Way back when I wandered through hallways of English, understanding only Chinese and hearing Yiddish on my babysitter’s radio, she was there with me making sense, actually fun and nonsense, with all of those words. My younger sister and I were two little button eyed girls growing up in Queens, New York, trying to figure out the world around us as Number One Daughter and Number Two Daughter. Hoong Yee and Hoong Wei. I actually thought those were names like Jane or Sally from my Fun with Dick and Jane reader.
“Just a little.”
“Yi dian dian.”
“A bissel.”
A little? Wait a minute, maybe we should ask for more! Who needs yi dian dian when there’s all those cookies? And wouldn’t it be great to get a Big Huge Bissel of Bosco Chocolate Milk? You ask, you’re bigger than me, Hoong Wei would say.
And then she would smile sweetly and wait for me to get the goods.
Soon, we were running around the schoolyard and backyards with all of the kids on our block armed with street game English yelling,
“Tag, you’re it!”
“Lai, lai lai!”
“Holt din zocken!”
Of course, by this time we knew a bissel of a lot of languages and created our own code only we understood. The other kids didn’t know who to tag, who to throw the ball to, or if one of us was going to steal a base. The older generation who used to speak in Chinese amongst themselves so that we wouldn’t understand what they were saying now scratched the backs of their necks wondering what the hell we were babbling about. Our Jewish bubbe babysitter Tante Lainie and her friends, Sylvia Immerkrank, remember her?, Betty and Rita peered curiously at us over their pince-nez perched on their noses as they played canasta. Catching a word here and there, a familiar sounding phrase, rhythm, and Bam! crazy sounding words tumbled out like pots falling from a window. Our secret language was the soundtrack of our childhood.
My sister and I thought in Cantonese and erupted in Yiddish. The world lay before us, a wonderland to figure out, to reinvent in our own words.
Years passed. We found ourselves living and studying piano in Salzburg, Austria, just the two of us clutching well worn manuscripts of Beethoven Sonaten, Brahms Klavierwerke and a Langenscheidt’s Deutsche Worterbuch. Now, if you think for a moment that we had any command of German, especially the Salzburg dialect of German that sounds like you just swallowed an alpine yodel, we did not. Once we were accepted into the Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunste Mozarteum, all of our classes and piano lessons were conducted in German. It was sink or schwimm.
“Oy vey ist mir! ”
“Ay yah!”
“Gott in himmel!”
Again, my sister and I recreated a farmisht, mixed up, cuisinart vocabulary for ourselves. This time with a gesund Guten Tag’s worth of Oesterreichische Deutsch thrown in with some indignant Cantonese idioms. Very useful when
“Hey, remember Mrs. Immerkrank who lived across the street from us? Can you believe her name means always sick? No wonder she was always kvetching about her arthritis.”
“Fabulous!”
“Fablehaft!”
Fei cheong fabelhaft!”
In the last years of her life, we spoke to each other in a different language. There was no need to find other words to say chemotherapy or clinical trials. We could not rewrite the reality of her cancer. Silences and unanswered questions became inevitable parts of the landscape of our shrinking world. In the secret language between sisters, there were no words for this time. No funny double entendres, no joyful jumbling of jargon.
I stood on the edge of her life, feeling helpless and for the first time, speechless.
As the cancer took more of her breath away, I did most of the talking when she could speak on the phone; she tired easily from long and painful coughing and I could not bear the thought of her fighting for each breath for every word she tried to say.
Her last call to me was brief and painful, she was gasping for air and could barely speak. I remember saying to her, “Rest. We can talk later.”
That was the last time I would hear her voice.
Almost a year has passed since she is gone. They say that when a language dies, people write poetry. What my sister and I had created for ourselves was more than a language. It was a universe of two, a work for two pianos, an endless duet.
I am standing on the stage by myself. Just me, Number One Daughter.
Our secret language of sisters, now a song without words.
Hoong Yee runs five miles a day on the beach and writes style notes about artful living at www.hoongyee.com.
All of a sudden it dawns on you that you cannot find your wallet, your phone, the car keys, the words to express how frustrated you are and now, a reason to even attempt adding a cup of coffee to your morning hell.
This actually doesn’t happen to me as much as it does for Seth. We have accepted it as part of our routine. We have considered creating a niche industry around it or perhaps even a product we could sell for $19.99 on late night TV ads.
It feels like parts of your being have fallen into a black hole. You feel incomplete, exposed. It burns you up because these things were just in your hand. You burn up calories tearing through the house digging through sofa cushions and laundry baskets.
