here lies Nathan's umbilical cord and other things that explain my behavior

Nathan's umbilical cord is buried in this planter box. It rests below rocks we've collected from various travels and flowers that bloom come spring. Shortly after it fell off Nathan's newborn belly, My mother and I dug a hole and plopped in the dark lump. There wasn't any accompanying fanfare or eulogy. The idea is that burying the umbilical cord in the ground will keep a child from growing up wild and running loose in the streets.

I don't believe that this works in that it replaces years of proper parenting and discipline. But I loved the ceremony of it, that I was continuing a family ritual that will explain to any excavators why my old backyard is filled with bellybuttons.

And to propitiate Tami for her meme, here are 20 things I remember about living on Saipan, with accompanying anecdotal goodness for my mainland peeps:

1) McDonald's came to Saipan in 1992 and before that, the only way to get a Happy Meal was if someone went to Guam and brought it home. There was no greater status symbol in fifth grade than the sight of a cold, soggy, but fancy flown-in french fry.

2) I remember Matsumoto's theater after the American couple started managing it. The one-plex theater showed only one movie at a time and Titanic ran for a whole month.

3) I got into my first of only two physical fights I have ever been in at Starlight (?) Night Club during their "teen night." I was trying to walk away from a girl when she pulled my hair. And after a high-pitched shrieking rush of hair pulling and face grabbing, a security guard broke up our tangled bodies. The other girl tried to stare me down but I didn't care as I danced freely to my favorite song, New Order's "Bizzare Love Triangle."

4) During the short stint at Catholic school, I got into a near-fight with a girl I will call "Divine" when she claimed that she saw me flip her the bird. If the teacher hadn't stepped in, it would have been fight number two.

5) During the holidays, a selected group from the local parish would visit each home in the village, bearing a baby Jesus or the niño and a box for monetary gifts. You would welcome the baby Jesus into your house and call everyone to kneel and kiss it. They played loud Chamorro Christmas songs to signal their arrival and every year I would try to feign disability to get out of kissing that germy ceramic doll but my mother would pull me out, Garfield pajamas and all, until I had kissed the niño.

6) I heard chickens, roosters, and church bells every day.

7) Whenever I read American lit like The Babysitters Club or Sweet Valley High, I never understood why girls were afraid of geckos.

8) My mother told me numerous times that I'm not allowed to leave the Catholic church "even if the priests dance in bikinis." [SIC!] Seriously, if you ask her if priests dancing in bikinis is a religious deal breaker, she'll snap, "AY! NO! Even if the priests dance in bikinis, you cannot leave the church!"

9) And while on the subject of matri-distortion, I was in the third grade when discovered that not everyone called their vaginas "pancakes" (hence, ruining breakfast starches FOREVER).

10) Three elders from the Church of Latter Day Saints were visiting my neighbor's mom and while they were there, they teased me about the gunk I had in my eye, called mugu, and I ran away crying. Some people call that stuff "morning glory," but that's baffling, not glorious.

11) To show respect to elders, you bow your head toward his/her right hand to "amen," basically asking for their blessing. You say ñot for males and ñora for females. Angelo has a more thorough explanation of this practice. At a rosary, I faced amening a long row of women sitting at a table, so instead of doing it one by one, I ran along the ladies, my head bent and my mouth bleating a long, "Ñooooooorrrrraaaa." I have never seen my mother run so fast to pull me out of there, gripping my hair in her hand.

12) I dropped out of catechism class three times before my mother told me she'd give me money if I just got my confirmation. At 18, I joined the confirmation class for adults and when we introduced ourselves, one woman with a strong and charming Chamorro accent shared that she had "tree kids."

13) At 16, I won the Attorney General's Cup which was at the time the most prestigious speech competition on island. I found out later that right before I went up to speak, my mother turned to an Assistant Attorney General, pointed to the ceiling and said, "Those lights look like earrings!"

14) My favorite Chamorro food is corn soup and I will pay cash money to anyone with Marji's Kitchen's recipe.

15) Japan Airlines flew in snow one time for a snowman competition but the snow had hardened during shipment. I remember one kid getting a black eye from a snowball ice-ball fight.

16) Thanks to a very international student body, I learned how to swear in Korean, Chinese, and Russian.

17) I was fitted for my third-grade wardrobe at Roshi's, an Indian store that sold both clothing *and* electronics. Who doesn't need shoulder-pads and a 20-inch TV?

