Long-Distance Christmas

I just realized I'm about to go a full calendar year without posting something on my blog. I have to apologize for this.

The nature of my job has been impacted by COVID-19. While I would usually take time during my lunch and breaks to write articles, I can barely get five minutes of peace without having to put out a figurative fire somewhere. I'm hoping things calm down next year. I have a few articles about ready to go, but I really want to build up a cache before I start blogging regularly again. I thought I would be well into Phase Two and Phase Three by now.

So, I thought I would at least do my annual Christmas post.

It's very interesting to see how things have changed over the last half-century with regards to the holidays. One of those has specifically to do with the long-distance calls to relatives and other people you weren't able to spend Christmas with in person. Does anyone remember how long-distance use to work? You had to call at specific times to get the best rates. If you called long-distance during a weekday, the cost was outrageous and you only did that in the event of emergencies. For whatever reason, someone decided it was a great idea to have the lowest rates between 11pm and 5am the next morning. And this was back in the day that if the phone rang and you were at home, you were obligated by law to answer it.

So on specific holidays, the overnight rates were in effect for most of the day. EVERYBODY in the country was trying to call their relatives. If you tried to call long-distance, you would get a recording that asked you to try your call again later. One Christmas, we were trying to call my uncle Ord for eight hours straight and we could not get through once! We did get to connect with him after 5pm, when the long-distance went back to the regular evening rate. While Grandma Bend was glad to finally get to talk to her son, she didn't like that she was going to have to pay the extra money for the long-distance call.

I couldn't help but wonder if the phone company didn't just shut down long-distance for the day and force everyone to use the evening rate if they wanted to call their loved ones so badly. It was bad for us because we only needed to make this ONE call. I can't imagine what it was like for those who had several people they needed to contact.

It is so hard to imagine that we used to live like this with our old technology. In at least the past 30 years, I haven't had any problems with trying to call people on Christmas. I can even make multiple calls and I never get any recording that tells me to try my call later.

People are always complaining how the cost of living does nothing but go up. This is the one thing that has actually gone down.

In this respect, I don't miss the old days.

Encountering an Asian Stereotype

You may have seen this clip from "Family Guy" before:



Prior to dating Myz, I was aware that this stereotype involving young Asian women existed, but I never thought I would actually encounter it. When I went to visit Mom in 2002, she gave me some water bottles to take on the drive home. They were 10 oz. bottles. I thought they were rather handy and didn't require a lot of extra effort to pick up, twist off the lid and drink while I was driving.

I continued to use these bottles when I made my trips up to San Jose to see Myz. I brought a couple of the bottles into the bedroom. Myz picked up one of the bottles and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at this water bottle! It's so CUTE!" I explained that I had gotten it from Mom the last time I went to Phoenix. She kept going on and on about how small it was, like she'd never seen a water bottle like that before.

During that same visit, I went into the kitchen to fill a bottle from the water dispenser. All I had filled it, her cousin Haad grabbed the bottle out of my hand and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at this water bottle! It's so CUTE!" I remarked that Myz had the same reaction, but I still didn't see it as anything special.

A few weeks later, I was going to leave directly from work to drive up to San Jose. I brought a few bottles into the breakroom so I could fill them from the water dispenser. All of a sudden, an Asian co-worker of mine named Xiz picked up one of the bottles and said, "Oh, my gosh! Look at these water bottles! They're so CUTE!"

I have since encountered other Asian stereotypes, but none so glaring as this.



And I guess I should go into a little detail about Xiz. She was a co-worker I had a crush on before I met Myz. She was of Chinese descent and was very pretty. She appeared to be a little flirtatious toward me, enough for me to think that maybe she was interested. But it seemed like she was that way with everyone.

She did have a couple of issues, though. She smoked and she had a kid. Another co-worker had met her daughter. He wasn't aware that Xiz lived in the same apartment complex as him. He saw the girl and thought she looked exactly like Xiz. He then asked the girl if her mother's name was Xiz. The girl said it was. He was shocked at the resemblance.

