when I re-started karate a few years back.

My current instructor had only joined the organization after his death, and had not known him personally, though she had, apparently, learned much of him. He was a spectacular teacher and coach. And he was terrifying, in a sense – you were going to do as he said, and without hesitation – yet it was clear that he loved and cared about his students. I never consciously thought, He loves me, or anything like that. But, if I had been asked, I would have been able to say with full confidence that he loved me. The best teachers usually do love their students – that’s a big part of why they are such good teachers. They truly are here and teaching for us, and for our success.

Anyway, all that to say it really didn’t work to have the person I truly wanted for my final fight.

So, I thought again. Who else had been in similar standing with Mr. C— for me in karate? Well, that answer was clear, too, once I asked the question: my mom.

She’s the whole reason I started as a kid, and her having become a brown belt was the main reason I had ever wanted to become one. Granted, I had now surpassed her rank of brown belt, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that it was all through her that any of this was possible and actually happened in my life.

After weeks of allowing her space to ‘think about it,’ she finally agreed fully this morning. I had had a feeling that she would do it in the end, though she had declined my original invitation to join just as one of the 16 over a month ago. She understood why I was asking her now, as well as the importance and significance of it. And she also appreciated that I would be exhausted by the end of all the sparring, and so necessarily would ‘go easy’ on her. That definitely helped. And the fact that I’m recovering from a sinus infection, and so literally couldn’t breathe as well or move as well as usual. So, she messaged this morning for details about tonight, and I was ecstatic and grateful. She even had to borrow sparring gear for her hands, head, and shins, because I had commandeered her head and hand gear for myself a couple years back – naturally, my child-sized gear didn’t work so well for me anymore. But my foot gear and shin guards did. (I guess she missed her shin guards when she was looking.) But she borrowed the gear and pulled out her old uniform and t-shirt and all, and she showed up.

As soon as we started our match, I instantly began to cry with emotion, of course. Should have seen that one coming, I know, but I hadn’t. Haha

Our match was actually quite fun and a real match, which made it all the better. It was a great closer for the evening and the week and the whole candidacy season.

Afterward, we all retired our brown belts, and we were all granted our black-belts-in-waiting belts, which are brown belts with a black stripe through their length. Everyone else had their main teacher/parent – because multiples have parents who are black belts and teachers – accept the brown belt, hold it up, and pull it taught into its final tie/knot, officially retiring the belt. My mom got to do mine. She had already taken off her top and her belt, so no one likely even noticed that she wasn’t a black belt. We both thought it was silly that she was ‘sneaking in’, but it was also really cool. And it was perfect that she’d taken off her top and belt already, and was just in the old black shirt for our school under Mr. C—. It was perfecto.

Then we were given our eight-day belts, and it was sobs all over the place. Our main instructor started it, just to be clear. Haha

Okay, I must sleep now. So, final thing: Our final scores were calculated before the sparring began, and announced at the end of the sparring. The scores were based on our physical fitness tests, our kata performance, our self-defense skills, and our written test on history and rules of judging and sparring and teaching. The total was several hundred points all together. She announced our grades a percentages. And mine was the highest, with 98%. That was quite cool.

Also, my mom and my man came tonight and watched me the whole time. That was awesome, too. I am very grateful that both made it.

Thank you, God, for this blessing and this success I have had. Please, continue to heal me, and heal my body rapidly, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

America!

Tonight, we attended a performance by the wonderful, fun musical group America. They were friends as teenagers living in England way back when their parents were stationed there in the military, I believe in the 1970s. They opened for Pink Floyd when they were 18, and have been going strongly ever since, doing roughly 100+ concerts yearly for 52 years.

As the different songs came on, seeing my mom was one of the coolest parts of the night. “Gah, I feel like I’m 15..,” was what she said early on when a particular song played that had often played at her school dances back in high school. On one, when it started, she said something like, ‘Oh, this one is s total make-out song,’ referencing how all the kids would get together for this song at dances. It was really fun, but also informative – it was great getting to see this history of my mom, as well as enjoy it all with her myself.

Thank you, God, and thank you, America, for such a wonderful night! In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Speedy chatter

Riding in the car with my mom today, I kept noticing how quickly I was talking. I was just so excited to share all that I was sharing with her, say what I was saying, that I was saying it as fast as I could manage while still being understood.

I felt silly yet cute at the same time, like a little kid who’s just super excited to tell his mom about what happened at school today(!). 😛

I haven’t been calling my mom quite as much the past couple weeks, intentionally so, and that has been good for me. I had gotten really, really lovely for a while, and so called her way more often than usual, just to have someone with whom to speak. But I was able to settle myself down and focus on other things I want to do in my day, instead of calling her several times a day. Now, we are back to talking only once or twice a day, for the most part.

