From wedding bells to silver bells

It has been an eventful month for our family, capping off an eventful year filled with triumphs, travels and travails. But we’ll start with the biggest highlight, which was the marriage of Glenn’s younger brother Sean to his fiance Chi To on Dec. 9 in San Jose. It was a multicultural wedding that blended a traditional Vietnamese tea ceremony with a civil service presided over by a Jewish rabbi and instrumental accompaniment by a vocalist attired in a full Scottish kilt. Maybe not a first in the history of wedding ceremonies, but surely one that will never be topped in our family’s journals.

The wedding took place at Sean and Chi’s house, where neighborhood parking is at a premium, so folks in the wedding party met up around 9:30 a.m. at Edenvale Gardens Regional Park about a mile away to carpool back to the house. Our folks were smart and rented an Airbnb not far from the house so they’d be right there on Saturday morning. We’d been invited to stay there as well, but decided against it because Glenn and Ben both had to work the Friday before, so we had to depart from home around 7:45 a.m. to be there in time. Glenn’s parents met us, already dressed in their traditional Vietnamese attire — Mom in a formal red gown and Dad in his ao dai tunic.

When we arrived at the house a bit before 10 a.m., preparations were well underway for the tea ceremony. Sean met us in the driveway, dressed in his blue wedding tunic, and everyone passed the time visiting while we waited for Jennifer’s family to arrive from the Airbnb. Inside the house, the kitchen counter was filling up with dishes for the buffet lunch that was to follow the ceremony, and in the living room Glenn and Sean’s cousin Andy was adjusting his video gear so he could record the ceremony and stream the event live on YouTube.

The last time we’d been to Sean’s house three months earlier, the backyard had yet to be landscaped and there was little room to park on the small driveway. But driven by the approaching wedding day and the addition of two tenants renting rooms at the house and needing a place to park, Sean and Chi had transformed their yards. The backyard now included a checkerboard pattern of paver walkways and barked-in areas where wedding guests would be able to sit at tables. The driveway had been widened using paver bricks, and now served as a small plaza with a festive archway where people could pose for photos. It was all very lovely.  

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NCE JENNY AND Tom arrived with Allen and Shannon, it was time to get the tea ceremony started. The Vietnamese custom is to have a processional in which members of the groom’s party arrive at the bride’s residence bearing gifts for her family — a dowry in return for which the groom is permitted inside the residence to seek his bride’s hand in matrimony.

Normally this tradition includes nine presents (the number 9 being auspicious in Vietnamese culture, and hence the reason that Sean and Chi were married on the ninth day of the month.) The problem was that Sean did not have nine members in his wedding party to carry all the gifts, so some extras needed to be drafted for the processional. That is where Ben and Glenn became intimate with a pig.

Uh, better explain that. One of the traditional offerings presented to the Bride’s family is a whole roast pig on a platter. Although our brother-in-law Tom singlehandedly picked up the pig from the store to bring it to the house, it now fell to two people to carry it in the processional, and that was how we became involved.

If the thought of lugging a 50-pound pig on a platter for half a block sounds like a challenge, try doing so while also avoiding getting grease on your suit jacket or new sweater. Not so easy! Ben took the snout end while Glenn wrangled the tail, their arms straining from the weight of the beast while they attempted to hold it away from their torsos. Ben has a bit of upper body strength, thanks to his grocery store work. But Glenn is admittedly out of shape from lack of exercise and on this day was also tired from little sleep leading up to our early start to the day’s events. By the time they got to the house, bringing up the rear of the receiving line, Glenn was panting and doing everything he could to avoid dropping the pig in the middle of the street. Ben was lamenting that he’d already “been kissed by the pig” several times, and greasy crumbs had found their way onto Glenn’s jacket. The things we do for family!

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EAN AND CHI’S tea ceremony took about half an hour, during which prayers were said and incense lit at an altar set up around a table in the living room. Chi’s parents sat to one side, while our Mom and Dad took the other side of the table. A translator was present for the ceremony, which was good because no one in our family speaks Vietnamese, and some folks in her family have limited English skills.

After the speeches, Sean and Chi served tea samples to the elder family members, who in turn offered advice to the couple along with cash gifts sealed in red and gold envelopes. When it came to our turn, we took our seats in the two chairs placed near the center of the room and offered what words of wisdom we were able to conjure up on short notice — about a month.

