The Madwoman and the Roomba

by Sandra Tsing Loh

  I yelled, “Huzzah!” and smacked my arm!

  And spilled some root beer over this poem!

  Now parts of speech are drowned in foam!

  Interjections that rule the day

  Are curse words that I dare not say

  Although those words are dear to me

  I turn those in? I get a D

  My entire weekend, lost to grammar

  So teacher! Please, ma’am? Rest your hammer.

  Grade? We are improving! B+! (Probably because the teacher sensed I wrote them, but we’ll take it!) UC Merced wait list, here we come!

  “Summer”

  A “June” of One’s Own

  Let’s Commence

  CHARLIE, THE GIRLS, and I are driving north up the coast, to Carmel Grove, for my nephew Sam’s high school graduation.

  We talk about how high school graduation will be different from any of the girls’ previous ones, as in fact will their (fingers crossed) college graduations. Where there is a guest “commencement speaker.”

  “Like who?” Hannah asks.

  “Like me!” I say. “I actually had to give a commencement speech once.”

  “No!” says Hannah.

  Charlie says, “That’s right, your mother did.”

  “It was at this little college in Orange County. From public radio, I was famous enough to be invited, but not famous enough that the graduates knew me.”

  “Henh?” Hannah asks.

  “Let’s put it this way. When you google ‘Best Commencement Speeches,’ which I did, all these web nerds will eagerly tell you that the best commencement speeches ever were made by Bono and Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs’s speech described his fascination with Japanese calligraphy and how that led to Apple products’ beautiful design. Bono’s tasked an entire graduating class with making sure there’s always clean drinking water in Africa. I think. I didn’t finish it. I was too depressed.”

  “I don’t get it,” Hannah says.

  “The point is, when you’re a cultural rock star, you can say anything. Dare to dream! Dare to be different! Dare to dare! Sincerely, Oprah Winfrey. Regular people have to work harder. I literally tried googling ‘How to Write a Commencement Speech for Regular People.’ ”

  “My brother should google something like that,” Charlie muses. “He’s best man at a wedding next month. Those toasts can go wrong quickly. Suddenly the best man is drunkenly reminiscing about doing shots together in college and all the skanky girls the groom dated back in the day! Room goes dark—”

  “ ‘How to Write a Best Man Speech.’ ” Hannah has googled it on her phone. “Top search: ‘How to Write a Best Man Speech When You Can’t Stand the Bride.’ Answer: ‘Hire a comedian from our staff to ghostwrite it for you, it’s that impossible.’ So what do you write, mom?”

  “Well, I said advice we give now will soon become obsolete, and then I kind of went the ‘wear sunscreen’ route. It was only eight minutes long. Essentially, I told the story of my own graduation in 1983. Our commencement speaker was novelist James Michener. The title of his speech was ‘Your Revolution.’ ”

  “What was your revolution?” Hannah asks.

  “Something to do with space. Michener had just written a book about it. His hope was that our generation would pioneer manned space exploration to Mars and beyond.”

  “With the possible exception of Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar,” Charlie says, “our generation has not done that.”

  “Right,” I say. “I guess that makes us the Not So Great Generation. Fifty years since Neil Armstrong, we harness the computing power that once launched rockets in our cell phones. And use it to Yelp the nearest Cheesecake Factory.”

  Charlie: “And the guy pioneering space travel today is no astronaut or war hero or even a Nobel Prize winner, but Elon Musk—the guy who invented PayPal.”

  “Many of my Caltech physics classmates ended up doing statistical modeling for Wall Street or writing algorithms for beer gun pressure at Applebee’s.” I turn to Hannah. “That’s why I have so little career advice for you.”

  Charlie agrees: “In The Graduate, remember? ‘Plastics.’ ”

  “Most trend lines suggest a boom in the field of gerontology. Look at caregiver Thomas. Your future college tuitions are pouring into your grandpa’s GI tube.”

  “I remember my culmination!” Sally suddenly says.

  “Into what?” Charlie asks.

  “Sixth grade.”

  “Really?” Charlie rolls his eyes.

  “I rolled my eyes, too,” I say, “but actually it was cute. It was fun to see all these former kindergarteners now in their little ties and party dresses, semi-grown-up.”

