It’s 6:44am and I’m having some of my coffee (I’m back on coffee now and have ended my matcha era), and I’m blogging upstairs these days. My brother designed for me a custom built-in desk area and that’s where I’m blogging. I’m lucky.
The little one who is almost 18 ran out of the house without her shoes, and into the car with her father. Her Honors Ceramics class is going to LA on a field trip to the American Museum of Ceramics Arts (AMOCA) so they have a catch a bus from school, and had to leave earlier than usual. I wanted to see her outfit and see her off, but she was rushed and yelled from upstairs “Mommy, I HAVE TO GO!”
A teenage body in a blue hoodie and jeans rushed out and gave me a hug and apologized briefly, but was off before her grandmother and I could fully appreciate her. She’s off to a field trip, and soon she’ll be off to college to Harvard and Cambridge – where we are so happy she’ll be nestled for the next four years.
But I’m allowed to wallow. “Mommy, I HAVE TO GO!” And I stay at home with grandmother and grandfather, and the black poodle mix and her childhood memories. I stay home and keep myself busy taking care of other people’s children and continuing to work on climate projects. But my heart is with that teen and a twenty-year-old up at Berkeley.
It’s the universal truth of parenting in that when you succeed, you lose. You lose them to the world. As it should be. “Momma, I HAVE TO GO!” And mommy is crying on my blog because I don’t get to go with you.
The two photos above are separated by 13 1/2 years. The first I was holding our youngest who was 3 after her Saturday ballet class in Liberty Station, and we jetted over to a Harvard Club of San Diego admit event for early admitted students at a Chinese Restaurant in town that has since closed. She was obviously exhausted and I’m sure I was exhausted too, because I was (and am still) a working doctor mother. The 2nd image is our daughter at the Harvard College San Diego Club admit event we attended yesterday.
Most of her college journey is her story to tell. She was a reaction video that would 100% go viral! But we are saving it just for family and friends and not even sharing it (you never know these days about other people sharing your videos), because she doesn’t want to be remembered for a funny reaction video. It’s really heart warming though especially her father’s response at the end. If you know me in real life, I’ll show you on my phone. She won’t be sharing her essays nor her application, because they are so intensely personal to her. She’ll just go to college, and continue her journey and figure out life.
But I did want to share a fun moment yesterday when I think I won in life! The event was at the local public library in a very nice part of San Diego. The kids were mingling and sizing each other up, and the parents were more relaxed in the corner. I was sitting with the other Asian mothers or different variations, and actually most of them were more recently immigrated. This makes sense because the immigrant work ethic is a very real thing. It was super fun for me because I got to speak Korean with someone who is fluent, and Vietnamese with another mother. I talked to another “Asian Auntie” who drove one of the students over (her parents were out of town) and she was a physician too, so we talked about doctor things. One mother is married is my older brother’s high school best friend. San Diego is a very small world when you are born and raised here, and doing community focused advocacy. I really like that small town feeling.
The parents were chatting and the students were mingling, and my daughter came over to hug me. She is a quieter person than the typical Harvard student. She said her MBTI is Introvert, Intuitive, Feeling and Perceiving. I think she is the polar opposite of what I was in high school. Now that I’m reading about this personality type, that is her precisely.
https://mypersonality.net/personality-type
So my INFP daughter after hugging me, brought me a plate of food and she whispered something to me and we had a quiet mother-daughter moment. When she brought me a plate of food, there was a collective moment of quiet when the other Asian parents noticed and smiled. That’s it! We chatted about raising kids afterwards and I told them, that her Korean grandparents live with us so she’s a quieter person because she was raised by older grandparents. It was a beautiful moment that I wanted to remember.
I really can’t take credit for her being an INFP, or for her bringing me a plate of food. But I can take credit for yielding to a quieter personality type as I was raising her, and realizing that often the INFPs in the world are the ones who need to be heard. The rest of us just need to quiet down a bit, to see them and give them room to express themselves. I never thought I’d have an artistic daughter, and it has been one of the biggest gifts climate work has given me – the ability to recognize how special every single being in this universe is. To quiet myself to try to understand better others, and to realize that just existing is enough. Does that make sense? She brought me one brownie, a cookie and a tangerine. She was very impish afterwards when we were talking about the gathering afterwards, that she purposefully added that fruit to make me look healthy in front of the other parents. The girl knows what she is doing! LOL
From @ceramics_by_vivi work in progress, working title Motherhood
April 6, 2026
by Dr. Plastic Picker
It’s 6:04 am and I’m blogging upstairs at my desk. It’s a built in office space which I’ve reclaimed. I had given it up for my daughter, but it ended up being just a storage area and a few months ago I cleared out all the excess things that accumulated and made it my desk again. She never needed the desk area, and after I offered it to her – never claimed it. It’s mine again, and she continues to study and create in her room.