One day, I overheard her telling another co-worker in the breakroom that while she would date outside her race, she wouldn't marry outside her race. That pretty much told me I didn't have much of a chance.

Fayd vs. "A Christmas Carol"

One of the things I loved doing as a kid was watching all the animated Christmas specials on TV. If it was a cartoon and it was about the holidays, I couldn't be torn away from the TV. (I remember throwing a fit one year because Loyd and I wanted to watch "The Mouse on the Mayflower" on Thanksgiving, but all the men wanted to watch football on the only TV. We lost that one.) And it always lifted my heart to see the percussive "CBS Special Presentation" logo come on and lead directly into the soft piano intro of "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

When I was around 7 years old, I saw that something called "A Christmas Carol" was going to come on. This was the first time I'd ever heard of it. But "Christmas" was in the title and it seemed like it was going to have songs in it, so I watched. (I have confirmed it was the "Famous Classic Tales" version from 1970. You can find it on YouTube.)

I don't recall everything I was thinking while I was watching it. I must have been bewildered by the old guy griping about Christmas. Who doesn't like Christmas? And I was probably pretty freaked out by Marley's ghost and wondering why that was in a Christmas cartoon instead of a Halloween cartoon. (I had seen the "Famous Classic Tales" versions of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" earlier that year.)

I do know I was thinking that every time the ghosts removed Scrooge from his house that Santa wasn't going to come by. Maybe that was why Scrooge didn't like Christmas. He wasn't getting anything from Santa. I mean, it's one thing if you're at your grandmother's house. Santa knows to bring your presents there. But if you're just gallivanting through time and space, Santa's not going to even try to track you down.

So yeah, a lot of the story was really lost on me. However, I must have liked the cartoon because I know I watched it again the next year. But this time, I had a better understanding of what was going on. That one year made a difference in my perspective of the world.

I came to realize that not every Christmas cartoon needed to have Santa or Jesus in it.

The Reveal to Mom

In my relationship with Myz, I decided to hold off on telling my Mom about it for as long as possible. She always got WAY too excited anytime I was seeing someone. ("Grandchildren on the way!") I was actually glad she never met my previous girlfriend. I don't even remember telling her until after it ended the first time. And I don't even think I told her when we started things back up.

After I'd been seeing Myz for a few months, Mom told me there was someone she wanted me to meet. Her name was Rowd and she knew her from working in the New Mexico Legislature. She was around my age and was living with Mom and Dend in Phoenix until she could find a job and get on her feet. She thought she was someone I would like.

This forced my hand. I didn't tell her about Myz right away. I had to discuss this with Myz first. I had to let her know how my Mom got anytime I told her I had a girlfriend, about the expecations for getting married and having kids. I had to tell her about all the previous disappointments. (Myz knew about my ex-girlfriends. She just didn't know the extent of my Mom's involvment with them.)

We decided it was in everyone's best interests if I told Mom what was going on. This way, she wasn't getting Rowd's hopes up. One afternoon, I called her. She happened to be shopping with Rowd at the time. (Oh, great! I didn't want to do this while she was with her! Well, we've gotten this far. We need to get this over with.) I told her that I had started seeing someone. I said that her name was Myz and she lived in San Jose. "Is she Spanish?" "No." "Is she Black?" "No." "Is she White?" "No..." "THEN WHAT IS SHE?" "She Asian!" "Oh, okay."

I told Mom that her parents had come here from Vietnam. Mom said she hoped that she would get to meet her someday. I don't recall what else we discussed after that.

After getting off the phone with Mom, I called Dad and let him know. I never had a problem with telling him, but I figured it was best to keep him in the loop at the same time.

Not long after that, I had a few days off and went to Phoenix to see Mom and Dend. Rowd was still staying with them. I remember driving and getting there late at night. The first thing I had to do was call Myz and let her know I had gotten there safely. I had a cell phone at the time, but I was worried about roaming charges. (It turns out there really weren't roaming charges, but I didn't know how it all worked.) I had to use Mom's landline to call Myz and use a calling card to make the long distance call. I had to punch in all the numbers and the phone made a very loud beep every time I hit a key. I was afraid I was going to wake up the entire house just by punching in my card number. And then, I didn't so something right the first time, so I had to make those beeping noises ALL OVER AGAIN!

