Every year, around my birthday, like clockwork (calendarwork?), I end up settling into a quiet existential melancholy. I pretty much have an annual midlife crisis. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. It was cuter when I was younger. A teenager reflecting on life and meaning would elicit chuckles from people and remarks about being an old soul. But now I’m actually reaching midlife. Now, the days in front of me may very well be shorter than the days behind and the smell of pumpkin spice and yellowing leaves aren’t just seasonal decor. They’re harbingers of entropy—a sign that we all meet our end someday.

Anyway, this year, my midlife crisis has taken on a different tone. I mean, I already have a motorcycle. I’ve already gone on soul-searching pilgrimages to far away places. I’ve already purchased and own several different types of ways to make artisanal coffees. All that was really left for me to do is reflect.

And as I reflect, I see that my life is more complete than it ever has been. I have a smokeshow wife and two perfect kids. Stephy is accepting of my flavor of strange and accommodates my crack of dawn basketball sessions, long-winded political rants and the resurgence of a trading card addiction late on life. Shelby is the sweetest girl who wants to sing and draw and make little cards for her parents to tell them she loves them (although mom gets more hearts next to her name than dad). Soren is a perfect little chunkster whose laughter brings a level of joy to our family that we didn’t know could be attained. I have a perfect home in the textbook suburbs, the one your Asian aunties tell you to move to because they have good schools and fancy landscaping. I’m in a church community where our families have truly grown up together—most of us have known each other since before we were parents (lifetimes ago), and half of those, before we were even married. I have a job where I get to be me all day and run around never doing the same thing twice. I get to be strategic and creative and enable kids to make community for themselves in a million different ways. 

On the surface, I have more autonomy and agency than I’ve ever had at any point in my life. I can make more personal, professional, financial decisions than I’ve ever had access to and yet this year if I had to pick a feeling or mood that I’m experiencing during my birthday, it is helplessness. 

I don’t know what kind of day jobs you have, but in mine, I often receive some variation: “Hey Sunroot, what are you going to do about the swelling tide of Christian nationalism?” or “hey Sunroot, what should we do about the plague of prejudice and xenophobia that has infiltrated our faith communities?” They recognize, as I do, that we are watching as Christian fascists take over our religion and our country and I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do about it. 

Bullies have gained an outsized influence in what feels like every organization that I’m still a part of and the leaders who have been trusted to prevent it are either too corrupted, too scared or too weak to do anything about it. The systems that have been put in place to protect the flourishing of all people have been put to the test and proven to be insufficient to respond to the will and whims of those select few.

I’ve come to the realization that, at this point in my life, I don’t have any leaders in my life that I trust or want to follow. I really wish I did. And I’m so old now that I’m not sure if I’m the one expected to be one of those leaders. I’m a little too scared to ask. I’m afraid to find out I’m disappointing someone else out there too. In any case, it just feels like we’re either on the cusp of or past the point of letting the most embarrassing, sycophantic, virtue-signaling, witch-hunters take over my places and I don’t know what to do.  

Except maybe let them.

Maybe we just let them have it. 

You see, I’ve been praying a prayer for the past couple years. The prayer echoes verses from the psalms and prophets. It’s this constant refrain of “how long oh Lord”. I feel like I’ve been waiting for God to answer my frustrations at these broken systems with a show of force. A spectacular show of wrath and conviction, declaring that the way that His children have been treated is unacceptable and the ones who have seen fit to treat them that way will be punished in accordance with the cruelty with which they treated handiwork made in his image.

But I also remember that this is not the way of my savior. I know this because 2000 years ago when the Jews suffered under the bootheel of Roman Imperial oppression, they expected a king to overthrow it all. Then, the long awaited king arrived in a manger. Instead of a glorious diadem, he wore a crown of thorns. Instead of an army, he led fisherman and tax collectors and lepers and whores. There was no sword in his hand, only nails. The God I serve didn’t come to conquer the conquerors. He came to subvert  empires—to offer a different path for the people who are looking for a different place. So maybe we let go. Maybe we let them have the empire, maybe it was never our home to begin with.

These Earthly places, whether school or church or even country—these places are not where my true citizenship is based. The things worth being a part of are things I can’t be separated from and these things in this place at this time were never supposed to be the end all be all. So maybe just let them have it. Maybe I’m meant to dust off my proverbial sandals and be off to the next, especially if I don’t think the folks in this town will miss me anyhow. Maybe it’s my job to take on the quiet role of caring for the people oppressed by the systems and not to reform the systems themselves.

The trick is, I’m just not really that humble kind of a guy. I am in a place where I have more agency in my life then I have ever had and that has fooled me into thinking that I belong to a kingdom where the going currency is power, policy and the ability to affect systems. I’ve somehow arrived at a place where I think my influence is more important than my presence. I want to make big sweeping changes, but the example of Jesus shows me that a church, a school, a country—these were never worth fighting for—only the people in them are. My God was not a legislator (I mean, outside of things like the Law with a capital L) , he sat at a well with a Samaritan woman and listened to her story. He didn’t implement a tax policy or establish a church bylaw to serve the least of these, he rubbed shoulders and broke bread with them. I’ve been conditioned to think that I can make systemic changes and make an impact that is somehow more scalable and big-picture-thinking than Jesus Christ? That sounds idiotic. Maybe it’s time to let go.

