Committment and cake blues

I've been depressed lately, I think because the weather turned cold and dreary, Neil's been gone, I'm still in temporary housing, and lastly, wedding planning is sometimes a very solitary process. Saturday I rode the bus for an hour to visit a bakery, only to arrive and find out the owner was out (even though I had called the day before). And, when I saw photos of past work, it was of the awful-80s-white-plastic-pillars variety. Thankfully, the owner did phone me later that day and was very nice, but was unsure if they could do what I wanted, and definitely not within my budget. It got me into a funk: I love cake, but it looks like getting what I love will be extremely difficult and out-of-budget...should I even bother? It's positively depressing having to stay late at work every night just so I have an Internet connection to get wedding planning done.

I started a feeling a bit better yesterday when I went over to Eric's for a great belated Thanksgiving dinner. A lot of turkey put me in a good mood. And I also went to concert of Gordon Shi-Wen Chin's music, sponsored by the Chilin Foundation. The piece I enjoyed the most was actually the encore, one he wrote for his wife on their 10th wedding anniversary. I swear he said (but I may have misunderstood the Chinese, and Jen wasn't paying attention) that love does not come down from the heavens, but is a choice. Anyways, the piece and the presence of the foundation's founders, Mr. & Mrs. I-Shiung & Su-Ming Lin, got me thinking. Particularly Mrs. Lin.

When you get married, you vow to be together, through sickness and health, through the good times and bad times. when you marry, it's a public affirmation that you believe in your spouse and what they stand for. But no one ever imagines that their husband will become a political prisoner of a authoritarian government, and that they will come home one day to find their twin daughters and mother-in-law stabbed to death by the same authoritarian government, and another daughter clinging to life. How do you carry on without your spouse physically present? How do you raise and help heal a daughter when you have your own grieving to do?