Paraphrasing from the Captain & Tennille, Glenn said that “Love might bring you together, but it’s friendship that keeps you together. Don’t lose sight of your friendship in your marriage, because it can help you get through tough times.” Roni noted that Chi’s birthday falls on Dec. 5, just four days before their future anniversaries. She spoke from experience when she told Chi she should make an effort to keep her birthday and anniversary celebrations separate. (For those who don’t know, Roni’s birthday is March 23, three days before our anniversary, and we often combine the occasions as a way to take vacations. We call it our “anniversary weekend.”)

Once the tea ceremony had ended, there was time to dig into the buffet and get our revenge on the piggy that we’d had to carry during the processional. Our plates filled with cuts of fried pork, sticky rice dishes, eggrolls, seafood pastas, lasagna, deep-fried and battered shrimp, gelatinous salads, dumplings, and various other items we could only begin to guess at. There is a saying in the Asian community that you’ll never leave an event hungry, and that was especially true on this day.

We sat together with other family members while we ate our meals out in the backyard. It was nice getting to see Glenn’s second cousin Ramona, who had come up from Southern California with her partner Bernard. We had to shoo away a few yellow jackets while we ate and brush aside helium-filled balloon centerpieces that kept blowing into us, but the lunch was mostly uneventful.

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INALLY CAME THE civil ceremony — what Andy referred to as “Part II” of the day’s extensive list of wedding festivities. In Vietnam a couple is married once the tea ceremony is complete, even though there is no official “moment” when the marriage begins. It’s not like in the U.S. when an officiant pronounces a couple husband and wife and everyone applauds as they are introduced for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. In Vietnam, marriage just happens.

But in America, and before the eyes of Santa Clara County, marriage only happens when there is a piece of paper signed by witnesses and filed with the county clerk’s office. So that was why the civil ceremony took place in the backyard, at a makeshift altar that was in reality the back patio. Andy’s wife Shana, who is an ordained Jewish rabbi, officiated.

We all sat at tables to watch while Sean and Chi, flanked by bridesmaids and groomsmen, listened as Andy performed an acoustic guitar rendition of The Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun,” which they had chosen for their wedding theme song. And then Shana delivered a beautiful 20-minute service that concluded with the (now officially wed) couple sharing a kiss in front of family and friends.

Just like that, most guests headed for the exit as we lingered behind for instructions on how to help deliver flower arrangements to the reception hall. Although Sean and Chi had most of the preparations well in hand, Chi admitted they would need help getting the flowers from her aunt’s house to the Koi Palace in Milpitas in time for the dinner.

Roni had volunteered for the duty, which turned out to be easier said than done in our little car. We didn’t take into account that the flowers were in water-filled vases that don’t transport well, so we couldn’t take all 19 of the arrangements in a single trip. We were only able to get about a third of them, and that was with Glenn holding two in his hands for the 20-minute ride from San Jose, the others squished into Amazon boxes and cushioned with air-filled plastic shipping bubbles.

Fortunately others stepped up to bring over the remaining arrangements, so we didn’t have to make a bunch of round trips that would have eaten up an extra hour-plus along with gas for the engine. Instead, we got to hang out at the Koi Palace and helped decorate tables with party favors while Chi had her makeup done and changed into a formal white bridal gown, Sean by her side in his tuxedo.

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EN WENT BACK to the Airbnb with Grandma and Grandpa to nap for a bit following the wedding ceremonies. That might have been a good idea for all of us, given that the reception was supposed to run until 10 p.m. We’d been invited to spend the night at the rental house, but even though Milpitas is more than an hour from home, it wasn’t far enough to justify staying through to the following morning. Still, more than 13 hours of driving and partying made for a very long day. 

Ben and our folks rejoined us at the reception hall about the time things were getting started around 5:30 p.m. There had been perhaps 60 guests at the house for the tea ceremony, but there were roughly three times as many at the reception. Ben hadn’t been sure he wanted to stick around for the full reception, but he quickly changed his mind once he saw the self-serve boba tea bar that had been brought in, and got to visiting with family members he hadn’t seen in several years.

Ben also had his moment in the spotlight when he beat out a dozen other male guests to catch the garter during the garter toss; he wore it the rest of the night on his arm like a trophy. Theoretically it is supposed to mean that he’s the next to get married, but we all agreed that he would need to find a girlfriend first.