  “We each gave a speech,” Sally recalls.

  “All seventy of them,” I add. “It took two and a half hours.”

  “What do people even have to reminisce about when they’re ten?” Charlie asks.

  “Field trips—” Sally says wistfully.

  “Right,” I say. “Memorable ones obediently cited included the Griffith Observatory, Skirball, and something something ‘adobe.’ But the runaway favorite?”

  “Second-grade whale watching!” Sally says.

  “I also found you fifth graders very eager to thank the friends who pulled you through ‘when times were tough.’ Perhaps like when you realized your field trips peaked in second grade, with the whale watching, and from hence on, instead of the thrill of watching a classmate vomit over the side of the boat, you would only be visiting museums. Anyway. People would name their friends, from three to almost fifteen. I counted. The most thanked friend in your grade was someone named Yamillah.”

  Sally nods. “Yamillah was good people.”

  “And remember, Sally, you actually won that award!”

  “What for?” asks Charlie.

  Sally raises a “for Narnia” fist: “The Ellen Rubin Award for perfect attendance!”

  “The PTA president posted a photo of Sally getting it on my Facebook page,” I say. “It was like a shot of cocaine. Well-wishers flooded in for what one friend dubbed ‘the Cal Ripkin of fifth grade.’ Other families shared their own happy news. One friend reported that his own fifth grader had been voted ‘most courteous.’ Another couldn’t resist adding that her own son—now nineteen—had once been voted ‘most elegant’ in kindergarten—here’s the kicker—in France. Another shared the exciting news that her seven-month-old puppy had just learned to catch a ball. I was tempted to do a follow-up post—a photo of this most wonderful LAUSD award Sally also got—”

  “What?” asks Charlie.

  Sally can barely get it out: “Certificate of Achievement in the Area of Bus Riding for Improved Behavior on the Bus!”

  We howl with laughter: “Literally true!”

  “OH, NOW THE trees are starting . . .”

  My daughters always find going to Carmel Grove a magical experience. It’s another planet, compared to their hometown of Van Nuys.

  Driving them home across Victory Boulevard, a tangle of telephone wires and exhaust, past the pupuserias, tire shops, and Yoshinoya beef bowls, I used to apologize for the fact that their parents were working artists, our neighborhood was butt ugly, an eyesore, and that we didn’t have the money to raise them in a grassy enclave.

  By contrast, Carmel Grove is one of those places—like Aspen, like Santa Barbara—that you get out of the plane or car and the blue sky hits you, slaps you in the face, like a young Michelle Pfeiffer in heels.

  Not only that, Carmel Grove is an idyllic place of kindly protection. The wildlife is protected, the children are protected, even the elderly people are protected, striding healthfully through the grassy dunes in their Scandinavian sweaters.

  In fact, it’s so beautiful it scars you forever. It secretly makes you hate any place that isn’t it—like your own home.

  CG is on a hillock above the Pacific Ocean, which plunges away dramatically in a crash of emerald waves, puffy white clouds above, perfect today as it is every day.
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  Even the bakery we stop at is like an illuminated painting of pastries so aromatic they seem to exhale when we arrive, a silvery bell ringing behind.

  Not to mention, at the local (nonchain) grocery store, there is an actual friendly local butcher. The meat is so pink and gleaming we can’t help thinking that the animals were clearly happy, living in their own artistic commune, composing symphonies, before gently and humanely “transitioning” to continue to nurture us.

  There is a church with a perfect steeple, a sloping hill in front so that you can almost see, with her elegant swan-like neck, Christina from the Wyeth painting Christina’s World. We have to slow the car, for a moment, to let a trotting family of deer pass safely.

  The late wife of my brother—Sam’s father—picked out a beach house in the early 1990s for $300,000, which we thought was exorbitant. Suffice it to say, it’s now worth much more than that. She was a teacher, he is an engineer—you can’t even feel alienated by what has become a luxury piece of real estate. It’s just Carmel Grove’s gentle good luck.

  SO HERE WE ARE at Sam’s graduation. The sun is shining. Metal risers gleam.

