Mother & Nature: Unexpected Guests?

Big news: Snow! And quite a lot of it, falling steadily since early morning. I imagine that many Czechs (and ski resort owners…) are doffing their hats or waving their gloves in thanks to Mother Nature. “Finally!”

Me? The sight of the snow is pretty and all, but I was hoping for the good-weather-streak to extend into February, further lessening the chance of a cold snap arriving that late in the season. No such luck apparently.

Even bigger news: Mom wants to come to Prague in March!

Eek!

I mean, “Yayyy!”

Checked my Skype voicemail yesterday and she had left two messages. I summarize:

“Hi, this is mom. It’s been a while. I have vacation time coming up in March, about a week’s worth, and well….I don’t have anything planned for that time, sooo maybe I’ll come over to pay you a visit in this Prague of yours? Call me.”

But we met over the Christmas break; must we see each other so soon…already?

I don’t think I’m ready for my mom to be here.

Immediately after listening to the messages I looked around my apartment and suddenly found it lacking in ways that I thought I had long ignored or at least gotten used to. You know, I turned on my “Mom Sensors”—the all-seeing eye that catches the stray dust bunny rolling across the floor and notices the piece of cardboard folded underneath one leg of the bed for balance; the uber-sensitive nose that wrinkles at the strange fumes coming from the cheap Tesco cooking set; the ears that pick up the rumblings of trams that are at least another 10 minutes away, and on and on. “Mom Sensors” don’t miss a thing. And even if she doesn’t say a thing you know she has made judgments.

And perhaps I’m not the only one unprepared for my mother’s visit. Is Prague itself ready? Can I hope that Czechs will be on their best behavior—pick up after their dogs, cover their mouths when coughing, refrain from hocking mucus left and right or at least do it discreetly? Will folks remember to shower or at least apply deodorant? Will I have to pre-bribe waiters into acting friendly at restaurants I plan to take her to so she doesn’t wonder why I choose to coexist with a nation of grumps? Will non-smoking sections actually stay non-smoking? Will Mother Nature play nice and keep the temperature above 9 degrees C?

Version 3.0

Call it a side effect of my recent venture into the tech industry but I can’t help but liken my recent birthday to that of a software release. The only problem is I have yet to decide if I’m a Beta, a Milestone, a Release Candidate or an FCS—that’s tech-acronym for the version ready for mass adoption.

Yes, I turned 3.0 on Thursday.

A big “Thank You” to all who made birthday calls, or sent their regards via email, text and voicemail. You made a girl feel loved.

And like icing on a big birthday cake—actually, what I had was Crème Brulee @ Kampa Fish—I also received a half-veiled wedding proposition.

Hold your horses. It wasn’t from Pch.

Rather the prospectus—a greeting card and a two-page letter—traveled all the way from Lagos via Registered Mail—wow, I feel special!—from the son of a family friend. His father had visited my family in New York last summer and jokingly—we thought—suggested marriage matches between his single sons and the inexplicably single daughters of my clan.

Apparently Daddy was serious and returned home to extol my virtues—I was the only daughter in sight the day of his visit—to one of his boys. Proactive fellow that the young man is, he took pen to paper and poured his heart out in a fashion I thought had gone the way of LPs and cassette tapes.

It wasn’t important that we had never set eyes on one another. The more pressing matter was that he had just turned 30 as well and his father had advised that he start thinking of settling down. I was a prime candidate for good reason: I was “recognized and appreciated” by Daddy—a discerning parent knows a good breeder when he sees one—and I was “decent and come from good parentage”. 16 years in America, enough time for me to have been corrupted, yet I did not hesitate to get on both knees to greet Daddy when he came to visit in July. My parents had obviously done a fantastic job with me.

But, Junior continued, if my heart had yet to melt at the thought that Daddy had assessed me like a prize mare, perhaps I ought to consider things from a different angle.

Daddy was only following tradition. Biblical tradition, that is. Daddy was Abraham. Junior was Isaac. And me, I was Rebecca. Junior was kind enough to give me references. (For all you bible-abstaining delinquents, that's Genesis 24. If you even still own a bible.) Like Abraham who wanted to make sure that Isaac did not fall victim to the clutches of questionable foreign women and thus had traveled back to his people to find a suitable mate for his son, Daddy was also returning to people he knew to find suitable mates for his son. Anyway, and on it went.

How did I find all this out? People, me thinking the card and letter had come from a female friend sending me birthday greetings, I had asked my mother to read them to me. Oh, the humiliation of having my mother read my first EVER love letter.

I told her to stop reading and put the letter and card aside with the rest of the supplies she’d be sending me in February. But c’mon, you know she returned to the rest of the letter the minute we disconnected.

