Tag: family life

What’s up, summer 2026?

A stay-at home summer

We had planned a family trip to Norway this summer and then changed our mind after our abysmal air travel experiences to South Florida during Spring Break. The airports and airplanes were overcrowded and super-chaotic with families with small children, sometimes even crying babies, which triggered my anxiety. I fell off the bed in Florida in the night and had to move through the airports in a wheelchair on the way back home. Never again would I travel to anywhere during high tourist seasons! Traveling is supposed to be a means to escape the stresses of daily life and to provide a relaxing and rejuvenating experience. However, that has not been my experiences during our recent trips when we were in airports and airplanes with so many people and families with crying small children as well as inconsiderate old people. Long lines at airports’ security checks and the sheer number of people traveling during high tourist seasons seem to bring out the stress and subsequently the worst in many of us.

It turned out to have been a sound decision to cancel the Norway trip as this summer unfolded into one of the busiest and most productive in our family chronicle. I also enjoyed staying home this summer because the weather was most pleasant–cooler in the morning and evening and not too warm during the day. There was a couple of heatwaves which did not last for more than 2 or 3 days, but the rest of summer was delightful weatherwise. Oh, nothing can compare to the joy of staying home and the peace of not having to deal with traveling headaches and complications.

A new understanding of J1’s developmental and social struggles

This summer, the headline for us was that J1 has level 1 of ASD or Asperger’s Syndrome. After the diagnosis, there was clarity and relief for us concerning his history of struggling with social interactions, his difficulties with emotional regulation, and his problems with remembering such basic self-care activities as showering or changing clothes. J1’s transition from childhood to adolescence and through adolescent stages have been most stressful for our family and especially for me for many years now before we learned of his ASD this year. We simply couldn’t understand why he could never remember the most routine activities to take care of his body hygiene and maintenance. I even thought of him as being careless and lazy at one point. I suppose it has been hard for us because for J1, crossing the threshold between childhood, when life was simple and joyful, and older adolescence, when life became more complicated and challenging, was tremendously difficult to navigate for many reasons. He not only has Asperger’s Syndrome but also hypersensitivity as well as generalized anxiety disorder.

We used to have big dreams for J1 about which prestigious schools he could attend because he had shown academic giftedness especially in scientific subjects. However, after many years of painful emotional struggles starting when he left home to live and study at an academy for gifted high schoolers on a college campus in Kentucky, I have wearily given up on any grand scheme for J1’s professional future. I earnestly want him to be first and foremost healthy physically and mentally. J1 is currently a university student majoring in physics and minoring in math. We are staying in touch with him on a weekly basis to make sure he is building good self-care and study habits so that he can fulfill his academic obligations while managing his stress and anxiety which tend to intensify when he is tired or doesn’t have enough sleep.

As to his professional future, I want to remain open-minded as of this current moment. Our family motto has always been ‘First things first’ or ‘Ruthlessly Prioritizing,’ so I try not to think too far ahead. Besides, we will try to do our best to take care of the present while hopefully being able to form some plans for the next steps and then the following next steps, so on and so forth.

I think of and pray for J1 every day and night. I sincerely hope that my prayers for him are and will be answered. I honestly don’t know what else I could do now that he is 20 years old and living away from home. His life path and maturing journey will take their courses with their twists and turns, and all his parents can do is to do their best to support him navigate the painful and difficult processes of growing up and finding his footing in this confusing and confused modern world.

J2’s book-signing and book fair activities

We self-published J2’s book on Amazon in February:

Amazon.com: Behind the Wall of Fantasy: 9798249425487: DeBrot, James: Books

An article about J2 and his book was published in the Apple Valley Breeze: Smithfield’s Debrot publishes first book at age 13 | News | valleybreeze.com

J2 has subsequently created his own website: jamesdebrot – Official website of James DeBrot

D is the main driver behind this enterprise and has worked with J2 throughout this summer to promote his book at book-signing events at Barnes and Noble stores in Smithfield and Warwick as well as through local book fairs.