After talking to Myz, I went to sleep in the guest room. I woke up the next morning and saw Mom and Dend. Later, Rowd got out of bed. Usually, when Mom had tried to set me up with someone, she would be like a younger version of Mom, with blond hair and blue eyes. I could tell that Rowd was Native American. I thought that at least Mom was trying to fix me up with someone closer to my taste.

Rowd talked about how all the beeping from the phone woke her up. Mom and Dend hadn't heard anything.

Rowd was nice and very smart, but I knew I wouldn't have started something up with her even if I didn't have Myz in my life. This was because Mom was involved. Now, if I'd met Rowd on my own without Mom's involvement, there was a possibility. But I didn't put much thought into this.

Later, Mom told me that Rowd had divorced her ex-husband after she had been arrested for beating him up. I guess Mom thought that after my other disastrous ex-girlfriends, Rowd would have been a cakewalk.

This provided justification for me knowing that I could never allow Mom to pick my girlfriends. And thankfully, she never got that opportunity again.

Meeting Family and Friends

I'd already gone into detail about how I med Myz' cousin Haad. I wound up meeting a few of Myz' other family members and friends in unexpected ways. But it would be a very long time before I would get to meet her parents, older brother, sister-in-law and niece.

The next one I met was her younger brother Sand. Sand was the one who was supposed to be living in the house when I first came up to meet Myz, but he moved back home before I made the trip. While I was visiting Myz, he showed up unexpectedly. I was in Myz' bedroom at the time. Myz told me he was there, but she didn't want me coming out. (She hadn't told her immediate family about me yet.) She was going to go talk to him to see if he was going to stay long. I thought I should go ahead and meet him because I knew it would look bad if I was trying to hide. She thought he was going to leave soon, so she told me to stay. She talked to him for a bit and then came back. She said he was planning on spending the night. I was going to have to meet him, but she needed a couple more minutes before I came out.

She went back to talk to him to let him know she had started seeing someone and that I was there at the time. She then called for me to come out. I greeted Sand. He just kind of shook his head. "We'll talk about this later. I gotta go." He went out to his car and left.

Myz had to run an errand, so I was left in the house all alone. Sand came back later. He was outside smoking. I decided to go start a conversation with him. I don't remember what all we talked about, but we were both being casual. He then asked how old I was. "37." "Oh, so you've been married a couple of times, then." "No, I haven't been married and I don't have any kids. Myz wouldn't have had anything to do with me if I had."

After that, we seemed to get along okay. Later, Myz and I were watching a DVD in the living room and holding hands on the couch. Sand came in and saw us. He appeared to not like what he was seeing, but he didn't say anything.

Anytime I saw him after that on future visits, he seemed okay. But even though he's my brother-in-law now, we've never really bonded like brothers. (That also goes for Myz' older brother Phod.)

I had visted Myz at least eight times before I got to meet the other occupant of the house, her cousin Robd. He was Haad's younger brother and lived on the other half of the mobile home. (I should point out that the mobile home was a single-wide, but they enclosed the porch area and put in a bedroom, bathroom and laundry room. It looked like a double-wide, but it wasn't.) When he was home and Myz and I were in her bedroom, we could always hear him when he was home.

One of the things that I knew about Robd was that, even though he was 19, he LOVED to drink. All over the house was a number of photos of him getting drunk with his friends. There were a few photos that showed them taking a sharpie to someone's glasses while he was conked out. I got to meet Robd when he happened to be home after Myz and I had returned from doing something. He was there with a friend. I don't know if he knew anything about me beforehand, but he didn't act surprised to see me.

About the fourth time I came up to see Myz, I met Gied. Gied was Myz' best friend from high school. She was a student at San Jose State University. Myz and I were in the bedroom when we heard the driveway door open. The next thing, we heard knocking on the bedroom door. Myz opened it and it was Gied. Gied gasped when she saw me. (Fortunately, Myz and I were fully clothed at the time.)