Remember what we said earlier about Asians making sure their guests are well fed? Well, we surely weren’t prepared for the menu selection at the reception. The menu was displayed at every table, and we probably would have been satisfied with any one or two items off the list — dishes like roast duck, boiled lobster, fresh steamed fish, sticky rice, and at least a couple of different soups and salads. What we got was an 11-course meal served in the span of two hours, and that didn’t even include the slice of wedding cake we received at the end. Talk about stuffed!

To their credit, Sean and Chi managed to enjoy some of their dinner while still finding time to mingle with their guests at every table. And when the lights went down and the music cranked up, they still had some energy to show their moves on the dance floor. We didn’t leave until after 9:30, and everyone agreed that it was one of the best weddings they’d been part of. We were exhausted by glad to have attended the entire day. 

 While we were happy to be home in our own beds that night, there was no rest for the newlyweds as they prepared to jet off for Fiji and New Zealand on their honeymoon, leaving all of us envious family at home to enjoy their vacation vicariously through Facebook and family chats, haha.

Congratulations, Sean, and welcome to the family, Chi. We wish you all the best for a wonderful and happy life together, and for all the family gatherings to come.

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HE TIMING OF the wedding served to distract us from the fact that Christmas was rapidly approaching, and while we’d already been making some preparations, there’s something about looking at the calendar and realizing you barely have two weeks left to shop that becomes a motivator to get yourself into gear.

Our original plan was to join the family in Hayward for Christmas Day. Up until a few years ago we would rotate our get-togethers between Christmas and Thanksgiving, traveling west for one and hanging out at home for the other. While we enjoy the company of family, there is a lot to be said for having a leisurely holiday at home where you can do your own cooking or chill out with your gifts… or simply catch a nap after a big meal or unwrapping presents. But the past couple of years we’ve done both Christmas and Thanksgiving in Hayward, and would have this year too if not for the fact that Sean and Chi were on their honeymoon overseas and wouldn’t be here to join everyone.

So after a bit of discussion, it was agreed that we would forgo the Christmas gathering in favor of a New Year’s Eve celebration once the newlyweds returned. As that will happen too late for this newsletter, we’ll have to wait until next month to report back. Meanwhile, we’re taking advantage of the extra few days to polish up our gifts to the rest of the family and in-laws and looking forward to celebrating the ball-drop on 2024 when it happens in Europe or London.

We spent both of the past two weekends on last-minute shopping excursions, with Ben and Glenn heading out to the mall on Dec. 17 to purchase gifts for Roni, and Ben and Roni visiting many of those same stores on Dec. 20 when they went shopping for Glenn. Meanwhile, Glenn and Roni used Dec. 16 as their shop-for-Ben-and-others day, hitting Slatten Ranch and then County Market in Antioch where Roni rounded up Asian foods to add to a “ramen gift basket” she was building for Ben.

Glenn somehow managed to complete all his shopping for Roni online, enriching Amazon in the process of adding to his own frustration as the gifts arrived in six different deliveries despite the fact he ordered them all at the same time. The worst of it was that Amazon nearly spoiled the surprise of Roni’s main gift, depositing it on our porch completely undisguised in its original packaging. Did they not consider the time of year? Fortunately Glenn intercepted the box before Roni or the porch pirates did.

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UR GIFT SHOPPING also brought us to Lomeli Gardens in Lodi on Dec. 23, where we were on a quest to find a perfect item for someone on our shopping list. Not to mention that it was a great way to spend the Saturday before Christmas, avoiding the crowds at the shopping malls in favor of a drive along the Delta’s backroads, which are always inviting no matter the season. 

Lomeli has long been our favorite statuary store, located on Eight Mile Road near the junction of Highway 99 on the Lodi/Stockton border. They’ve got a couple acres next to the interchange where you can find thousands of concrete statues, fountains, planters, and wall hangings. They’ve got metal sculptures ranging from small dinosaurs to massive horses and gazebos. There are ponds, landscaped lawns, and an animal pen where chickens and other animals roam free; we were greeted by a flock of peacocks strutting their stuff among the statues.

Even when you know what you want, it is impossible to just drop in and go when you visit Lomeli. Or at least we’ve never had much luck with that. True enough, we were there for nearly two hours shopping and deliberating over our purchase, and once we found it we had good luck negotiating the price to our liking, as the owners are always willing to knock off 20-25 percent from the ticket. It actually enabled us to buy two items instead of just the one we had been eyeing, so someone in our family is going to get a bonus when we see them this weekend! (Shhhhhhh.)