Princess Leia entered into our life and turned it to a new page

Our family life never felt the same after Liam, our blond Maine Coon cat, had been returned to his first adopted family in Lexington in the summer of 2024. We returned him so that we can downsize from a 4-bedroom house in Campbellsville, KY, to a 2-bedroom apartment in Bowling Green where J1 was attending the Gatton Academy for gifted students in math and science and where D opened his financial planning office serviced by Commonwealth. We also wanted Liam to be united with his first adoptive “mother” and with the other cats living in her house. He had been restless, trying to leave the house on several occasions, and had shown a longing for being around more creatures like him towards the end of his stay with us. In Lexington, he ended up being reunited with his brother and old friends, which made us happy although we were sad about not having him with us.

During that gap year in Bowling Green without Liam, we were extremely busy going through many kinds of transition. We were also in the midst of the preparation for our big move east. D especially was under tremendous stress due to the threat of lawsuit from the evil Edward Jones Investments while simultaneously working extra hard to retain good clients so that we would have income. I and especially D suppressed any nostalgic emotion we might have had about Liam or our previous stable existence in our cottage on High Street.

Liam’s absence was finally and acutely felt after we have settled into our townhouse in Smithfield, Rhode Island. D felt it the most, I believe, because he always feels very attached to pets whereas I am more attached to people in general. I did not grow up with pets in my original family in Vietnam, which conditions me not to feel a need for and a strong bond with domestic animals. Liam changed all that as he restored me back to good health and humor during my seasonal illness bout that autumn when he came to us. Not only did he spend time keeping each of us company everyday but his presence, innocence and playfulness contributed immensely to the coziness in our cottage on High Street. We simply adored him–his good looks, charm and sweetness.

Liam’s absence partly led to D’s depression leading partly to the near breakup of our marriage. As our relationship was on the mend in May, we adopted Leia. Three days after she entered our house in Smithfield, our life together turned to another page, a fresh new page showing “writings” of renewal and new domestic joys. Thanks to Leia, this new chapter of our life, when both our kids are much older and we are officially in middle age, promises a return to cozy conviviality in our home and hearts. Although Leia is not as fluffy and innocent as Liam, she is more playful, cuddly and affectionate with intelligent eyes.

A natural way to soothe the tense nervous system through a heatwave

We had a heatwave that lasted for 2 or 3 days some time this last June. Although most people here have air-conditioned homes and go to work in (sometimes heavily) air-conditioned buildings, I sensed people’s collective stressful anticipation of and suffering from the excessively hot temperatures outside. I myself was most uncomfortable physically during the ultra-hot days regardless of the existence of air-conditioning. Our home felt stuffy to someone like me who is not used to living in spaces constantly shut in and pumped with forced artificial air.

To help soothe my nervous system, since I’m hyper-sensitive to the collective stress and anxiety in my environment, and to ease my feeling of being shut in during those oppressive days, I decided to bring nature indoor. I would go down to our garden early every single morning to enjoy the fresher, cooler morning air and to cut hydrangea blooms for display in strategic spots in our home. The hydrangea blossoms were arranged and displayed where I would be most likely to not only look at them while passing but to gaze at and contemplate them as well. Something about the freshness and unspoiled beauty of nature that would always act as healing balm on my strained nervous system and weary soul.

 

Our late-spring indoor garden

Repotting these flowers in our home was tiring but gave me so much joy. I suppose this time I succeeded in exerting myself physically for beauty’s sake without damaging my health. It was a tremendous “win” that boosted my spirit, enhanced the look of our house and invigorated the feel in our home. I believe that, after many physical and emotional struggles throughout winter and spring, I finally achieved a sustainable sense of renewal by the end of this spring. It is fitting that my eventual triumph would be marked by the presence of flowers which are among my most beloved temporal things.

My foolhardy attempt at starting a hopeful Spring and my miserable failure

About two months after D’s mental and emotional breakdown and the near collapse of our marriage, my physical and mental health deteriorated visibly. In March, I was no longer the spunky, sweet, super-loving and all magnanimous wife who was deliberately over-affectionate and overattentive so that my husband would be saved from committing a grave sin of breaking his wife’s heart and of breaking up a family. Our family was saved and our marriage survived, but my health, both physical and mental, was falling apart.

