David's and Lily's Wedding

Seems like weddings are the theme this summer. Tung's cousin David got hitched on June 25th. The morning started off traditionally with a tea ceremony at the bride's house. Tung and I are all decked out.



The bride, in her traditional outfit, offers tea to her parents and esteemed elders to thank them for raising her and as a symbol of her joining a new family.


Groomsmen stand by, bearing gifts in red cloth-covered platters. The gifts traditionally consist of tea, cakes, fruits, and even betel nuts from olden days.


After the tea ceremony, the bride is transported to the groom's house in a "xe bong" (flowered car) as part of the "ruouc dau" (receiving the bride) ceremony. Her parents and close relatives follow, then have tea and refreshments at the groom's house for a brief time before making their departure.


Since both families are Catholic, the afternoon mass is held at church. Tung and his cousin Mindy goof around before the ceremony starts.


The bride and groom stand in front of the altar with the bridesmaids and flower girl waiting on the sidelines.


Before the banquet dinner, I get my hair done as a trial run for my wedding.


A picture with the bride and groom before dinner starts.


Posing with Tung's sister. My hair turned out fine--didn't like the makeup.


The Precious Moments cake. By the way, I recently learned that many couples save the top layer of the cake and freeze it for a year to eat on their first anniversary?? Eeew. I'm all for ordering a new cake at the same place in the same flavor rather than eat year-old cake.


During the banquet, the bride typically wears an average of 3 outfits: her white wedding dress, a traditional outfit, and an evening gown for the cake-cutting. Lily managed to get David into a traditional Vietnamese groom's outfit as well.



Tung snags Cousin Bryant for a picture during dinner.


The ladies line up for the bouquet toss. Not me this time--my bouquet-catching days are behind me!

Upon Stepping Back on the Mat After a Week Away

It shouldn’t be too hard, coming back after a little over a week. There is the familiar smell of freshly-varnished wood floor, the new smell of wall paint, the faint scent of Zebra mats, the warm displacement in the air hinting at the arrival of summer. Putting the gi and hakama back on, tying the fabric in place, tugging at the loose ends to smooth out the uniform, even that is a comforting reminder of how it should be. I line up, clap to bow in, and the training starts.

And I thought I paced it right but suddenly everything seems to speed up, and Sensei says for everyone to give it an extra 20 or 25% more speed, and Sempai goes around to tell us the same thing: “Get back up! Attack, attack! Hurry up, let’s go!,” and I feel the impact of the mats with every takedown along my back, my calves, my palms as I slap the surface, and feel the bruises starting on my knees and elbows, those sharp joints that have had too much time away to remember the conditioned pain, and the sweat starts on my forehead and slides into my brows and eyes, and I could feel the beads glide down my front and back underneath the shielding layers of shirt and gi, pooling at the cinched belt, soaking into the fabric like tears on snow, and the summer air is more apparent now—thickened and heavy with the scent of collective perspiration—and suddenly there seems to be not enough of it as I forget to keep my breathing rhythm and start to gasp, but don’t look at that clock because the minute hand has not changed, it is stuck forever at the half-hour mark with no momentum left to begin its grueling climb back to the 12, and the second-hand is not that much more cooperative to my mental plea, so look away and don’t think at all about time, and go for that wrist and fall down and get back up and fall down and get back up and fall down and get back up and roll and roll and roll and let’s not allow those muscles weakened by illness betray me, or focus on my lack of coordination or my decreased sense of balance as I struggle through vertigo to get even the simplest of techniques right, and I get physically worn and mentally frustrated while thinking, “Come on, Sensei, have mercy,” when suddenly he yells out, “Owari masu!”—“Let’s finish!” and his resounding clap ends class, and I melt into a pool of gratitude in my place during line-up and pant during the bow-out.

See? That wasn’t so bad. Sensei catches me afterward and says, “Welcome back to the mat, Daisy.” I smile, bow, and say thank you. It’s nice to know the mat and the people on it missed me as much as I’ve missed it and them.

Apothecary

One month later from the start of May, and I’m sitting here wondering if my next blog entry would finally be one that doesn’t involve the subject of illness. May 1st started me off with a normal cold/sore throat, which led to an extended cough that required antibiotics, which really didn't help as the cough transitioned into seasonal allergies. I got my first migraine ever coming back up from a Southern California trip. I had to schedule an emergency dentist appointment to re-seal a tooth’s crown that suddenly popped off during flossing. Just a few weeks ago, even my work computer caught a virus. But the worst that happened was I caught a stomach bug and ended up missing the entire annual Gasshuku at Lake Tahoe.

It must have been adrenaline that got me there, and every day, I woke up in the hotel room with the hope that I could hobble to the gym and train at least one session, only to have that hope shot down by yet another trip to the bathroom. As I lay groaning in bed, wishing it could have been any other way, I wondered if I had been a bad Buddhist lately and missed a vegetarian day, or forgot to help my fair share of old ladies across the street to get that big of a karmic kick in the butt.

It must have been adrenaline that got me back. The prospect of home, of comfort foods my body was used to processing when it’s ill, of the Bay Area’s signature warm and healing sunlight instead of a white world of wind and snow. With four days and five pounds lost, it was difficult to stand without needing to lean onto objects. The night I came back, I stood in my future mother-in-law’s kitchen, watching her prepare my evening meal. When she learned of my ailment, she threw a handful of raw white rice onto a nonstick pan, roasting the grains over the heat until they turned a yellow-brown color. Rice—a staple in most Asian diets—has been known to have healing properties to the digestive tract. Roasted rice tea, thought to promote a healthy digestive system, is a common beverage served in Korean restaurants.

She told me that roasting the rice kills off the milky-white substance that the stomach cannot digest when it’s ill, leaving behind the nutrients that coat the lining and sustain one’s energy. Her late grandfather was an apothecary, and he left behind these simple kinds of treatments to her, along with a topical wine medicine that I have countless times used on my aikido bruises and sore joints to help them heal. In poor villages in Viet Nam, most families didn’t have the money to buy Western drugs. They didn’t have knowledge of or access to the full Bananas-Rice-Applesauce-Toast-Yogurt (BRATY) diet for stomach ailments. They worked with what they had to survive on bare essentials, and through time, their DNA adapted and learned how to process these staples. Despite everything I tried to eat in Tahoe—toast, crackers, yogurt, wonton- and chicken-noodle soup—my body refused to hang onto anything. But somewhere deep in my blood and bones, it remembers the simple miracle of roasted rice. Aikido teaches me how to live, but in her kitchen that night, I was taught a way to stay alive. I brewed teapot after teapot of her rice, mixed with ginger to warm the stomach. I cooked and ate the solid grains, along with a bland soup of fresh vegetables and lean meat, as my stomach became able to hang onto food. Slowly and surely, I started to heal.

It could have been a worse trip. I could have wound up in the Tahoe emergency room if I wasn’t able to keep hydrated. I do miss the three days of training, the priceless group dinners with good conversation and great friends, the bear sighting, the weapons work in the snow. But you do learn something from every momentous passage in your life, and this time for me, it wasn’t jo awase or sudden technique epiphanies. It’s what your body truly misses and desires when it’s down. It’s a reminder that without good health, nothing else matters. And it’s these invisible tendrils, reaching out across oceans and time, that bind me to my roots, that resurface in a lesson of who I was, to shape who I am.