Squirm inducing as the whole affair was (and Mama was instantly dismissive—“Not quite the stud we imagine for the likes of you, my dear….”) I have to admit that it was comforting for a brief moment to know that a girl still has one foot planted on the auctioning block. But for how long is another matter. Who knows? Years from now, while doling out cat food in my cramped studio apartment, will I wonder, "What if?"

The Pleasure of Making Your “Full” Acquaintance

Be honest. How many of you have had friends whose last names you didn’t know even after hanging out at least a half-dozen times or more?

Very few people these days, I think, start off social introductions by announcing their first AND last name. I certainly don’t remember the last time I did so.

But I found myself this past weekend thinking about two of my "Prague" friends and the fact that I had no idea what their last names were and that they had none as well about mine. On the one hand, knowing each others' last names seemed irrelevant—we had gotten along this far without them. But at the same time, to continue interacting on a first-name only basis struck me as the kind of seemingly innocuous thing that could throw the possibility of a closer friendship into doubt.

Of course, I have no idea if my friends feel the same way. And I could be taking this more seriously than necessary.

I’m not suggesting that close friendships are impossible in the absence of surnames, rather that in a world that’s increasingly impersonal, where we spend the better part of our days as usernames and binary numbers, having that extra, organic piece of information can be refreshing, even exhilarating.

With some friends I’ve been lucky to get their last names in a roundabout fashion: through their email addresses. Some, like “Neesha B”, have left me stumped. (I guess I’m getting a taste of my own medicine? You couldn’t tell my last name from my various electronic monikers.)

After hanging out with Neesha at Ikea on Saturday I wrote her a message asking for her last name. It was a mouthful for sure! But I was glad that my entry for her in my PDA now had one less blank space.

Let’s Take a Walk Down Resolution Lane

Most folks seem to be getting about the business of living in a brand new year, but I’m still dragging my feet. I can’t make up my mind what I want 2007 to be.


Did any of you make resolutions? Scratch that. Given the bad rap, do people even still admit to making resolutions? I do. I know most resolutions are exercises in futility—the only thing with a failure rate higher than American marriages—but the fun is in the trying, don’t you think?

Maybe not. Today, I went in search of some of my old resolutions. I dug deep—okay, I opened a few Word documents—and found my monthly-to-do-list and my year-in-outline for 2002, 2003 and 2004. Boy-o, did I have some ambitions for myself. Selections from the year-in-outline entries, and in no particular order:

2004: Apply to graduate school
Errr, I’m still thinking on that…. In fact, it may make next year’s list if I decide to revive the yearly-list thing again.

2002: Research proofreading gigs
Those who know me will tell you, “She's is always on the hustle for more money.”

2003: Start editing business
Ditto.

2004: Maine with Cynthia?
Cynthia, why didn't we go on this trip?

2003: Finish one short story
Of the many plans that have come and gone this one always haunts. Resolution romantic that I am I still have hopes for it and can’t bear to let it go.

2004: Buy a road bike and/or take a bike trip
Well, part one got accomplished. I was (and still am) the proud owner of a beautiful silver Bianchi Giro, now boxed away in my basement in Canarsie. I was so slim that year from all the riding.

2003: Ballroom/Latin dancing
Ay Caramba! For a brief period, I was twirling and eight-stepping it in weekly Salsa lessons in Soho. It was fun, but eventually, getting better meant taking regular classes and that was more than my budget could handle.

2002, 2003, 2004: Exercise at least 3x a week
Exercise resolutions are easy for me; I stopped making them in favor of more specific challenges such as….

2004: Do 2 – 5 century rides
Century rides are 100-milers. I probably hit 3 or 4 of these when I joined the NY Cycle Club. Our longest rides were 70-90 miles, I'd ride to the subway to catch the rides on time and then at the end of the rides I would pedal back solo from Central Park to Brooklyn—both trips easily another 15+ miles together.

2002: England for next birthday

Tola, 25. BlackGirl, 26. January 18, 2003.
2004: SVA assignment once a month
I had a brief career as a model for an art school. But I doubt there are portraits of me floating around waiting to be used to blackmail me when I become rich and famous. But scheduling issues nixed this from becoming a regular gig.

2003: Volunteer 1x a month
As Tola said recently, "Fuck to the hell no...."

I made a few notes for 2005 (Get apartment: didn’t happen) and 2007 (Complete grad school), but I stopped short of fleshing out full goals for the years. Curiously, I had no thoughts whatsoever for 2006. Perhaps that explains why the year caught me off-guard and I did some unexpected things, chief among them: moving to Prague.

I have toyed with some ideas about 2007, but I doubt if to call them resolutions. Very little is riding on them. I want to think of them as a series of fun (I hope) mini projects. If I do them, great. If not, it’s okay. And perhaps that’s the trick to making the plans we have for ourselves stick. Keep ‘em light and creative.

Happy New Year

Lola, Saratu & BlackGirl @ Zuma