It was a typical New England winter of times gone by. Recent winters had been mild, but January and February 2026 were brutally cold and snowy with grave financial and emotional consequences for many folks. A three-day blizzard dumped more than 3 feet of snow in Rhode Island; we are now still paying in installment a surcharge for the snow removal service we used six months ago. Even though we had to dig ourselves out at one point because our yard care/snow removal company didn’t show up for many days in a row, they still charged us a large amount above what we usually owe them for the monthly maintenance of our grounds.

What a dismal, heart-breaking and expensive winter! What a bleak beginning to the year! My happy spell that had started around the Fall of 2025 was completely broken when January 2026 came around. In my despair, my heart ached and I missed the cottage on High Street where our family used to be together happily. I questioned our decision to move out of Kentucky. We worked so hard together as a team to move our whole family out of the stagnant environment of that small town where nothing happens. And we were so over-the-moon with our new home and environment last July. How did things go so wrong after we achieved our objectives and arrived where we wanted to be?

Did we anger the Gods by having left behind everything and everyone we used to know and count on? We had had to be secretive about our plans because of the toxic nature of Edward Jones (if they had known of D’s intention to leave, they would have made it impossible for him to be employable) and the dysfunctional dynamics of D’s extended family (they constantly quarreled among themselves and are not trustworthy). Still, should we have just stuck it out with everything and everyone that was familiar? Should we have not taken the leap into the unknown that we believed would be better for our family? Were we disloyal and deserved to be punished? Did they whom we used to care about turn out to be vengeful and treacherous? How to live? Do we dream and strive to do what is best for us or just submit to the flowing current of society constituted of other people’s whims and wishes? Do we try to rise above mediocrity or just go along with the majority? I still don’t have the answer.

By Easter, I had started suffering from dysfunctional uterine bleeding as a physical response to excessive stress. I thought I was only having a longer-than-usual period that is quite normal during perimenopause. After I had gone for a doctor’s visit and got a prescription, the bleeding stopped and I felt a small surge of energy. With more energy, I wanted to do something to try to uplift my spirit above the gloom and doom I had lately succumbed to. I wanted to see beauty and something colorful and positive. With Easter on the horizon and the fluttering of Spring’s first breaths, my thought turned to flowers.

So, on a windy Monday during one of D’s business trips to Kentucky, I ventured out to buy flowers from Dave’s supermarket and pots from Home Depot to try to create an indoor Easter garden. Little did I know that my body was still very weak from the bleeding and that over-exerting myself physically outside in the wind would lead to a relapse. The day after my indoor garden had been planted, the bleeding resumed with even more intensity than ever before. I was forced to lay flat on the couch for many days on end, which led me straight to depression. Instead of feeling uplifted as I had expected, I was completely miserable. All because I wanted to plant and see pretty, cheerful flowers in my home so as to ward off the winter gloom in my heart.

Here they are — the flowers I paid for dearly with my health:

By Saturday morning of that week, it was clear to me that my bleeding was not going to be controlled by me just resting on the couch. I called my doctor’s office but they refused to call me back. I ended up having to call random doctors’ numbers, hoping that one of them would call and guide me as to what I needed to do. A doctor from North Scituate called me back and advised me to go to the emergency room at the Women and Infants’ Hospital in Providence. I called our kind neighbors Lauren and Barbara to ask them to help drive me there.

A recap of winter and spring 2025 – 2026 – one of the most depressing periods of time of my life thus far

Winter 2025 started joyfully with absolutely no foreboding of the heart-breaking unfolding of events that was to come. D and I had fun browsing through the Stillwater Antique Mall to look for Christmas lights, ornaments and decorations. Our favorite finds were the singing dolls. For our Christmas tree, we had one fresh tree cut down at the Lockwood Christmas tree farm in Greenville near home.