So unattractive. So bad for your skin.
Here’s what we have tried:
1. Martha Stewart
That’s right. Get Martha Stewart on your swat team. I suggest getting yourself several of her cute storage boxes with the labels and set them up at the scene of the crime. For us, that is the center hall near the phone.
Make a label for each of your demons. Extra Keys, Extra Wallets, Extra Phones. Why battle these moments when you can label them and stuff them in a box. If you think I am kidding, I am not. The thought of refilling the boxes will actually make you think about where you fling your things when you come home.
I call it the Reverse Pavlovian Effect.
2. No pockets
This is more of a guy thing. I once counted how many pockets Seth had stuff in and it is no wonder that he can’t find anything. Four pants pockets, one shirt pocket, five down vest pockets, three jacket pockets. That, in addition to the pockets in his bag, is a lot of places to lose things. It is so easy to mindlessly shove spare change, cards, world peace, and whatever you gather throughout your day into those pockets. Don’t do it.
If you absolutely must, put everything in one pocket only. Eventually you will realize that people might start staring at the lump growing on the side of your body and avoid walking with you on the street. This is a good time to ask yourself what you really need to have with you and what you don’t.
3. Smaller is smarter
I am talking about pocketbooks. The bigger the bag, the more stuff you put in it. Most of it mildly uneccessary. All of it will probably sit on top of the things you really need. Like your keys, wallet and phone.
Get a smart looking bag that you can fit the things you really need and do with out the rest.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
I’m not sure what happened but I really thought I had embedded this video in yesterday’s post. This is Rockaway in all of its wintry windswept splendor – the setting for Ghostmistress, my online writing project for thirteen year old writers.
Anyway, here it is.
Enjoy!
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Thirty twelve and thirteen year old kids said yes to my question and are now members of my Boo Crew. Every week I post a new scene from my ghost story, Ghostmistress, and they comment, respond to my challenge questions and post their own stories on Ghostmistress.com.
Why Six Words?
This is a fabulous way to get to the most important words of your story. I challenged them to read the story I posted in Week 2 called The Strange Incident at the Hotel Mystique and distill it down to six words.
I gave them a few examples:
Unsolved mystery and tea in diner
Ghostmistress drinks tea and plots revenge
And here are a few gems from my Boo Crew:
Spooky hotel, death… and scrambled eggs
Death on a bun is filling
Murder, mystery and revenge for Ghostmistress
Suspicious, malicious and oh so vicious
Murder with a side of tea
Do you know what you can do with a six word ghost story?
When you are in the elevator with a Hollywood movie producer you can turn to him or her and say, ” Have I got a movie idea for you. Here it is – “.
As you are waiting at the bar for a drink, you can smile at the publisher fumbling with his or her cell phone and wineglass and say, ”Oh, let me help you with all that. By the way, you look like someone who enjoys ghost stories. I have one you will love – ”
At the launch of your wildly successful book tour, the crowd presses against the table you are seated at signing copies of your book and you have run out of books but never fear, your assistant hurtles through the store clutching a box to his chest and lands at your feet with the grace of a linebacker landing in the endzone. You rip open the box and triumphantly hold up what your clamoring fans are reaching for.
A sexy black T shirt that says,
“I’ll have tea, gossip and mystery.”
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
And became sad, disappointed, and unable to smile. A dream choked.
Grrrrr…. I felt my body change, my eyes set like a huntress, my body ready to pounce. Tiger Mom transformed into a more formidable force of nature, a She Wolf.
Revenge? Don’t make me laugh. Revenge is for amateurs. A She Wolf tosses vengeance over her shoulder as she moves in for the kill.
What I was after was more valuable.
Options. Information. Connections.
OK, I can’t help it. My grandfather was a general and my father was a brilliant engineer. Scheming, strategizing and plotting success is in my DNA. I did a search on every person I needed to get to on my speed dial list, fired off a series of timed emails and said a silent prayer for whoever was the first person I reached. Every day I set out in my attack mode until three days later, I had everything I needed to know to claim my prey.
What is my prey?
A pile of bodies? A path of destruction? A moonlit mountain to howl from?
No. Vital information and insights for my wolf cub to plot a new and stronger plan of attack. This time better prepared and carefully thought out for the next battle so that the last thing the enemy will hear is the low and deadly growl of the pack.
Tiger moms believe their young are tough. She wolves believe in their young.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
I write for love and money. It is my everyday passion. What's yours? 