But that leaves me with more to say whenever we are together now, especially considering how we don’t talk for very long whenever we do talk on the phone now. It is usually just a quick check-in, not real conversation on much. So, when we are together, I always seem to have so much to say, even if I hadn’t realized it beforehand.

Though, I think I am also just really excited to have someone in person with whom to speak…

In other words, I really am just like that little kid who is super excited to tell all about his awesome day at school today(!). 😀

And I love it.

Post-a-day 2021

^Whoo! Almost missed it this time!

December 6th

I asked my mom the other night if she thought Heilige Nikolaus (Saint Nicholas) would leave presents in my shoes if I set them outside my bedroom/studio door in the house where I currently am living (Not a great idea to leave anything completely outside overnight in this neighborhood, you see. It could be okay, but it isn’t amazing odds.), or if he probably only visited the suburbs (where people can leave shoes outside overnight safely). She told me that he probably only uses people’s permanent addresses.

And so, when I arrived to my mom’s house this morning – in the suburbs and the location of my permanent address – I was delighted to find atop her new blanket my croc-like shoes that always remain at her house, filled with delights. There also was a pair of traditional Dutch wooden clogs, also filled with goodies.

Note: When I first arrived, I set a few things on the sofa, plugged in a camera charger for the photo session I would do shortly for someone, and wandered to the kitchen for something or other. As I did all this, my mom asked me if I saw her new table. I turned back and looked toward the fireplace, opposite the sofa, and saw a small table decorated with a new winter blanket and covered with the shoes etc.

I’ve been clear to my mom several times over recent months that I would like, at last, to have a sewing machine of my own. I do not often have gift requests or wishes for my birthday or for Christmas, but a sewing machine and all of its necessities is something that I really need help managing – I do not know enough about brands or specifics or technologies even to guess appropriately what machine to get myself, or in what price range, let alone all the pins and wheels of everything one uses with sewing machines. I think it can all be in the mid-hundreds of dollars for a decent quality everything, but I am not one to know which ones are the decent ones yet. Thus the request for a Christmas present from my mother, a woman who has made clothes (and more) her entire life.

When I got looking at the shoes and goodies, I was tickled that, aside from the delicious-looking babyfood snack packs – yes, they are amazing, if you get the right ones – there happened to be obvious sewing machine supplies: thread, bobbins, pins, machine sewing needles, etc. “Hmm! Clearly Heilige Nikolaus has a hint of what I’ll be getting!” I laughed, and my mom laughed with me. I went through all the items, delighted that they were here, essentially solidifying the fact that I would be getting a sewing machine of my own at the end of the month. Whether it would be new or just my mom’s (and she would get an upgrade for herself) was still to be determined, but one of my own I very likely would have by the end of the month! (At least, it was more likely this time than any other that I’ve asked for one.)

Just as I was about to leave for the photos, I began to pack up. “But you still haven’t finished,” said my mom. “You didn’t see it all yet.” She wanted me to see it all before I left, I knew, but I hadn’t realized that I’d missed something. I went back to the large clogs in the center, and pulled the bits and pieces of sewing materials out of them, looking for what I had missed up in the toes of the shoes.

But there didn’t seem to be anything else. ‘Is it under?’ I ask. And my mom replies in the affirmative. I pick up the clogs, find nothing, and set them back down. I check the wreaths next to them, and it is the same story. I look over the back of the table and ask if it is the cute new-to-me nativity scene just behind everything. No, it is not.

Without thinking much of it, nor expecting much out of it, I flip up the blanket to see under the table.

And it isn’t a table after all.

It is one of the big cardboard fold-outs for laying out sewing patterns and measuring, and it is sitting perpendicular atop another box. It takes a moment to process that the box is a brand new sewing machine.

Even thinking about it, my eyes are welling up now. It was so unexpected, and so amazing, I started crying when I realized what it all meant. Not only did my mom really find me a sewing machine of my own, but the found me a new one. This is something I have wanted for years, but hadn’t figured out how to make happen yet. I felt that I really was ready for it this year, and my mom showed me today that she agreed.

“I figured you could get started on some of the things you’ve been wanting to do lately, instead of waiting,” she said. 🙂

It is time, my dear. It is time. Sew on, love.

Danke, Heilige Nikolaus, Saint Nicholas!!

And thank you, Mom.

And thank you, God, for all this love and joy today and always.

Post-a-day 2020

Advent

Today marked the beginning of my Advent and Advent calendar for this year, complete with presents and my mom falling face forward up the stairs to my room. Trust me, despite the fright in the moment of that final piece happening, it was all extremely delightful and quite festively fun (even the fall, while my mom was lying there, laughing on top of the pile of presents she had been carrying).