We had a typically cold, stormy and snowy New England winter in January, February and March 2026. As befits the gloomy weather and desolate landscape, my emotional life was bleak and tumultuous. D and I had marriage troubles and I worked so hard to try to work out what went wrong and how to save our family from disintegration. It was for me a winter of despair.

Early spring was still very cold and windy, and my life still felt unsettled as I continued to have health and other problems after both D and I had succeeded in saving our marriage. There were some moments, however, when I felt briefly consoled by the beauty of nature. Some evenings were enlivened by stunning sunsets and the faithful moon.

After a traumatic and exhausting winter and early spring, I became depressed and severely anxious. As per my tradition every time I felt physically exhausted and emotionally helpless, I turned to God and consecrated religious people for help. I went to Portsmouth Abbey in April for a retreat. There, so as to uplift my heart to God, I joined the monks at Lauds, Mass, Midday Prayers, Vespers and Compline. To sooth the wounds in my spirit, I sat on a rock at Narragansett Bay for one whole morning. I also visited the cemetery to cry and lament at Father Paschal’s tomb. I tried to commune with God and nature anytime I could during my short stay at Portsmouth Abbey.

We came to Portsmouth Abbey for Mass after spring has reached its peak in floral glory and has imperceptibly begun its descent. At Portsmouth Abbey School, the students had already left for their summer holiday and we had the campus to ourselves for roaming around and taking photos. One of the most glorious spring flowers is indubitably rhododendron, and in nowhere else had we found more massive bushes of rhododendron than at Portsmouth Abbey.

Now spring is gradually giving way to summer. Here are some images of the early morning sun in late spring. I love waking up early in the morning and go down to the verdant lawn and misty lake to inhale the fresh morning air and feel the early morning sunshine on my skin. One time I even spotted an enormous snap turtle under the small Japanese maple tree in the front lawn of our townhouse complex. I saw me watching and started retreating back to the lake. I excitedly followed it down the stairs and even made a video of it going into the lake.

Our last trip to a Kentucky state park in summer, 2024

In order to function optimally, a family of whatever size needs unity created by mutual understanding, shared goals, a convivial atmosphere and mutual affection. When our kids were small, I was super focused on our family unity by building a family culture that comforts, stimulates and helps all of us thrive. In Kentucky, we had a cozy and loving home where parents and children enjoyed spending time together in a peaceful and fun domestic sanctuary. Outside our professional, educational and essential social activities, we tried not to get too distracted by the outside world so that we could conserve energy and money while spending quality time with one another. Alas, nothing lasts forever and that cozy family atmosphere began to disappear when J1 moved out to live and study on a university campus for the last 2 years of his high school at a STEM academy for gifted highschoolers in Kentucky.

J1 went away but he was not happy about not living at home. He also was not helped properly by the people at the academy to adjust well to a new living environment. As parents, we tried our best to coach him and to stay in constant contact with him to cheer him up almost on a daily basis during his first year away. We believed it was in his best interest to not give up his scholarship and his opportunities for more advanced coursework at the academy. However, working on the project of coaching and keeping J1 motivated on a constant basis both in person and from a distance caused the rest of the family to experience a lot of stress. J1 was extremely shy as an adolescent, and he sometimes was tempted to give up on class projects because he was required to work with peers or communicating with professors. Both D and I sometimes would have to spend a long time talking to him on the phone to persuade him to not give up on a class project or presentation. Many times, I would voice my regret to D about having let J1 apply to that academy, and D would tell us that “We don’t give up in this family!” and that all our hard work will pay off in the future. Well, D is the moral leader in our family, and he knew best, so I relented and tried to carry on as best as I could.

Leading up to the summer of 2024, life had been so stressful that I felt we needed to go on a vacation somewhere in wild nature where we had felt happy together in the past. During D’s early years at Edward Jones when he was still prospecting, we used to go to different resort state parks in Kentucky to enjoy nature and to get away from the daily humdrum. I remembered having always felt restful and rejuvenated in such spots as surrounded by forests, lakes and walking trails. We all would enjoy seeing wildlife such as deers, turkeys, fish, birds, and turtles. We would hike the forest and lake trails and take pictures of sunlight filtering through leaves and mushrooms growing on the grounds or from dead tree trunks. The photos above are snapshots selected from my previous posts about our trips to Kentucky State Parks throughout the years of us living in Lexington and then Campbellsville in Kentucky.

