Lena turns 50

Lena Chow was my first best friend. Being the only two Asian girls in the entire third grade, we were inseparable during recess and after school. In the winters, while other kids were making snowballs and engaging in epic snowball fights, Lena and I would huddle in snow forts, creating bowls, forks and spoons out of the same hard-packed snow. In the summers, we would spend hours under my dining table, pretending to be rabbits in a burrow, planning our next globe-trotting adventure. We made passports for ourselves and traveled the world. We had the visas to prove it, too! By age 11, we stated writing scripts for our favorite television programs. We each had a pet collie and even bought a "timeshare" dutch rabbit named "Duchess." To further cement our exclusive bond, we called each other "Ainot" and "Anel," our names spelled backwards.

We were complementary but opposites. Lena was quiet, considerate and always the follower. I was loud, impulsive and always bossy. We even looked like our complementary roles, like Laurel & Hardy. Lena was so scrawny, at times I was afraid she would blow away. I was probably the chubbiest Chinese girl the Midwest had ever seen, hefty and round. Both of Lena's parents worked so I often marveled at how she so dutifully washed the dishes, folded the laundry and did all the other chores I always thought belonged in the land of the grownups. Our kids' job was to PLAY. (Yes, that world view has comeback to bite me after I had kids, whose sole interest was to play.)

I remember particularly clearly, one of the monthly Chinese faculty potlucks when our families gathered at Lena's house. As usual, the fathers played poker and high-low in the living room while the moms gathered in the family room to play mah-jong. The kids also split by age and gender into different rooms scattered around the house. The oldest girls gathered in Lena's room. We were in the midst of gossiping about one thing or another when I noticed Lena absent-mindedly sliding a roll of masking tape up and down her twig-like arm. It looked like fun.

"Can I try?" I asked.

She gave me the roll of tape. Within seconds, I slid it onto on my bicep. That's when the trouble started. No matter what I did, the roll of tape would not slide back down. Now all eyes were glued to the bizarre arm band adorning my bicep. After 10 minutes of trying various methods to remove the now offensive object, I knew I needed adult intervention. I headed to the poker table which would only serve to rachet up my humiliation. My father was furious about being interrupted. He drove me home, cut off the roll of tape and sent me to bed. That was the first and only time I had ever seen him so mad at me.

Somewhere in middle school Lena and I began drifting apart. We reconnected briefly when I was a grad student at UC-Berkeley. Lena was going to the California College of Arts and Crafts, a highly regarded private art school, to pursue her passion. Then years later, I heard she had married Kevin Smith, another Madison transplant. It wasn't until her son Jesse was about 5 or 6 that we gathered again, this time at my home on Skyline. We were hosting a Halloween party for my Madison friends and their kids. Vivian Tiao and her family, Julie Tiao, Peggy Ho and Wally, Connie's family, Lena's family and my family. I remember her son Jesse came in a Spiderman costume. He had been battling leukemia and was in remission, so it was to celebrate that, too. Jesse was energetic, lithe and nimble.

On September 5, 2008, I called Lena to wish her a happy 50th birthday. Her soft and gentle voice answered the phone. It had turned out to be a tough year for her. Her father had passed away, then her mother was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease that was causing a rapid decay of her mental faculties. This coincided with learning that Jesse now had a brain tumor. What a difficult spring and summer. Lena, as is her manner, has shouldered all the care-taking in her patient and soft-spoken way. She arranged for live-in caretakers for her mother, 24/7. She is trying to keep her spirits up around Jesse, who is devastated about being struck down just as he enters high school and the period of life when young birds are to be set free.

I pondered the trajectory of Lena's 50 years. She was always the artistic one yet she has put everything aside to care for those around her: her parents, her sister, her dog, her gerbils, our rabbit Duchess, her husband, her son and daughter... no bitterness. No frustration. Only grace and patience. How is that possible?

The answer came to me as I was writing her birthday card. Reflexively, I had addressed the envelope to "ANEL." Then it occurred to me that if I added "Gee," then Lena was really an AN(G)EL. Now it all made sense. In Lena's 50 years in this world, by sharing her gentle compassion she has been a safe harbor for everyone who has come in contact with her. I'm grateful she is in my life. Over the years, she has shown me what patience, love and compassion look like. Gee, Lena is truly an Angel.