18) On All Soul's Day, it was tradition to sit at our family's plot at the cemetary for mass. Unlike cemetaries here on the mainland, Saipan's plots are often elaborate creations of porcelain and other fancy materials and there is enough small for your family to gather and pay respects during the mass. Do not bring children. Children will always complain, "I'm hot. I'm sweaty. There are dead people below me."

19) When the Joeten-Kiyu Public Library opened, I lived there for several months and checked out seven books even though I knew I wouldn't read them all.

20) Whenever I've flown back home, I've pressed my face to the glass and pretended I could see my house but at such an altitude, my home blended in with the green landscape below, even with my finger moving over the window, pointing out that I live here, or here, or here.

Dear Midwest: there is no "r" in Washington

Once Mike and I had shuffled through the frenetic throngs of crying kids and oblivious business travelers, we stood at the gate counter to get our seat request. A woman wearing distressed jeans and toting an oversized Prada bag walked in front of me while I was checking on Nathan. When I turned and found Miss Hands-on-Hips blocking my view, I immediately said to Mike, "Did this bitch just walk in front of me? She did!"

I fantasized about surreptiously defacing her bag with a mini-Sharpie and transforming it into a "Prado," spitting on her hair, or vexing her with an incurable case of ass-itch.

But instead of executing any revenge plot or politely tapping her on the shoulder and saying, "My good woman, surely you jest!" I waited until she turned back toward my hissing so I could give her an Oscar-worthy eye roll. Ha! I showed you with my passive-agressive ocular reflexes! I gave you a "whuteva!" with my eyes! If this had been seventh grade, her name would have been all over the bathroom stalls and there would be serious grapevine discussion on the severity of her B.O.

On the flight, Nathan did not cry at all. He was mesmerized by the two-year-old boy across the aisle who shrilled like a girl and jumped on his mom's lap so he could get a tight hair grip on the guy who sat in front. I felt like I had joined some special club called, "That Is Not My Baby Crying." And as a member of TINMBC, we would wear berets and pat ourselves on the back and take turns kicking out moms and dads whose babies broke the first rule: no effing crying. I'm sure I'd be the first one dethroned.



I wanted to nurse Nathan to protect his little ears upon take-off, but a combination of our thirty-minute taxing and the boy having no interest in eating left me with one boob in hand, like this was The Omen: Breastfeeding Unleashed and I was frantically shoving a boob into his mouth, saying, "It's all for you, Damien!"



Mike's brother and sister are going to be the godparents and yesterday we met with the priest. Nathan's going to be baptized in the same church Mike and his family attended which is across the street from the house he grew up in. Nathan's going to wear the same baptismal gown that's been used for the past fifty years. These traditions are touching, but the smart ass in me wants to break into Fiddler on the Roof.

After we had gone over the ceremony, my sister-in-law had her gift for her husband blessed. At first I was impressed because I didn't even know you could do that, but then I remembered watching the news back on Saipan and seeing the bishop blessing the fiber optic cable being installed between Saipan and Tinian. And why stop there? Why not hire a priest for a few hours and have him bless everything in your home. I would imagine a Sonicare toothbrush sprinkled with holy water trumps an untouched one.

And now I'm in St. Louis in a house that would cost at least a million dollars in Seattle proper. I can only afford a hovel in Seattle. If I save up, maybe I can afford a hovel with a view. A view of another hovel.

I am the daughter of Jesus

Last week marked the 13th anniversary of my father's death and I've been thinking how to say it. This could get very sad and uncomfortable. I thought of sharing a poem I wrote about him. It's not terrible and rhyming, but it's maudlin enough to warrant heavy rotation of The Cure, clove smoking and a legal name change to Azrael Abyss.

So no victim poems, deal?

My father's name was Jesus. Some people knew to say hey-soos, but most blurted out the full-on Christ Almighty pronunciation. He was 59.

My memories of my father, the ones before the hospital stays and surgeries and sickness, are the ones I want to share here.

I am very much like him. I inherited his large flat feet. My mother would point at my ham hocks and say, "They're just like your father's! Like irons!" I also inherited his voracious love for reading. I read my Babysitters Club books in the bathroom even if I didn't need to go, just because that was his routine every morning of my life, scouring the paper and drinking his black coffee. He taught me that french fries are tasty when dipped in sweet and sour sauce and that long division is tricky, not impossible.