  There are festive balloons, leis, personalized graduation caps. The orchestra begins. “Pomp and Circumstance.”

  Here come a dozen girls in sundresses bearing flowers. Behind them march 150 beaming graduates.

  The “Call to Colors” seems to confuse the two be-gowned boys bearing a flag and two white prop rifles. They stand for a moment, in a haze, as if confused. The action halts. The principal prompts them on mic. “Ahhh, Call to Colors. Stand tall for the flag. Raise the flag.”

  I whisper to my crew, “That would never happen in Van Nuys. Our ROTC is really on top of it. You really need to be in L.A. for the good riflework.”

  Though if lacrosse sticks came to Van Nuys, people would be using them for spits to barbecue pork ribs of many nations.

  I’m relieved our Sam doesn’t look at all disemboweled by his college shutout. On the contrary, he’s beaming and happy. “Who was on the Honor Roll—GPA 3.8 or above?” Apparently Sam was. He stands. “Who played varsity sports?” He stands. “Who played in the orchestra?” For two years, he played in the first violin section—toward the back, but still in first.

  It is a lovely set of accomplishments. When had he had time to sleep halfway through the day like my girls?

  Then come the speeches. Valedictorians and salutatorians. They fall into two categories.

  First, valedictorian. Asian American, fearsome stats: 4.7 GPA, varsity fencing and swimming champion, Model Debate Squad, STEM honor something, 100,000 hours of community service. She’s headed on scholarship to Stanford.

  “Classmates!” Grace, the valedictorian, declares with an almost warlike intensity. She begins quoting from Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

  “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . . !” She goes on to say, I think, that the standard interpretation of the two roads suggests choosing safety(?), but a deeper interpretation invites one to get lost in the woods. Essentially, Grace is daring her classmates, in their Hawaiian leis and oversized yellow sunglasses, with plushy animals hanging over their graduation caps, to stop, to smell the flowers, to be themselves, to plunge into the unknown, to fail.

  I can’t help whispering to Charlie, “I feel it’s ironic that Grace is challenging her classmates to fail because many of them have already. Next thing you know, Grace will be daring them to sleep in.”

  Because if there is anyone who had never failed, or slept in, it is Grace. It seems she hadn’t had even a minute to fail, with her schedule and formidable train of extracurriculars.

  By contrast I see Sam, next generation, looking up at her in total rapture. His face seems to say, “We’re graduating!” I remember the boy who attacked with his king in chess, who loves riding bikes with his friends.

  The salutatorian, a bean-pole boy with wiry hair, in a husky voice tinged with emotion, promises, “I will remember you, the faces at the lockers. We will never see each other again. This is a time that’s now moving into the past.”

  The sun is setting. Golden hour. A palpable sigh comes over the crowd. There’s the reading of the names.

  “Ach!” I whisper to Charlie. “Why don’t they practice the names first? Or say ahead of time, ‘I may butcher your name, that’s life,’ but then don’t do the hesitant questioning ‘Patrizio . . . Oionoscola . . . Hahabjelay . . . ?’ ”

  But everyone is thrilled, from the tubby short dude with Coke-bottle glasses, whose presence on stage draws a jubilant howl from forty teary people, to a tall thin girl with acne who draws less of a sound, the void into which the Loh family cheers, because we can’t bear anyone not graduating to loud applause. It’s our own version of “No Child Left Behind.”

  To say good-bye, among a mind-boggling fluorescence of pool toys, leis, and sunglasses, the graduates throw off their caps into the twilight.

  And just for one moment, one safe space, one wormhole in time, the families drift off glazed-eyed, sated with joy.

  “I can’t wait to graduate from high school,” Hannah murmurs in awe, as if it’s a magical possibility she has just thought of for the very first time.

  “I’m scared to graduate,” says Sally. “I’m going to miss everyone. My friends, my teachers, my locker . . . I still miss Yamillah!” she half-wails.

  “From fifth grade?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Sally says, “she was good people.” But even as she says this, behind her glasses, her eyes gleam as they follow the balloons lifting, lifting in the sky.