Out in open nature, my soul feels soothed and my spirit expansive. Being in the mountain or next to a body of water–a lake, river or ocean–always help me put back the fragmented pieces of myself into a renewed wholeness. It is a wandering joy that helps free the spirit constrained and burdened by human society’s physical, mental and emotional constraints and demands. Going into nature means to me a return to the essential and a sojourn in simplicity.

We drove for over two hours through some impoverished areas to get to Buckhorn Lake State Park in eastern Kentucky. I have always wondered why places of spectacular beauty in America are so far apart from one another and why they are usually located next to or surrounded by poor or rundown communities. I still remember driving for a long time down a very long street flanked by large dismal trailers in New Jersey to get to Princeton University, one of the oldest and most stunning Gothic college campuses in this country. This geographical feature certainly prevents many people who don’t have adequate time and ample energy from visiting quaint and beautiful spots in U.S.. Once I voiced this thought to D, complaining that many Americans won’t get to see how diverse and beautiful their country is if their lives are busy or if they don’t have a lot of money or energy for traveling. D said that it is because the U.S. is not a country but a continent.

At Buckhorn Lake State Park, we did not take any photo, which was unprecedented. It was the first time ever that we went somewhere together for fun and didn’t bother to take out our phones to take pictures. We were either too tired or just enjoying not doing anything much except being there together. D and I sat together on the uncomfortable stiff vinyl furniture in the cabin’s living room and read our books. J1 and J2 sat in their beds in their rooms and played video games on their laptops. We ate together at the basic wooden dining set next to the window overlooking the woods. We also ate together on a picnic blanket next to the lake with bumblebees surrounding us about their business of sucking honey from tiny clover flowers amid the grass. Paying attention to the movement of the bees helped distract me from my own weariness and whatever worry weighing on my mind at the time. Next to the lake, my focus shifted among the bees, the clouds and the lake surface glitteringly lit up by the sun.

At one point, J1 and I sat side by side in silence on a bench next to the lake. Neither one of us felt the need to say anything to each other. I tried so hard to coach him to hold on and to do his best throughout his first academic year at the Gatton Academy. He was so tempted to give up especially during the first semester and we would not let him. After all the pep talks and outbursts of anger and frustration, there was nothing more to say. He bent down his head and watched the bees intently while I watched the mesmerizing lake surface. The lake that day dazzled and sparkled like an undulating sequined magic carpet carrying my spirit away from the inevitable pain of living and loving.

At one point, all 4 of us lied on the picnic blanket right by the lake doing nothing. It was a rare moment of idleness for me and D who are so used to working and striving. It was the pause and simplicity that we needed before the next push. As it was still early in the season, the air that day was not yet so humid as could be during the height of summer in Kentucky; however, it did not feel light and transparent either. Kentucky’s summer air tends to be heavy-laden with oppressive humidity, causing both physical and psychological sickness. Not too far away, a man on a riding mower was disturbing the peacefulness and serenity, which is what people in Kentucky love to do with their mowers. Not many people want to leave silence be. Someday I would love to live in a place where the people are silence lovers.

Another memorable moment for us also took place next to the lake. One evening, we made a bonfire using a roll of toilet paper and dry sticks scattered on the lake shore. As the light dimmed down in the sky, fireflies made their appearances and pulsated near and far. I feasted my eyes on the dance of the flickering fireflies. We felt primitively excited as our fire got fed by a light breeze to become a roaring flame that chased away the evening chill. All 4 of us huddled around the fire, sitting on rectangular slabs of rock. J1 caught hold of a frog and dissected it using his stick. He seemed so focused on it. I was just feeling happy to be there with my family next to a lake and a healthy bonfire while witnessing a dance of the fireflies. Somewhere on a shore in the distance, another fire came into life.