She creates in the ceramics studio. She creates in her bullet journal. She creates on her ceramics instagram account. And she creates within herself. There is so much creativity in that 5’3″ being that it sometimes amazes me.
The above are screenshots of the new and 2nd to final pot she is creating, before she takes herself to Harvard.
It’s on motherhood, and it’s a work in progress.
It creates overwhelming emotion in me, this pot. It makes me think of myself, my daughter, my own mother. And that makes me remember moments, and understand better past instances. It’s really remarkable what raising an artists has done to me. It’s transformed me, as a mother, as a woman – especially since I was lucky to be gifted a daughter.
Isn’t it remarkabl?. She’s really remarkable the artist, but I’m a little bit biased. I really hope she is able to continue her ceramics during her college years. That’s the plan, but we have to go to admit weekend and figure it out. She’ll figure it out. I have confidence in her. She’s really pretty to look at too, so I think one wouldn’t mind having her in the studio with you. She doesn’t make that much noise when she is creating, but her pots take up lots of space! She likes to make super big pots. Fair warning.
Our little one is headed to Harvard for college in the fall. It was an exhausting application season for us honestly. We are alumni of the college, and she was initially deferred and then after applying to over 26 schools – ended up accepted during the regular cycle to the school she initially applied to early. She is actually a far superior student than both of us – so we were surprised. It was hard to see her go through this application process, 26 schools in addition to extensive art portfolios which required her being in the ceramics studio (which she loves) to work on additional pieces to submit to the art schools that she was also considering.
What I’ll remember most is how sick she was during the application cycle. She had cold on top of cold, had to have several urgent care visits and treated with antibiotics and steroids. She had a minor surgery and the healing process was long and arduous, and we had her post-op appointment and all is now in the clear. She was so tired and her father plied her with more Starbucks that I was happy with. We had some tense moments about the amount of caffeine she was taking to make it through application season while still keeping her grades up. Grandmother was hospitalized several times during this time, and her father was also starting his responsibilities as chief of the radioactive doctors department.
But all in all, she made it through and she got into several excellent schools. But she wants very much specifically to study East Asian Studies and Ceramics, and Harvard is actually one of the few programs that has Korean, Vietnamese and a strong visual arts program. The other option was Tufts BA/BFA and she was lucky enough to get into that program as well, and we had a wonderful few weeks watching her talk to their director and interview and fall in love with that program. But in the end, she made it through the application process and got the YES to come to Cambridge in the fall.
We are relieved because there really isn’t much of a decision to make, so we’ll skip the college tours/looks for the other schools and just go one weekend to the Harvard early look weekend. Did you see the plane ticket prices have skyrocketed???!!! It used to only cost $275 on TWA (which does not exist anymore) to fly round trip from San Diego to Boston. Now it is $650 one way, and Mr. Plastic Picker used our saved up miles for the return trip. I haven’t bought any clothes for almost 5 years, but a I bought a new shirt at Macy’s (and signed up for their reward program) for our weekend! I’m really excited about that weekend.
I’m actually really excited for our youngest as she enters this next stage. We never pressured her and never expected this for her. There was just something in this tiny being from the time that she was conceived that kept on fighting and living and breathing, and creating. She was so sick as a preemie baby in the NICU. So many hospitalizations and surgeries, and now she has been fine. This application cycle was a little reminder to those early years when I worried mostly about her health and not about her SAT scores.
This is our last child that has gone through applications, and both Mr. Plastic Picker and I agree – THAT WAS SUPER STRESSFUL and WE ARE DONE! We helped her because she wanted help, and she had certain goals for herself.
But she did it, and she’s healthy again. She’s finally caught up on some sleep (although her father AGAIN TOOK HER TO STARBUCKS THIS MORNING!!!! ARRRGHHHH). She’s been eating more vegetables and working out. She’s a normal teenager and worried about prom dresses, and how her acceptance to HAAARVARD is playing out in her social circle. She’s a typical teenager and for that I’m so grateful. I remember when the high-risk OB asked if I wanted to terminate her at 19 weeks and was slightly encouraging me to do that, I became a mommy bear and decided to fight for her the rest of my pregnancy and actually for the rest of my life. I told them no termination, and that however she came – that we’d love her and provide for her.
And that’s what I’m going to do. At my heart, I’m a simple person. My parents gave me everything they had. If there was not enough food, the children got the food. My mother-in-law is the same way. The children get the best pieces of food of any dish that is made at home. And for the rest of my life, I will just work and pay her tuition. I’ll wait for crumbs of her attention. I’ll try to help save the earth. And everything I have will be to help save the world so that my child and all our children can breathe and have a livable earth. I’m so grateful I got to be her mommy! She’s really a remarkable child for living and breathing, and now she gets to go to Harvard. She has big ambitions, but I really hope she finds a cute boy to flirt with. Thank you for cheering on my child, and I’ll continue to cheer on yours. But mostly save the earth for all of us.
