The Office and the Echo

 I’ve been practicing my euphonium mostly in my office at work. Practicing music in the law building is complicated. I do not want to disturb students or colleagues, so I use a mute, check that no one is in the nearby offices, and play at lower volumes.

However, I have found that after 7:00 p.m. the building is mostly empty, especially on the weekends. I still keep my door closed, but take out the mute. Muted practice is better than no practice, but it changes everything. The tone is not an honest reflection of my ability. Even though my colleague down the hall can faintly hear me, he said it was kind of nice, like a far away trumpet. 

I was willing to overlook the trumpet comment, especially in light of his otherwise positive words.

I was practicing in my office on the last Friday night of winter vacation when I went out in the hall to get some water. The building felt especially dark, empty and quiet, so I decided to try something a little outside of my comfort zone. I took my euphonium out into the hallway and played a few notes. It was fun to hear the echoes, but felt like breaking a rule. I blew a few more notes, then waited quietly for a door to open, or footsteps to approach. 

Nothing but silence. 

I headed for the central stairwell.

My office building has two wings with a large central stairwell that is open to both wings on all five floors and the basement below. My office is on the fifth floor, so the stairwell goes up just one more floor. In other words, a large sound in the stairwell could be heard throughout the building. During work hours I like to hum or sing in this stairwell, but try to restrain myself. It feels like easily excused behavior if it is not loud enough to disturb nearby classes.

I have long wondered what it would be like to go into that stairwell and make a sound that could not be easily excused. This would be the day to find out. How would it sound to play my euphonium in there? Would I get in trouble? Surely not, especially during vacation with no one around.

So I played. Instinct told me to start with a single note. I decided to play the F below middle C, the most relaxed note in the scale for me: all valves open, lips so relaxed it feels more like play than work. No need to hunt for this one. Starts as clear as a bell every time. Except when I’m nervous.

My first note in the stairwell did not start as clear as a bell. But after a second or two my lips and lungs remembered what they were doing, and we settled into the kind of note that I can hold without wavering for a surprisingly long time. Which I did.

I had to. I had to hold that note because I was joined by a host of angels, all playing the same horn around a thousand corners from a thousand different dimensions. They all followed my slightest wavering, but not at precisely the same time. They all played the same note, but not exactly the same pitch. When I let my volume swell, they followed me the same way that a flock of birds follows itself. When I let my volume drop, they too got quieter. 

I am pretty good at playing quietly. The euphonium does not look like a subtle instrument, being shaped like a small tuba, but it can whisper with the best. 

I could not play under the sound of those echoing angels. When I stopped, the slowest of them took two or three seconds to fade out. 

It was sublime. I listened as the echoes faded, my ears grasping for the last few waves finding their way back to me. Somehow the silence felt richer than before, now that this chorus had performed.

I took a few breaths, then played the F again, dropped to the C below, went back to the F, then up to the A, then repeated them over and over. The echoes held the whole chord as I moved between notes, but they also reflected every missed tone, every rough start. It is both the most rewarding and least forgiving performance hall ever.

I wanted to offer a song, and found the old hymn “How Great Thou Art” right there in that F chord, so I played it. The song lifted me even as I lifted it. I slowed down on the descending lines, giving each note a chance to inhabit the hallways.

I wanted to soar through the chorus, and I mostly did. Even the notes I flubbed couldn’t bring me down. It was hard to believe that these amazing sounds were coming from me and my euphonium! 

I will not give up practicing in my office to only play in the stairwell. For starters, the windows of opportunity for stairwell practice are limited, especially during the semester. I don’t want to get a reputation as the Low Budget Low Brass Phantom of the Law Building Professor. 

More importantly, there is room for mistakes. The loaded bookshelves lining my office not only hold ideas, but grab the sound--including mistakes--out of the air. I still hear them, just not echoed back by a thousand angels in a thousand ways. The angels offer no judgement, just honesty, but that much honesty can be overwhelming. 

The office is a forgiving place to practice. I think that it suits my needs most of the time. But when I really need to hear the truth, and the building is empty, I will return to the stairwell. 

A Taste of a Previous Home

Thakali Khana, up top so it shows up on the preview thumbnail.

