============================================================== To reach ALL SJD members, please send to sjd@satjadham.net ... Do NOT include any other addresses when sending to the list... Include as LITTLE of the original messages as possible........ Message sent by: Meeckee@aol.com *** Announcement: *** Please register for SatJaDham Fifth Annual conference at the website http://www.satjadham.org/sjd5sd/ ============================================================== Sabaidee Pi Nong, I want to take this opportunity to extend my long overdue welcome all new members. So far I enjoy reading all your emails. I started to write something very short and simple for our B-Bash posting, but I seem to have caught SJD's spirit because I can't stop writting. Let me know what your thoughts are on this piece. Enjoy! Oy -------------------------- The Butterfly by Sommay Oy Simasingh Everyone seems to know which path to take for his or her life's journey. At 14 years of age, all I wanted to do was to swim at city national level for my school swimming team. It was in the water that I first truly discoverd the word "strength." As I grew older this was also where I returned whenever I felt that my life had trailed off my preordained path. My focus on winning each swim meet was intense. I was in control, and being in the water was the thing I enjoyed the most. Everything outside of the pool seemed to be in a state of imbalance. Maam, half-Caucasian and half-Thai, was a girl that I met in my English class on the first day of school. Our next door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Roner, the elderly Caucasian couple who lived to the left of our house and Fred Holmes, who was a bachelor when we moved in, live to the right of our house. These were my most memorable neighbors. It was no wonder that the Hatfield and the McCoys were so famous for their neighborly-misconduct as fictitious as they were -- they were pale in comparision next to my neighbors. I just wished that everyone could jump in the water and swim their struggles away. Mr. and Mrs. Roner had been married for what seemed to be forever. At fourteen, everyting seemed to be forever. Father Time had yet to catch up with the teenager who swam. The Roners were our neighbors from hell. From the first day we moved in our house, they made sure we knew that they were there first. Their attitude toward us reminded me of something from the Discovery Channel, how animals, especially domesticated dogs, would urinate on a certain place to mark their territory. Mr. Roner felt the same way toward us. It was not that our house looked like a fire hydrant, it may have been because we looked different from them. The dirty looks and the name-calling didn't have much on us at all, but the straw that broke the water buffalo's back was putting the fertilizer on our driveway. It was our punishment for not returning his childish pranks. Not only did our driveway get fertilized, Mr. Roner had to water the manure all over my parents' car. The cow manure smelled up to high heaven on warm summer days. Furthermore, as if fertilizing our cemented driveway was not enough, Mr. Roner often times called the Fire Department on us whenever we cooked outdoors. The Fire Marshall said that if his men came out to our residence again, one of us was going to receive a citation. After all of Mr. Roner's childish behaviors, it was no wonder that we never extened our invitation to them for B.B.Qs. I often thought that he was the anti-Christ. It was too bad for the Roners, since my mom makes the best Tumakhung (papaya salad.) Tumakhung and koaneo (sticky rice) are dishes that we seem to never get enough of in a Laotian household. The Roners will never be fortunate enough to even sample these wonderful dishes. Fred Holmes, my other neighbor, was more cordial towards us; especially towards me. He made comments like, "Boy if only I were 20 years younger." My usual response to him would be, "what does that mean? So I could beat your happy butt in swimming if you were 20 years younger?" My spoken words were so soft that all Fred heard from my mouth were, "Nice lawn Mr. Holmes!" His effusive friendliness made me want to run in the other direction. Fred was much nicer then Mr. Roner, at least he said "hi" or waved to us. Fred's wife left him years ago, and he never heard from her again. Fred vowed that he would never walk down that matrimony aisle again. It was something that I could never understand. I thought marriages were built like trucks and were supposed to lasted forever. To the outside world they seemed like an ideal coupld because they lived in a nice house with a manicured lawn, but what went on behind closed doors was as strange as swimming a 50 yard dash on a full stomach. Maybe what I saw on television about marriage was misleading. Then again, television always has a glare all it's own, it lack of reality is absurb. Something serious must have happened between the two of them, because Fred came home from the military with a young Filipina woman name Lourdes Robles in his arms. Lourdes was young, but not young enough so that my friend Maam and I could invite her to go swimming with us at the pool. Lourdes was a pretty little woman with short black hair, but then again anything next to Fred was small and fragile. They seemed like two people cohabiting under one roof, but separately they looked more like father and daughter. Fred had to be at least twenty years her senior. It was a complex arrangement, one that would require a business license to operate, like marriages in my parents' generation. There was no holding hands and opening doors for her unlike any other couples. Fred seemed happier since Lourdes came into his life and he stopped making those silly comments to me. The transformation from a ham to a man was very becoming for good old Fred. Maam didn't want Lourdes to go swimming with us that day; she wanted to tell me about Tik, the Thai boy we met at a dance weeks ago. Tik was every mother's nightmare. He was very good looking, charming and of course he drove a fast car. I hated him from the first time I saw him. He was a pretty boy who I could easily beat in any one of my swim matches. Oddly enough at our first meeting, I knew he would be the man that would change our friendship forever. Maam and I used to spend our entire afternoon roller skating down the street. We would ride our bikes to the beach on the weekend, and never miss a day at the pool. We talked about silly things that no one outside the two of us could understand. It was like a secret society and we were the only two survivors left. On our usual hangout and post "Romeo met Julliet" all she talked about was Tik. I really wanted to tell her he sounded liked a Prick, but instead I said, "Tick, as in blood sucking flea, tick!?" This change of tone in our conversation was disturbing to me. Disturbing because I didn't know how to relate to her. And what was the deal with her getting sick every morning? I thought she liked swimming and there certainly was not a need to miss practice. Maybe she didn't have enough "boon," and therefore she was punished with the morning sickness because she misplaced her dedication. True Buddhists believe that everyone must be in a constant state of creating boon. Boon works like a credit rating with the big man above, and you can not simply cash an empty check. Swimming as in any sport requires a degree of determination. Without this Maam might as well have sunk instead of swim. I was afraid that if she kept missing practice our coach would have to eliminate her from the team. It was as if she reached a turning point in her life, and she had crossed that line and joined the woman group. In the past the only man that we ever talked about was Greg Louganis, the US Olympic swimmer. We never saw nor met with Louganis, but we talked about him as if he was the silent member -- THE INVINCIBLE LOUGANIS. She said Tik's kisses were filled with passion, and that when their lips juxtaposed, it was like eating cotton candy. All of the sudden her attitude changed. It was as if the woman group had place a big stamp of approval on her forehead; she began to wear makeup and really provocative clothes to school. She did not realize that what she have lost at our age, she would never regain. In retrospect, the adolescence stage was like no other time in life. We had such an opportunity to explore what life had to offer and at the same time to commit ourselves to the endless possibilities of the future. I was mad at her for reasons that I could not understand. I was glad that I was not feeling nauseated every morning. I felt powerful yet powerless as time passed like the character in Marguerite Duras' The Lover in the 1930s as she crossed the Mekong River. I felt as though a man had replaced our friendship, and now she had to be a woman because she had kissed a man. It felt weird, yet incredibly exciting to hear bout the details of a first kiss. I was amazed to learn what came after that kiss. (to be continue...) _ ***************************************************************** Visit SatJaDham Homepage at: http://www.satjadham.org (or .net) *****************************************************************