I know what my fear is. My biggest fear is what happens when we let go of these places? At the least the outskirts are a place for people to be. At least the margins are something for people to hang onto. If we give up these scraps, is there anywhere left to go for my fellow misfits, strangers and outcasts? Deep in my heart, I know there is. Somewhere that isn’t just the scraps too. In the kingdom we belong to, they will have a place with me and people like me and hopefully people better than me who follow on a narrow path in the footsteps of a humble god. 

On Tuesday, the morning of my 32nd birthday, I woke up in San Gabriel, in the bedroom where I stayed for the better part of my 22nd birth year.

This was because on Monday, Stephy, myself and the wee baby Shelby arrived at our home in Tustin to a yellow sky, darkened by clouds of ash and filled with the thick noxious smell of the Silverado Fire. By that point, we had seen the notifications and evacuation orders for neighboring Irvine, and while there were no evacuation orders for our home, we took a look at the map and quickly realized that we were about two blocks away from a mandatory evacuation zone. Out of an abundance of caution, we grabbed our personal items, baby necessities and everything we would need to work remotely and off to grandparents’ house we went. After a night of creating two temporary workstations in the old living room, we went to bed with baby enjoying her brand new Pack N Play, courtesy of grandma Jenny.

I woke up on my birthday in my old room. My time in that room defined my young adulthood. This was the room that I lived in for my first and second moves to California. It’s where I built my relationship with my dad’s side of the family and formed my own notions of who I wanted to be as an individual. I’ve woken up in that room a thousand times, but this time, I was with a brand new family of my own, celebrating my first birthday as a dad.

We spent the day doing our best to juggle work and the baby. This was done with me on a makeshift workstation, sitting on top of a white plastic lawn table, and Stephy, working from her laptop, sitting with the baby in an improvised couch enclosure. I don’t really know how to express my gratitude for a wife who works so hard while doing so much for the baby, often at the same time. I try to shower her with kisses, but that strategy has it’s limits. The simple fact of the matter is that what we’re tasked with is difficult.

Before this impromptu field trip (AKA evacuation) to my dad’s, Stephy and I were grappling with a couple of things. Last week was our first week without a nanny, and we were still adjusting to working from home with a baby sitting in a pen between us (Shelby naturally crawls over to Stephy’s side and tries to play, ignoring me). Questions arose around getting a bigger place for the baby to run around in, or navigating child-care for the foreseeable future. And lingering questions can be stressful.

It turned out that a little 13,000 acre fire helped to put some things in perspective for us. Mainly, it helped us to appreciate our home—the shelter it provides and the opportunity it affords us to be a family together. We came back to Tustin yesterday, after a day spent in San Gabriel and we were relieved to be in our home, and suddenly empowered by the ease of functioning in our own space that we’ve crafted to fit our needs.

The place in San Gabriel was my home for many years, and the family there will always be my family. But I’m building a new home and a new family. Or rather, a continuation of the family. A franchisee, so to speak.

During one of Stephy’s work meetings on my birthday in San Gabriel, I took the baby out for a walk. We ended up over at grandpa’s (my grandpa) with my dad (Shelby’s grandpa) and Jenny. Four generations of Liu’s were gathered in a room and a family history that stretched across centuries and continents could be found huddled around the tiny baby sitting on my shoulders.

It was clear that my role in the family had changed. A baton grandpa Liu passed onto my father had wordlessly passed to me. Within it lies the legacy of our family’s past, the weight of responsibility to my ensure a comfortable present for Stephy and Shelby, and the imperative to forge a better future Shelby and the world she will come to inhabit.

Usually, on my birthday, I try to reflect on myself and write something that sums up the themes that pervade my life at that moment in time. It is fitting then that my birthday this year was immersed in my family, from the 100+ year old patriarch to the 10 month old that actually rules over me. While I can selfishly indulge by eating my cake (and I do) and dreaming dreams of Nobel Prizes in Literature AND Peace, it is fitting that my first birthday as a dad would have me reflect on my family and not just myself. I mean, after all, it’s hard to navel gaze when the world is literally on fire.

When you grow to my age, you don’t remember much about elementary school. You remember the names of your teachers and some of the names of your classmates. You remember making edible dirt with crushed brownies and gummi worms. You remember playing with a parachute in gym class and being sent to the principal’s office for making prank Valentine’s cards for classmates with crude names that you borrowed from that old PC game Scorch (well, I remember that last part).

I seem to remember worksheets that asked me what my favorite color was (don’t know), who my personal hero was (Raphael from TMNT), and what I wanted to be when I grew up (inventor/President of the United States).  I didn’t know it then, but there was only one question with an answer that has not changed. What is my favorite food? My favorite food always has been and always will be beef noodle soup, 紅燒牛肉麵.