You see, firstly, I didn’t know my mom was coming over, and my phone signal was still off. So, when I heard a knock behind me, I genuinely thought it was a raccoon or possum doing some construction work in the attic (or the likes). But then, my bedroom door was opening – by the way, the door to my room is down a flight of halfback stairs, because my room is a converted attic – and I started to freak. out…..

“Hello?” I asked in both annoyance and trepidation. It was my mom. And yes, I had locked the door, as I always do – my fear was that I hadn’t locked it, and I was now about to be attacked. I heard her voice, relaxed, reminded her that I was tutoring, and I went back up the stairs. Just as I was finishing telling the student to log off and back on again to see about resetting her computer’s connection and sound, I looked back down the stairs to see my mother falling forward as she turned the corner to head up the second half of the stairs. She has similar stairs in her house, but there is no step on the turn at the midpoint. Hers are just half and half. Mine are four, then one on the half turn, then another ten in the last part. The light in my stairwell is minimal in the first place, and the baskets of presents she was carrying certainly didn’t give her much help in seeing that single turn step. But they did help her land more safely, fortunately. I rushed down carefully and, basically, lifted her up off the ground on my own, as she had almost no leverage to get herself back up, her arms still wrapped around the presents now beneath her chest.

Even as I lifted her up, we were both laughing. She had determined already that all was well and whole within her body still, and so we could not hold back. It was ridiculous and hilarious to the both of us.

Anyway, the whole unexpected arrival of my mother was due to a request I made of her weeks ago. Would she print out my Advent calendar for me to use this year? I had made one for my cousin years ago, and loved it. I wanted to use it again this year, but I didn’t want to risk seeing the days ahead of time by printing it all out for myself. I had wanted them to be a surprise as much as possible, but I wanted to be able to write down my responses, instead of just look at it on my phone, as I did last year. (Each day has a question/prompt of sorts to which I am requested to respond, you see.) So, here we are on the first day of December, which lines up with how I had created the calendar initially, as a 25-day Advent calendar. My mom has gone above and beyond, as is regularly her style when it comes to fun, creativity-related things – the exact reason I had asked her to do this for me in the first place – and come up with presents for each day, wrapped in Charlie Brown Christmas wrapping paper – the Advent calendar I made is based on A Charlie Brown Christmas – to go with each day’s paper prompt.

Today, I got a box of tea, from which I can have a cup every morning when I open the day’s card and present – again, the original calendars we made are referenced, as they were tea Advent calendars, with a different tea for each day – as well as a Christmas lights necklace and green and red jingle bell bracelets to give me extra festivity this month. Then, my mom proceeded to open up the box of tea and make us each some tea. She actually hung out with me in my room while we snuggled up to our cups in the cold morning air, and just hung out together. Oddly enough, those were two of the things on my list for the first day’s prompt, checked off unexpectedly just about as quickly as I had gotten them written down.

Then she went off to work, and I snuggled in my bed another few hours before going to work myself.

All-in-all, it was a beautiful start to my Advent and my Advent calendar for this year. I am extremely grateful, and feel a strong sense of love and care for me today (for which I also feel extremely grateful). Yesterday was an odd sort of reminder for Advent’s ideas for me, just perfectly timed. And I have a feeling that there is much value to be found for me in and through Advent this year. I look forward to it all with cautious and grateful optimism.

Grazie, World and God. Here we are. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Wow – impactful interactions

Today at the clothing store, I had an amazing exchange with a mother and daughter that lasted close to an hour. I helped others on and off throughout that time, but most of my time and efforts were spent either folding clothing or interacting with the two of them. While part of me wants to go into extreme detail with the whole event, for right now, a greater part of me wants simply to acknowledge that the interaction happened, and then dwell in the delight of it here in my own space, without sharing anything else about it at present.

And I am going to go with that part within me, because it feels true to what I want for myself right now.

Perhaps I will share more about it later, and perhaps not. Either way, you can know that it was a spectacular interaction for me, and it has me slowly thinking more and more about what might be next (or, even, later at some point) for me in my life. It was that amazing for me. : )

Post-a-day 2020

Childhood Christmas

I ordered several items of clothing for work last week. For whatever reason, they were all being shipped separately to my mom’s house. I was excited about them all, but bummed at all the packaging (mostly since they were coming from the same company), but figured it was due to the items being at different origins, and so was inevitable (not simply irresponsible).

Nonetheless, I found it funny that so many packages would be arriving to my mom’s house in sun quick succession. “It’ll be like Christmas!” I declared, laughing at the idea that I wouldn’t know what was what in all the packages, but that each one would be a delightful surprise (since I had selected each one intentionally for myself, but had ordered so many things that I could pretend to forget about what most of them were), as well as the fact that I would get to open them all at my mom’s house.

I shared this thought with my mom, and added that it’ll be just like Christmas when I was a kid, because I will open all my presents and start playing with them right then and there and have a merry time. She laughed and whatever-ed me, allowing my request to come over and ‘open presents’ the next week one day.

When I arrived today to ‘open my Christmas presents’ (from myself), my mom actually fussed at me for starting while she was still upstairs getting dressed. “I didn’t know you actually cared,” I said somewhat questioning.

“Yeah, I was gonna put on Christmas music while you opened everything.”

I was thrilled(!). She then put on a James Taylor Christmas album, I turned on the “fireplace”, and I showed her what I had already opened (just two things), before I preceded to open all the rest with us both in the living room together. And yes, I “played with my toys” (meaning I tried things on) there in the living room with her, and it was an extremely lovely time. I was super excited about my “presents”, and I loved sharing the experience and time with my mom. It really felt like a childhood Christmas for me. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Mother-daughter

“I really want that dental tool… and I need underwear.”

What was that?, you wonder. It was something I said tonight on our way home, which was the catalyst for a several-minute cry-fest for my mom and me.

We could not speak. Only the occasional partial word exited our mouths, and none of it comprehensible, even to each of our own ears. Our eyes were pouring water. Our cheeks ached. Our bellies convulsed in silent, intense laughter.

Eventually, we both began to gasp for air, and slowly traded our silent laughter for loud coughing, tears still pouring down our faces.

So, why did this all happen, then?

My mom and I joke regularly about how our brains work on this family. We change topics very easily, but we always return to any topic we have set aside, no matter the reason for doing so. So, it is completely normal that we throw out a complete non-sequitur…. and also normal that the conversation continue with ease and without hesitation or judgement. Oftentimes, the original conversation will continue by one person, while the other person shares a few comments on a non-sequitur before returning back to the original conversation (the one that was continued by the other person).

Example: We are talking about cheese, say.

‘I think Brie would be better, because it’ll work with the crackers.’

‘I’m really glad they banned smoking in bars and restaurants in France.’

‘But a good smoked Gouda is always amazing.’

‘It just would have been miserable for me, if everyone had been smoking all the time.’

‘And a nice Swiss, too.’

‘Like in Japan… ugh. You always just go explore the cheese section at the grocer, and find fancy cheeses all at once there, so just have some in mind, but don’t bother settling on what cheeses ahead of time.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. I always do like doing that.’

See how two conversations kind of just happened at once? Well, we do that.

And we are fine with it.

However, we have, in recent years, begun to notice how it might appear to an outsider, whenever we have any sort of odd or atypical conversation. Therefore, such conversations usually end up with us laughing at some point in the middle of them, as we both realize one another realizing the outside-view-crazy conversation we are having.

Tonight, when, out of nowhere, I mentioned my desire for a dental tool, that was already a bit odd. That I continued with the, “I need underwear,” statement, that sent my mother out of it completely. I, naturally, could not contain myself with her laughing so hard. As I began to laugh, I asked for clarity on why specifically she was laughing, whether at the randomness of the conversation then itself or st the specific combination of those two comments. It was the latter, because she was immediately imagining how the two might go together somehow, like ‘I need bread and milk from the store’. But it was a dental tool and underwear, as though one had to do with the other.

I explained that I had gone to the store recently, but I had forgotten to look for the tool, and they had been out of the underwear I had wanted, so those were the only two items on my list that hadn’t gotten purchased.

That didn’t make it any better, though. 😛

We laughed so hard, it was ridiculous. And it was spectacular.

I love these ridiculous times with my mom, and I am extremely grateful for them.

Post-a-day 2020

Squirrels on the loose

My mom asked me this week if I have been noticing more squirrels than usual lately. Whenever she is out somewhere, usually driving, she feels like she has been seeing loads more squirrels than usual. At first, I was thinking about mating seasons, and wondering whether we were at a time of year where there just happen to be lots of recently-added squirrels in the mix.

But then something else occurred to me… and then she said that something else. “I just wonder if, because everyone had been staying home and not going anywhere for a while,“ she began.

And I finished, barely able to restrain my laugh before finishing, “No one was out driving to run them over??”

We both laughed. But we both considered the idea as a genuine possibility. Lost of things were affected this summer by people’s not going into offices and work anywhere near the typical amount…, perhaps this was just another of those effects.

And perhaps not, but the idea is a lot more fun to consider that the poor squirrels this summer actually had a chance for once. Kind of like the air, you know?

I still laugh when I think about her specifically bringing it up to me to ask my thoughts on the matter, as though it were something of significance in our lives. Just in the squirrels’, I suppose, but we both totally loved considering it, nonetheless.

Post-a-day 2020