Early last fall a former coffee shop near my workplace closed and put up a new sign:

Lumbini Restaurant & Bar / Nepal * Indian Food

When I saw that the sign specifically listed Nepal before Indian food, and had the Nepali flag first on their sign, my heart began to beat faster. 

Close up of their sign

Would this be the first Nepali focused restaurant in our fair city? We have Indian restaurants, including some with Nepali chefs. They have cloth napkins, fancy glass goblets for your water, and lots of art on display and deliberate decor. They offer a nice experience for going on a date, but are too expensive to visit very often. I could not return to any of them with Lumbini taunting me.

I had no choice but to play the waiting game. I put that top photo in my class slides and begged my students to tell me when they opened. Around the second week of November one of my students told me that they were open, so that weekend I went in for a meal.

Lumbini is as close to the Nepali eating experience as I have ever had outside of Nepal. At the end of this post I will add a lengthy description, but there's a photo at the top of this post to make your mouth water.

The first time I ate at Lumbini it didn't just bring back memories, it reminded me of who I used to be. Uncounted meals eaten in smokey, poorly lit rooms, sitting cross-legged on a woven bamboo mat on a dirt floor, eating off of an aluminum plate on the same dirt floor in front of me. Rice and dhal cooked over a wood fired hand-made brick and mud-mortared stove. Meals eaten at bus stops with benches and tables, maybe even electric lights, but still that smoke in the air, the dishes washed at a pump outside.

Food was always served by women, whether in a home or restaurant. They were both pleasantly surprised that I ate correctly (right hand scooping food from plate to mouth, left hand picking up a cup of water; digging in without even asking for one of the two spoons they have for measuring sugar and tea) and mildly offended that I was unable to eat half of my body weight in one sitting. 

In some circles there is no higher compliment than visibly enjoying the food that someone has cooked. This can be amplified by licking the fingers clean before washing and letting loose a proper belch, to show that you speak truly when you say that you are physically incapable of taking another bite. 

Just one more bite!

The second time I needed to confirm that I had not dreamed the entire experience. It was just as good as the first time, and I decided that the next time I had to bring my family with me. They are fairly adventurous, but I was still a bit nervous. For years I had been cooking curry for them, and they called it "Nepal Curry," when it was nothing of the sort. It was MY curry, influenced by my time in Nepal, but also by my cooking experiences in Korea and Kansas. What if the flavors were too weird for them? What if my love for Nepali food was mostly sentimental? 

What if my family rejects this food? Or dismisses it as not worth eating more than once? It would be a rejection of a fundamental formative chunk of my past. 

Like saying, "I love you, but lose the left hand." 

The third time we ordered five different dishes as well as dumplings as an appetizer. I was pretty sure that something in the lineup would work, hoping that the khana would be front and center. It is our default Korean mode to share food from the center of the table, which was a bit awkward with the khana. I mixed some dhal bhat (bean curry with rice) to serve out, but the side dishes were a bit awkward for everyone to reach. Some cultural differences are just difficult to get past.

That's one happy family! Nice photo, Maxine!

Maxine's favorite dish was t'hukpa, a Tibetan style noodle soup. Very comforting food, and evidence that if a culture has chickens they eventually develop chicken noodle soup. Quinten liked the sukatee: dried pork strips fried with spices and onions. The Pulao (rice cooked with veggies and nuts) and Chicken Chili (sweet and spicy chicken with a thick tomato and onion sauce) were popular, and mixed well together. 

T'hukpa on the left, Chicken Chili top center, Khana on the right

We forgot to order samosas, but by the end of the meal not even Quinten wanted more to eat. We had polished off all but the last few stubborn grains of rice. I assured my family that leaving a little food was the Nepali way of showing that you definitely had enough to eat.

I didn't use the spoon to put food in my mouth! I promise!

Now that I have dragged you through my nostalgia, I might as well make you hungry as well. And perhaps convince you to visit Lumbini.

Thakali is the ethnic group from which this food originates, but most Nepali people call it khana (food). Everything was there, starting with the rice in the middle. If you have ever eaten in Nepal, you will instantly realize that there is not nearly enough rice on that plate to qualify for dhal-bhat, but whenever I started to run out of rice, or dhal, or veggies, they offered me more! Just like in Nepal! No extra charge! Every food on this plate has a very different flavor profile. You can mix and match so that every bite tastes slightly different. 