Glenn, who is in love with concrete crafts, told Roni that if she was looking for the perfect gift to get him that it would be to purchase Lomeli Gardens so he could be the absentee owner and come visit whenever he pleased. Seeing as that won’t be happening, he may do the next best thing in the new year and create his own backyard sculpting studio — once the roof is repaired, of course.

Our purchases tucked snugly in the trunk of Roni’s car, we stopped for lunch at BurgerIM on Morada Lane in Stockton. The first time we’d ever heard of the place, but apparently they’re part of a chain and the food was really good and reasonably priced. When Andy Williams sings about the “tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago,” we’ll surely remember this day.

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ECAUSE CHRISTMAS FELL on a Monday and we did spend the holiday weekend at home this year, our pace was somewhat more leisurely than it might otherwise have been. Glenn decided to get his wrapping done on Saturday night after we got back from Lodi rather than waiting until Christmas Eve as is his usual routine. This was in part because he wanted to get the gifting out of the way early in case he ran out of energy or time on Sunday, partly because Roni still had a ton of her own wrapping to do, and partly because it was Christmas Eve one year ago when silent night turned into holy horror night when our noisy neighbors decided to strike up one of their insanely loud parties and spoiled the ambience. Thankfully this year they packed up their motor home for an extended vacation that we hope will take us at least through New Year’s Eve (fingers crossed!)

The other reason for finishing the presents early was because Christmas Eve traditionally is our baking night, when Glenn does his one Martha Stewart performance of the year by making the Christmas bread from an “ancient family recipe.” OK, so he inherited the recipe from Mom decades ago, but he has kept up the holiday tradition for at least as long as Ben has been with us — so ingrained in our Christmas ritual that Roni and Ben gifted Glenn a framed copy of the recipe as a keepsake, even after the glass in the frame accidentally broke a few years ago. 

Despite dropping hints that last year’s edition of the bread may have been the last, the hours-long task of making the dough and braiding it taking a physical toll on his back along with the challenge of rounding up key ingredients such as candied cherries, Glenn had a change of heart a few days before Christmas Eve and like The Rolling Stones decided to embark on one more farewell tour of the kitchen.

It was our family’s good fortune that he did, too, because this year’s bread compared favorably with those of the past, in ease of preparation, appearance and flavor (rating scores of 8-9-8 in that order on Glenn’s secret grading scale.) The use of some outdated stick shortening for the dough might have made it a bit denser than preferred, but it was a minor issue. 

Not to be outdone, Ben tried his own hand at some Christmas Eve baking, turning out some chocolate brownies infused with crushed candy canes and topped with gumdrops, M&M’s, and Pocky sticks. It helped round out our meager collection of holiday treats that also included a Dutch cookie assortment and a box of small stroopwafels we purchased from Costco. We just don’t seem to have a lot of time or inclination to do much holiday baking lately, and we surely don’t need the extra calories even when they do manage to find us.  

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HRISTMAS MORNING FOUND us all sleeping in a bit later than usual, perhaps with the knowledge we had nowhere else to be. Nevertheless, we were up by 9 a.m. to put the finishing touches on our breakfast preparations — a feast that included bagels and locks, bacon, eggs over easy, cocoa with marshmallows, and of course Glenn’s bread.

After the obligatory family photo shoot that included our somewhat reluctant cat, Phyre, it was time to dig into the pile of presents that awaited us beneath our artificial tree, which this year Roni themed around our travels in Europe. If the decorations were not actually purchased from Amsterdam, England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales — many of them were — then Roni created them from paper, ribbons and resin to fill in the gaps.

Our unwrapping sessions are always long, even in the leaner years, which this one probably should have been considering the inflationary economy we’ve all been confronting in 2023. We opened the first gifts at 10:45 a.m. and did not finish with the last one until nearly 1:30 p.m. Some major sporting events don’t run so long, so it is no wonder we were all tired and ready for more food by the time we’d finished.

In between, there were plenty of oohs, aahs, laughter, smiles, grimaces and long pauses to take things in or run to the kitchen for water. Among the highlights:

* Ben received a bundle of anime-related trading cards, POP figures, a couple of sweaters from Old Navy, books, and a handmade set of gaming dice in a holder that Roni made for him out of resin. His main present was the ramen basket that Roni assembled containing cookbooks, bowls, chopsticks, sauces, and packaged ingredients needed to prepare an authentic Japanese-style ramen like the kind he enjoys from the local restaurants he frequents. The basket also included some historical printouts about ramen and an adorable T-shirt of a cat sipping ramen noodles. Well, you just kind of had to be there for it.