There are things I have done that I know he would have been proud of, like volunteering for two summers at a bereavement camp for children, graduating class salutatorian in high school (which means more if I don't tell you that there were only seven people in my senior class and four of us shared that title. Thanks indecisive parochial school!) and smarty pants things like Phi Beta Kappa and English Honors. The period in seventh grade when I skipped school and smoked Benson and Hedges with the judge's daughter? I don't think he would have approved.

Once at a beach gathering, we took a walk, hand in hand. As we trudged on, he told me to be careful of the small holes where little crabs made their homes. He said something about the beach, the way it protected for everything and how we had to be apart of that.

When I think of my father, I go back to that moment, to the time when we towered over the sand, powerful enough to care for all the small things that lived beneath our feet.

I'm from Saipan

I present 5 things I most often hear when I say, "I'm from Saipan." In no particular order:

1. Where is that?
This is usually followed by a blank stare as I use my hands to position an air map of where Saipan is in relation to Japan. As many of my Saipan peers must also experience, I have to ask, "Do you know where Guam is? Yeah, it's near there." No offense to my Guam peeps, but it wears on me. The Vietnamese woman who does my nails misheard my geographic explanation and still thinks my family is from Guam. This has been going on for two years and I haven't corrected her. I don't want her to mess up my tips. If people do not know where Guam is, I also say, "It's between Japan and Hawaii." You know what's really between Japan and Hawaii? An ocean. And Amelia Earhart's sunken plane.

2. Wow, your English is so good. You don't have an accent at all!

Is this a compliment? Should I bow and say thank you? Did you expect me to communicate by drawing pictures in the sand?

3. Are you a U.S. citizen?

One of my brothers-in-law asked my husband if I was just trying to get citizenship. Doesn't he know? I didn't marry my husband for a passport. I married him so I could get his 2003 Nissan Altima which I've already named "The Silver Bullet." Duh.

4. Do they have airports on Saipan?

How in the holy hell did you think I got here? No, they don't have airports, sir. I had to take my canoe and wait for high tide. Oh, you've seen Castaway? Yeah, it was just like that, but without Wilson.



5. What's it like?

I think this is the most forgivable of questions since people are curious, but how do you answer something as general as that? In Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," one solider says it's hard to sum up what war is like because that it's not like anything. He says it's like describing what chocolate tastes like. (Another solider chimes in, "Or shit.") There is a lot of negative reporting which can easily be googled, but this does not tell the whole story or even an accurate one. One horrible boss, whom I named TDV (The Dry Vagina), handed me a New York Times article discussing the high military recruitment on Saipan. "So it's really poor there, isn't it?"

"You know what's poor? The humidity in your cootch. Why don't you sit on some KY and STFU, woman?"

And that is what I wish I had said. One of my sisters-in-law went to Hawaii and now speaks of that vacation as her trip to Asia. "The native Hawaiians were so nice, Mona!"

"Where did you meet these natives?"

"All over Waikiki."

"Oh, you mean the JAPANESE TOURISTS at Ala Moana?"

Tangent: Back when I was living on Saipan, an attorney who wore floral mumus attended a local party. The first thing she said there was, "Saipan is so boring. There is nothing to do here." DebbieDownersayswhat?

"And what would you be doing?" Someone asked. "Tae-Bo?"



I think about how I'm going to explain Saipan to Nathan. My son will grow up here in Seattle with memories of the Northwest rather than the Northern Marianas. He won't know about the incredible beaches and sunsets and food. That makes me sad. I hate that it costs $600 to get to Paris but $1500 to fly to Saipan. I hate that I haven't been home for three years.



I'll probably start with, "Mommy's from Saipan," and work from there.

Pencils are erasist.

My famous author professor gave me a 3.4 on my first short-short story. I wasn't hurt by it. My thematic matrix wasn't as tight as it should be.

Seattle is incredibly expensive. People are always suffering from allergies. Everyone has one dog or three million cats. Most people can be divided into two categories: those who drive SUVs and those who want to bludgeon SUV drivers with a tire iron. But I love it. The most awesome bands come through this area. It's easy to be a vegetarian. The literary heart here pulsates and draws me in... I can talk about gender roles and socioeconomic status without being a weirdo. And I can also find someone who worships Napoleon Dynamite as much as I do... Yessss....

If I had all the money in the world, I would be a top-of-the-line stereo system and crank out "Dakota" by Stereophonics. And I would buy you a muffin because you deserve it, friend.