Once, Myz and I went to a portrait studio to have our pictures taken. When we were there, we ran into a friend of Haad's. She was with her boyfriend doing the same thing we were. Myz talked to her for a bit before we finished our pictures. Later, Myz found out that friend told Haad about meeting us. Somehow, they were able to figure out that I was older than Myz and they thought I was manipulating her. We kind of laughed about that.

Another time, we were in the bedroom and we could hear other people coming in the house. It was Haad and Robd's parents (Myz' uncle and aunt). Myz clearly did not want them to meet me because she knew they would tell her parents. We had to stay quiet in the bedroom for at least an hour. Because the conversation they were having was all in Vietnamese, I don't know what they were talking about. I needed to pee very badly, but Myz wouldn't let me sneak into the bathroom. It got to the point that I thought I was going to have to pee in a cup in the bedroom. At this point, it was quiet in the house. Myz went out and saw that everyone had left. The coast was clear. I could pee in peace.

On another visit, Haad warned Myz that her parents were coming up from Monterey and they would be there in an hour. For some reason, Myz had something she had to take care of at the house and wouldn't leave right away, thinking we had plenty of time. I kept trying to rush things along, but Myz was adamant about completing her task. Finally, we left. Just as we were pulling out of the mobile home park, her uncle and aunt pulled in. They could clearly see us and Myz shyly waved at them.

Later, when we told Haad what had happened, she said that her parents had poor eyesight and probably didn't see me in the car. I expressed my doubts about that at the time. However, it didn't look like they said anything to Myz' parents about me. But when I did actually get to meet them for the first time about a year later, they commented to Haad how they thought I was better that Myz' old boyfriend (whom they saw in the car that one time).

And I also met Haad's boyfriend Tond. An odd thing after meeting him was that I was working at Walmart at the Customer Service desk one day in San Diego. I noticed a TV news crew was shooting footage of me assisting a customer. Tond saw that footage on a Bay Area newscast and recognized me.

I guess I didn't always have to use my car to get around.

But it took awhile before Myz got to meet any of my friends and family.

A True Long-Distance Relationship

So, this was the first time I'd been involved in an actual long-distance relationship. I felt like it was definitely better than being in no relationship at all. I trusted Myz very much and never felt like I had to worry about what she was doing when I wasn't in San Jose. And I felt confident enough in the future of the relationship that I didn't need to hedge and see if I could find someone close to home.

We talked to each other on a daily basis. We also continued chatting on AOL whenever we were both on at the same time. If I was planning on doing something in the evening, I could let her know so we could talk before I left or we could just let it wait until the next day. I was pretty much free to come and go as I pleased while I was in San Diego.

I continued to drive up to see her every three to four weeks. I didn't mind that I had to be the one to always travel to see her. And it seemed like the more I drove up there, the shorter amount of time it took. It was like I was going at warp speed speed because I would literally zone out and the next thing I knew, I was there. (However, this didn't work when I drove back home to San Diego for some reason.) And somehow, even though I was working at Walmart, I always had money for gas, food and other forms of entertainment. It was like taking mini-vacations to the Bay Area all the time. (I didn't even go to Vegas that often!)

There was even one time that I decided to drive up to San Jose on the spur of the moment. I had hoped that she would enjoy me making a surprise, unplanned visit (even if I was going to show up at 2am). I actually wasn't going to tell her anything until I got there. (But if she was happy I did that, I knew I had a keeper!) However, she actually called me about an hour after I left San Diego and asked what I was up to. (I guess she could tell I was driving.) I thought for a moment and decided it would be best not to absolutely surprise her. I told her I was on the way up the San Jose. She was indeed excited, because she was actually going to ask me to come up! She really missed me!

I do have to admit that everything was not always perfect between us. Regardless of if I was in San Diego or San Jose, we would still have occasional disagreements. It was never anything so major that I felt like the relationship was in danger, but they were common mistakes that I made in previous relationships. We were always able to work through them and still continue to love each other.