For the tour of the khana, I am going to start on the plate at the 9:00 position with the slices of raw cucumber and carrot. They are the easiest food to identify other than the rice in the middle, and give us a good starting point. They are also the simplest flavor to describe, because like the rice they are prepared with no seasoning at all.

Moving clockwise, at 10:00 is a tomato preserve (gohlbayda achar). I know that it is made by scorching the tomatoes under a flame, but I'm not sure what happens after that. I suspect that the tomato repents of its sins and becomes an angel. An angel with an acidic profile.

Next is a metal bowl of dhal--lentil curry. A thick, hearty soup, mildly seasoned, that will power you up for a long day, and later help you to make entertaining noises. The thing at noon that looks like a giant corn chip is a fried spicy bean-flour papadum. Crispy, with a little bit of its own, it offers a nice textural counterpart to the rest.

Thakali Khana

Just to the right of the papadum is the meat curry. They offer chicken, lamb, pork or goat. I went with goat (this time) because goat is The GOAT: greasy, because they don't trim off the fat or skin, stewed slowly to make it tender, long enough that the cartilage becomes soft. Exquisite spices. The bowl looks tiny, but it is actually the right amount of meat. In Nepali cuisine the meat is usually not the center of the meal, but a side dish that enhances the rice. And boy does it.

The next little shallow dish at 2:00 has curried potatoes, which could have passed for an exotic potato salad if it had been chilled.

Next to it at 3:00 are a couple of pickled green chili peppers, and a 4:30 a pickle called "sinky" (rhymes with the toy slinky). It is made by slicing long white radishes into strips, then drying them in the sun for a few days. This gives them a unique texture, a bit tough and chewy for a vegetable, but not fibrous at all. They are then marinated in spices, mustard oil, and mystery. It was one of my favorite side dishes back in the day. There is a Korean kimchi that is similar, but not as good.

At 6:00 we have spinach, cooked quickly and simply in a pan with almost no spices. A solid dose of green to the plate, and another unique flavor to add to the palate, and at 7:00 we have our last entry, curried broccoli. 

Not pictured is the clarified butter, much to my shame. They charge extra for it, but oh my goodness is it worth it! They bring it in extremely hot, and add it to the dhal and the rice. It sizzles when it hits, and makes the food scalding hot for a minute, which means you shouldn't try to eat it. Damn the torpedoes and burn my fingers I ate anyway. Totally worth it.

In the past, McDonald's was my weekly taste of home, and I still like to have a Sausage Egg McMuffin and hashbrown from time to time. But now Lumbini is my taste of home, even though Nepal was only my home for two years. I'm glad my family likes the flavor of my past. I hope to bring them back many times.

A Day with Maxine

Today I spent the day with Maxine. 

We checked on getting her driver's license, which we are ready to get tomorrow. We had lunch at a Jamaican restaurant, which we both enjoyed. We walked across town for it, 30 minutes round trip. On the way back we stopped at a game shop. I bought a card game called "a Gentle Rain" (which claims to be "A cozy game for one or more minds in need of a soothing reset." Sounds perfect for me.) 

Maxine drove us around town. It was only her fourth time driving since we came to Kansas. (Where's a gentle rain when you need it?) Later I drove us for 45 minutes to meet my aunt and uncle for dinner, then back to town for another 45 minutes. Lots of time for conversation. We will get more time together before I leave, but not a lot. 

It was a good capstone day, as Quinten and I will be leaving in four days. We talked about many things: about the cool aunts and uncles, and what it takes to be them. About being ready--or not--to leave home. About driving, which still makes her nervous, even in this small town. And about food, of course--the ones we miss and the ones we are enjoying. We talked about her brother, and how he will miss her when he needs her, but probably not day to day. 

And we talked about the little things that fill up the spaces between the big topics, like how we are out of shape in this town that discourages walking, and how getting a bargain on good clothes feels great. It was a good day. A kind of soothing rain. It didn't erase the things hanging over me, but it gave me a chance to reassure Maxine (and myself) that she will be okay.