* Glenn received a 14TB hard drive that he plans to use to finally transfer his vacation videos off other disks connected to his overburdened computer. He also got a sweatshirt, a couple boxes of coffee that Ben gifted him, a set of hot sauces, a couple of fiction books, and a ceramic figurine of the Dutch “kissing kids” that are a ubiquitous item in every European gift shop we visited on our cruise. (The irony is that Roni purchased the gift not from Europe, but off of Amazon.)

* Glenn also received a gift he gave himself, although he nearly forgot about it: a reverse proof two-coin mint set of the 2023 Morgan and Peace dollars that he’d ordered by subscription early in the year. The coins shipped in August, but he told Roni to save them for Christmas, partly because he didn’t know what else to put on his list. 

* Roni was rolling in resin-related gifts. She got two sets of silicone molds that make frogs, lizards and whimsical characters perched on crescent moons. She received a USB-powered handheld mixer, UV resin and blacklight to cure it, a mold to create a wind chime set, and a gallon of two-part resin mix so that she’ll have enough to make all these items.

* Ben won the prize for most creative present, giving Mom a coffee mug adorned with images of game show host and TV personality Steve Harvey. Roni has become a big fan of “Family Feud,” and she’s gotten in the habit of watching the shows each night during our dinner hour. She loved, loved, LOVED the mug, as well as the box it came in, which Ben decorated with a drawing of Steve and one of his familiar quotes.

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ONI’S MAIN PRESENT from Glenn is one of those gifts that keeps on giving — a Cricut Maker 3 machine that he got to provide another outlet for her creative urges. If and when Roni decides to retire, she anticipates needing ways to occupy her idle hours, and the Cricut has the potential to fill that bill and then some. 

Think of the Cricut as an inkjet printer without ink. Or a precision pair of scissors without having to use your hand. It’s a versatile crafting machine with interchangeable blades that can cut everything from paper and vinyl to cardboard, leather, fabrics and even some thin woods. You create projects using software that controls the machine, uploading your own image files or downloading them from Cricut’s database.

You are limited only by your imagination as to what you can do with the machine, and while we have yet to learn all its capabilities, we have been impressed by what we’ve done with it so far in just the tutorials. For example, Roni uploaded a detailed image she found for free on Freepik, converted it to the proper SVG file format, and programmed the machine to cut it for her into vinyl. Even at less than 2 inches, the level of detail in the cutout was astonishing, with razor cuts so intricate that they could never be achieved with a handheld X-acto knife, let alone a pair of scissors.

We are both already envisioning the possibilities for using the machine, and Roni has already figured out how to incorporate it into her production of resin items. People have been using the Cricut machines as the backbone of their Etsy crafting businesses for years, so don’t be surprised if Roni one day joins them with her own online shop. As for Glenn, he is pondering how the Cricut might be able to design templates he can use in making concrete objects. Stay tuned!

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N YET ANOTHER sign that our little town is no longer removed from the troubles of inner city life, we had a fatal drive-by shooting in our neighborhood on Dec. 20. It happened on Rutherford Lane across the street from Vintage Parkway Elementary School, where Ben spent the first few years of his education in the early 2000s, and where Glenn takes his walks every other day.

The victim was a 24-year-old man, Gabriel Stewart, who lived in one of the houses on the residential block and was on a break from his pizza delivery job at Domino’s Pizza here in town. The story has it that he was sitting in his car when another vehicle drove up, a passenger jumped out, and the person shot the victim multiple times at point blank range. Not a robbery, but evidently an execution. It all happened while the victim’s mom was wrapping Christmas presents in the front room of the family’s house, and she unfortunately came outside to find her son dying in the front seat of his car.

These sorts of crimes don’t happen in our town, or at least rarely did before this year. It was just a couple of months ago that a teen was fatally shot at a house party in one of the houses in the Neroly Estates subdivision a couple of miles to our southwest. We’ve been hearing more sirens and police helicopters and squealing car tires from late night sideshows and the like. The notifications from our Ring camera come across daily with complaints of mail theft, porch pirates and car burglaries.  

Is it time to move? Well, if the housing market eventually crashes as many economists think could yet come to pass, perhaps we’ll be in the market for another place. Until then, maybe we’ll have to start pricing out steel bars and bullet-proof glass.  

And on that somber note, we say farewell to 2023 and look ahead to more and better adventures in the new year. Peace.  

Glenn, Roni and Ben