I still had a dilemma: How were we going to reconcile the distance? At some point, one of us was going to have to move to be with the other for the relationship to prosper. I really didn't want to have to be the one to move. I liked living in San Diego. I had friends and after ten years, I finally felt comfortable there. But I also recalled the disasters that took place when I took my former girlfriends away from their homes in order to assimilate into my lifestyle. Those just didn't work out.

I knew I was going to have to be the one to move this time.

However, we're not going to get to that on this blog for awhile. The posts that follow will give a general outline of the things Myz and I went through during the next year of our courtship. It literally all became a blur (because of the warp-speed drive) so I won't be going into detail about every single trip. I will give a lot of general anecdotes about certain milestones we approached.

Some interesting things did happen, but for the most part, it will be drama-free. Unlike those other situations that involved moving someone to be with me.

A Second Go-Round

After going back home from meeting Myz for the first time, I focused on trying to figure out when I could plan to drive back up to San Jose to see her again. We talked on the phone and/or chatted on AOL almost every day after I got back. This was going to be my first real attempt at a long-distance relationship.

One of the nice things about telling Myz "I love you" before I left is that I could go ahead and keep saying that anytime we were on the phone. It always felt appropriate to tell her and she would always say it back before we ended the calls. I was so glad that didn't backfire on me, because it easily could have

Before I came up the first time, she had only told her cousin Haad that I was coming up and spending the night. She said that Haad didn't really think I was there until she went into the bathroom and saw my toothbrush. (Either we were being very quiet or Haad is a sound sleeper!) Her other cousin Bind (Haad's younger brother) didn't know anything, period. And I didn't know if I would ever get to meet anyone from her family.

About a week later, I'd gotten my work schedule for the next two weeks and knew what my days off were going to be. We made plans for me to come up during that time. The only problem was that I had to work until 7pm the night before. This meant I wouldn't get there until at least 2am. She didn't seem to mind having to get out of bed at that time to let me in the house.

One of the good things about this upcoming visit is that I would spend two nights at her house. This meant that we could relax and not worry about trying to accomplish too much in such a small amount of time. I was also aware that because of this, it was possible that we would be making love during this visit (even though this prospect was not a part of any conversation), so I went out and bought some condoms just in case.

The second time driving up didn't seem to take so long. I guess it was because I didn't have this feeling of dread in the back of my mind like I'd had before. The nervousness had disappeared and I could concentrate more on enjoying the journey.

I remember arriving at the mobile home park, parking in the guest area and calling Myz to let her know I was there. I walked to the house and she was waiting outside. I felt my heart being lifted when I saw her and she smiled at me. We went inside, I went into the bathroom, changed my clothes and joined her in bed. We just made out for the next couple of hours before we finally fell asleep.

We didn't really do anything special this time. We just wanted to spend as much time with each other without worrying about when I was going to leave. I remember we were in the living room watching TV. We were making out and it started getting very passionate. All of a sudden, it felt like the same thought came across our minds at the exact same time. We both stood up and ran toward the bedroom. We made love.

Some time later, I had to get ready to leave. It was late in the afternoon. Myz said she needed to run to the store for something while I got my stuff ready to go. This meant I was alone in the house.

After I had packed my stuff, I waited for Myz to come back. A car drove up and parked in the driveway. I wondered if it was Myz. I could hear the sound of a woman getting out and talking on the phone. I figured out it wasn't Myz, but didn't realize this until it was too late to close the bedroom door. The driveway door opened. It was her cousin Haad. She saw me and said, "OH, MY GOD! Hang on! I have to call you back!" She hung up the phone and introduced herself. She kept talking through nervous laughter. It was a good thing she hadn't gotten home an hour earlier.

Myz came back. Myz spent some time talking to Haad before I had to go. I was beginning to wonder if there were really other people in the house because no one made any noise. You'd think that with as loud as Haad was talking with Myz (and on the phone before she came in the house), I'd be able to hear her all over the house.

Myz and I said goodbye. I didn't want to leave, but it was nice to know that I would be able to come back again in a few weeks. I had a lot more to look forward to.