Family Reunion

My kids and I are in Kansas for six weeks, about halfway through as I start writing this. We have made this trip every two or three years since 2011 when we moved back to Korea. We always lose things when we take a trip like this. Some losses are easier to carry than others.

Part of each of these trips has been a family gathering. My mother sets it all up weeks in advance so that everyone can get it on their calendar. It started as a late Christmas celebration when my children were little kids, but gradually became a family and close friends potluck. 

This time I overheard someone say, "I haven't seen Doug's family since the last time we did this three years ago!" The response was, "It's become a kind of regular family reunion."

I love the idea of Family Reunions. When I was growing up the Sack family got together for Christmas for a good 20 or more years in a row. Watching the kids this time reminded me of when I was little and all these almost-strangers told me how tall I had gotten and asked how I was doing in school. I tried to make not-awkward conversation with my cousin's 12-year-old daughter, but it was clearly awkward, even though she was reading a book and I love reading and could always be found reading at uncomfortable events when I was her age. My role has moved too far beyond hers to join her group, at least in one shot.

These Family Reunions are always fun, with good food and lively conversation, even though I was getting a little tired by hour five, and kind of wanted to get out my Kindle and just sit and read with the other bookworm.

My mother planned this one well, deliberately taking herself out of the center of action. In the past she has been more involved in preparing food and such, but this time she did most of the work by phone: reserving the room, emailing everyone, ordering a huge amount of fried chicken from a local restaurant, etc. It was a deliberate choice, because it has gotten more difficult for her to stand and move around the past year or two. Her planning paid off in a way that she could not have expected:

She was unable to attend. At five o'clock in the morning on the day we arrived in the United States, she tripped on a slipper, fell and broke her hip. I visited her in the hospital that afternoon (or evening? damn jetlag) without the kids. She had surgery the next day, which went very well, then was moved to a rehabilitation clinic in Leavenworth about a week later. The problem is that she has also had appetite problems: she has no appetite. And it hurts to swallow. A lot. For a long time.

This went unchecked by the hospital and the rehab for almost two weeks, possibly because they were focused on the broken hip. By that time her condition was deteriorating because she wasn't eating. It felt like she was just getting worse and worse, and was going to die. There have been ups and downs, but as I write this the doctors still don't understand why she has trouble eating.

So around four o'clock at the family reunion which was missing its coordinator, my Dad told me he was going to see Mom, then stood at the front of the room and got everyone's attention. "Thank you for coming everyone. We're so happy to have Rob and all the grandkids here, but.. I... I... I thought I could do this." He started to break down in front of everyone, so I went up to him, put my arm around his shoulder, and continued for him:

"We are so happy that you all are here. Stay, eat, talk, but Dad is going to be with Mom at the hospital now. She knows that you want to see her, but please don't come to the damn hospital. We love you."

I got a laugh with "damn hospital," and replies of "We love you, too." Then I walked outside with Dad. I asked how I did, and he told me that it was a bit scary how well I had read his mind! I told him that I have spent my life hearing his and Mom's voice in my head, and as I have gotten older and listened more closely, I hear them both more clearly than ever. It is not scary at all. It's beautiful. As much as I will miss them when they are gone, they will never be completely gone as long as I still hear their voices.

The ironic part of me hearing my father's voice in my head is that he is losing his words. He has ideas clearly in his head, but the words will not form in his mouth. Simple words, like hospital, or key, or blanket. He will be reading words from a page, but his mouth refuses to form them. He has stopped being worship leader or doing any other public speaking at church, though he still sings. Sometimes I can give him the right words, but mostly I just listen, or encourage him to go on to the next idea. 

I have started mourning the passing of my parents, as I lose little pieces of them. I don't suppose anyone ever feels ready to take the place of their parents as the oldest in their immediate family. I thought it hurt when I lost my grandparents, but it is clear that that was a shadow of the loss that is coming. 

You don't have to tell me that this is the price of love. I know. I know that the price of love is losing it, and that someone will always pay that price. It is not too steep a price for the love I carry for them in my heart, and their voices that I carry in my mind. Love and voices which I will continue to pass to my children, until I too lose my words.