I grew up in Queens County, the most diverse county in the entire world (Google it). P.S. 163 and P.S. 173 were no different. People from every tribe, nation and tongue gathered a stone’s throw away from Manhattan to make a better life for themselves and for their families. They still do. But when you’re in grade school and you write beef noodle soup in a box on a worksheet, people don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. They think of chunky beef and vegetable soup. They think of beef stew with carrots and potatoes.

But they’re wrong. Beef noodle soup isn’t American. It isn’t Irish or English. Beef noodle soup is Taiwanese. Fatty beef shank, braised and slow cooked with bones for a deep, rich flavor. Soy sauce, rock sugar and star anise. Dough, delicious dough, hand pulled or knife cut into thick, chewy noodles that soak up the flavor without falling apart. Beef noodle soup is God’s gift to mankind, and it came by way of a little island formerly known as Formosa.

Main Street looked different when we were kids. When I was growing up, before there was Flushing Library, before there was Big Bowl or Starbucks, there was that wicked place Mega Academy and a string of excellent restaurants and supermarkets. On Main Street, in between 41st and 42nd ave., there was a Taiwanese Restaurant that made the best damn beef noodle soup in the city. Right smack on that street was a place that sold us 紅燒牛肉麵. I remember the sound of the bell against the door and the way the cashier had a booth before you got to the seating area. I remember the waitress with the hoarse voice, and the pulled back ponytail and a mole above her lip like Cindy Crawford. I remember the anticipation as we drove back home with it, burning hot even through the plastic container that I would hold to make sure it wouldn’t topple. Back then, I didn’t eat the meat or drink the soup, I just ate the noodles, and then I ate the extra noodles my mom would order for me and then I would eat my brother’s noodles that he didn’t finish, because beef noodle soup was my favorite food. 

***

When I was 21, I had essentially dropped out of college and moved to California (sorry mom). Then I decided to tag along with my dad and stepmom as they explored some business opportunities in China and Taiwan. It’s the longest stretch of time I can remember spending with my dad. I celebrated my twenty second birthday in a two bedroom condo in Taoyuan. It was during this time that my stepmom began to see some of the odd freakish similarities between father and son. Not the least of these similarities was the fact that we found an amazing beef noodle soup place on ZhongHua Rd. and without her intervention, my dad and I would have eaten there for every meal.

My dad, too, has always loved beef noodle soup and much of the mythology of my dad involves it. My mom used to tell me a story about my dad when he was growing up. My dad left home to go to high school in Taipei, so my grandma would give her beloved son enough money for two bowls of noodles. Two bowls, because beef noodle soup was his favorite food. A classmate of my father’s lost his parents when he was young and didn’t have the means to eat out, so for three years, my dad bought two bowls a day, one for himself and gave one to his friend. We now know that friend as uncle Liang.

Later, in college, uncle Liang introduced my dad to a precocious young lady from Chiayi. That lady was and is my mom.  

And thus, my parents fell in love (and out of love too, but that’s another story). When they were dating, my dad would take my mom all over Taiwan on his motorcycle. They rode through mountains and by the ocean, and when the engine would overheat, my dad would pull over to the side of the road and pee on it to cool it down. Dad would take off his belt and wrap it around the both of them as they cruised through the countryside day and night. My mom would fall asleep with her cheek pressed up against his back.

But they didn’t just travel around, they had their regular spots too. One of them was none other than a beef noodle soup shop. In certain restaurants, they will differentiate between 牛肉麵 (literally beef noodle), and 牛肉湯麵 (beef soup noodle). There were two differences between the two. First, the fact that the latter had no meat and second, the price. Since my parents were broke and in love, they split a beef soup noodle and the kind shopowner would give them a free tea egg.

After many shared bowls and after many long years of courtship, they decided to get married. The problem is, my grandparents didn’t support the marriage. They didn’t think my mom was good enough for their cherished son, so they didn’t show up for the wedding. When they did, guess who acted as a father for my own father when he married my mother. That’s right. The man who ran the noodle shop.

 

***

Usually, Stephy reads these things when everyone else does. I catch her on the bed or couch scrolling on her phone. If I’m lucky, she’s moved by something she read and accepts my kisses. With this post, I read it to her in different phases as I wrote it. She asked me where I was going with it. I think this is where. 

Stephy likes beef noodle soup too. And so does her family. When we were in Taiwan, her dad brought us a really damn good one from somewhere deeper in the city. We ate it together—  myself, Stephy, her dad, aunt, niece, nephew, grandma and NaiNai the dog. We also ate beef noodle soup in a famous shop in YongKang Street, and at another place with my mom and brother and a couple of instant ones from 7-11. All told, I ate at least one bowl per day during our two week trip in Taiwan last year. What was I saying?

Anyway, sometimes when she has the time, Stephy’ll make it at home. She makes it in the instant pot which spouts the smell of stewed beef all up in the air and when I walk through the door, I feel like I could cry. I feel at home. Maybe Shelby will feel that way too. Maybe it will be her favorite food, and she’ll think of good memories from growing up. Maybe she’ll think of the places she can count on, or her ethnic identity, or maybe she’ll think of people who love her. Or maybe not. Maybe she’ll have a different favorite food. Maybe it’ll be pastrami. I love Pastrami.