  And I glimpse a worldview of both commencements and endings, where both sadness and joy exist at once. And for a moment, we dwell not amid the chronological march of history—the decades, the movements, the milestones—but in the humble craft of the family, small, not legendary, taking a thing in, in a breath.

  Can’t Think of Anything Clever to Say about “July”

  101 (If You Count Each Piece of “Extra” Checked Baggage) Arguments Against “Summer Fun”

  (A Wee Rant/Digression)

  I ALWAYS THINK I want to travel and to do “fun things” in summer, but there are really so many reasons not to—at least in America. (I should really be wine tasting in Provence, but that would be in an alternate universe.) Let me count the ways.

  1.Kids in pools—a violation.

  I was at a hotel last summer, reading a book, squeak of the gate, and like a too-gaudy Olympic opening ceremony from some desperate Third World country, a surreal parade of gigantic inflatable pool toys marches in. There’s a green T-Rex, a purple unicorn with fluttering eyelashes, a tropical yellow palm tree, and an eight-foot-long hot dog.

  What’s next? you think. A giant gall bladder topped by a maraschino cherry?

  All these dirigibles were there for one reason: extremely loud and frantic water racing. “One, two, three, go!” the children screamed. Piercing shrieks as four tidal waves hit. An hour later, exhausted from their time trials, the shriekers floated to the pool’s shallow end, spent. They flung their deflating toys over the side onto the lawn. A shaky silence falls over their pool toy graveyard. And then: “Marco.” “Polo.” “MARCO!” “POLO!”

  2.“Amusement” parks of any form—the humiliation.

  One time, Charlie took me and the girls to this amusement park called “The Fun Spot.” It was a terrifying Erector Set of roller coasters, elevator drops, screaming. Because I hate thrill rides, Charlie suggests we start with a very small Ferris wheel. It is so dinky, in the gondola ahead of us are two elderly Muslim ladies in headscarves and glasses. They grip the rail, looking anxious. Poor things. It’s probably their first time in an amusement park. But no, as soon as the gondola lifts, while I have a panic attack, the elderly Muslim ladies raise their hands above their heads and cackle! One takes a selfie! I renamed it “The Vomit Spot.”

  But now I see it—a small, fenced-in enclosure with “kiddie rides.” Instead of the ominously named “Riddler’s Revenge,”
here are G-rated rides like “The Happy Swing!” Two feet off the ground and moving at five miles an hour, these rides are perfect for me. Except that their cartoon elephant-shaped seats are way too small for a middle-aged person’s butt. But wait—it turns out some come with a special “fat seat.” Determined to have some “fun,” I strap myself into a vertical bouncer called “The Frog Hopper.” I’m fine until it raises us eight feet into the air. I grip the rails and scream, triggering laughter from four-year-olds. Next comes a tiny roller coaster literally in the shape of a snail. My biggest fear is that the metal safety bar is going to bruise my shins as we careen slowly in circles.

  3.Calculating “air miles”—how to provoke a brain aneurysm.

  A couple of months ago, I’m trying to book a trip with United Air miles. But they’re the wrong kind of miles. But then I see an ad for Spirit Air! Amazing price—but you can’t take a carry-on bag. For a full week, my daughters and I, all three of us, will each need a carry-on bag— But wait! This thought actually crosses my mind. What if we FedEx boxes of our clothes ahead? Sure, our Cleveland family friends might not appreciate receiving FedEx boxes of our clothes. But geez, Spirit is charging—what?—$50 a bag? Three people on two flights—that’s $300 more— Unless we just fly our clothes one way, wear them, then toss them into Lake Erie— But wait, for just $59 per year, you can join the Spirit Air $9 bag club—!

  Like a whipped dog, I return to my captor, United. And suddenly, I discover that I can reserve three tickets at 30 percent off under a program called Basic Economy. You might ask: “Why so cheap?”

  The next day, United sends me a “morning after” e-mail that asks—and this is a direct quote: “Do you realize what you’ve done?” In Basic Economy, not only do you not get a carry-on bag, families are not seated together. Doesn’t need a change of clothes, flying alone— Who’s the target customer here? A time-traveling eighteenth-century serial killer? And how does breaking up families save United money? It’s as if they’re saying, sure, 30 percent off, but: