dear roody 3/30

dear roody-

it’s a sunday morning. a super hot one in sf (though cooler than yesterday). you’d be complaining just as much as steven and i. i had ear sweat yesterday. basically like living in beijing again but without a/c and our home is hot. it sucks. you’d hate it.

it’s a sunday morning. our favorite morning of the week. the aroma of bagels would be filling the house, just like we used to wake up to. dad would have been up for hours, gently tending to the most delicious bagels. we’d have one with  dad, then wait until he’d head upstairs and steal one more, then we’d wait til after church and steal one more…and then they’d be gone. dad would grumble and threaten never to make them again…but he kept doing it…until that one sunday.

i still remember it. dad made bagels and then had to leave to church before us. we assumed he got one, so we ate one a piece. then two. then three. i mean…they were sooo good. so much better than the stores. and man, we loved cream cheese so much. we just piled it on. we ate all the bagels…and i still wonder why and how we didn’t get sick.

and then…we got home from church and dad headed straight for the bagels. he could barely look at us for the rest of the day. and, he finally held his promise…he never made us bagels again.

3/30

i’ll always associate bagels with you. they were our thing. we loved them. i hold so dearly these last bagels we made together the week before you passed. i wish for one more sunday morning together. one more sunday morning with bagels and coffee. one more.

when life threw it’s shit at us we found comfort in these round circles loaded with cream cheese. they were our communion. in them we found a moment of solitude and rest. while gathered around them we shared our hurts, grief, our struggles, our pain. gathered around them we shared our joys, our hopes, our dreams. in making them; in the kneading and shaping, the rising, the baking, the heavenly scent we were saved. they were our meditation, our prayer, amongst them we found peace.

these were our daily bread.

these were a symbols of the kingdom we believed and strove for.

so in these days where i ache for you, in these days i ache to share this communion with you, i keep coming back to these round circles loaded with cream cheese. i come back to them hoping you’ll be there. i come back to them listening to you grumble about too little cream cheese or to sit in peace and silence as you share in this communion. i come back to them to remember the spaces we shared, the words, the tears, the hopes, the disappointments. i come back to them to laugh about that 5 lb plastic tube of cream cheese you bought from sanyuanli we never finished but i couldn’t throw away because…you.

gdi, i miss you.