Matt's Accomplishments

In spite of a terrible living situation for me Matt's first year at Menlo. He thrived.
In order to compensate for the fact that living in the Bay area was a far cry from what Matt thought it was going to be, he had visions of living in luxury like every other time we had gone to San Francisco in the past, his Grandfather had always arranged amazing luxurious accommodations. The family owned the Hyatt on Sunset along with the Sunset Gower Studios, and his grandfather always managed to get us suites to stay in. His grandfather used to call Matt, "The Little Prince," and in his own way that was how he was treated by everyone in our family. Once his Grandfather even got us the Presidential suite at the Hyatt on Union square. Now that is something to behold.

So when his dad and I rented a track house in a little middle class neighborhood in Foster City, with dirty orange carpets no less, he definetly was not a happy camper. To make up for the his dissappointment, I tried to make this place as much like home as I could, We even got him a piano so that he could continue to play it. (That' another Post for the future.)

It seemed to Matt that every dream he had of moving was not at all his new reality. To make up for our location,I took him to San Francisco every friday after school so that he did not feel like we totally ignored what he loved about San Francisco, Japan Town and the best Video store in town. He had started to amass quite a collection of Japanese animation at the time, which really helped his speaking the language with absolutely no accent to a Japanese person.
Till this day Matt is able to navigate the city of San Francisco better than most people who live on the Peninsula. I used to live and work there before I moved to LA and I knew that city like the back of my hand.

Of course by going to Japan Town every weekend the first stop was always the video store where we left with tons of Japanese Animation and classice Kourasawa films. This only enhanced his already vast knowledge of Japan and understanding the language.
He was so immersed into the entire culture even before going to high school and he actually had learned to understand it from watching animation in Japanese with English subtitles ever since grade school.

I could never get him to wake up in the morning for school and one day while flipping through the morning TV shows I stumbled upon a cartoon series that had "talking cats'.
Little did I know that "Sailor Moon" would be the catalyst to an entire new world for him. It was the beginning of his love of everythig Japanese.
Although he had studied the Martial Arts and gotten a black belt at ten years old, this sealed the deal, so to speak.
After winning the respect of his Japanese teacher, she put him up as a competitor in the much respected Japanese language contest. This in itself was unheard of.
It was not a competition that caucasians were entered in to. Not only did he compete he went on to take third place.

Now that in itself is a mystery. He was so much more proficient that the other two winners, but the award of first place was NEVER given to a non asian. The judges begrgingly had to give the award to him, asian or not. He was simply better than then all.

This lead to his being put up for a Rotary scholorship for a home study in Japan.
Not surprizing Matt won the Scholorship. He was fifteen years old and had barely ever had a sitter. Now he was off to Japan with two girls who did not speak the language. I was so proud of him and at the same time beyond nervous at him going away for a few months. This was the kid that barely survived his one trip to summer camp literally 25 miles down the road in Malibu.

But Matt was thriving at his new school. He was in his element and soaring to new heights. Who was I to stop him? It was the whole reason we moved up North in the fist place, so that Matt could be in a school that taught Japanese. I literally never dreamed that he would be so great at it.

My life on the other hand had become tragic. I would take Matt to school and come home and go back to sleep for a few hours.
I was really good at hiding it from Matt because I never wanted him to know what a wreck I really was. In the beginning his Dad would still come to visit us a couple of times a month, but we were pretty much on our own.
So I enrolled Matt into a Kendo class because he had always wanted to study the art of the Samurai. It was a good diversion for me also.
I really liked the instructors at the school and it was great physical training for Matt. He loved the uniform also, very cool, it looked like an ancient warrior outfit and the shinai were wood not real swords so he wasn't really going to hurt himself.

The first class would have had me running out the door and never come back. They did over 200 repetitions for the first warm up exercise of their swords over their heads. He couldn't move his arms the rest of the week. But he went back week after week.

To give you a little example of how scattered my head was, one night we just got home and the phone rang as I was taking his equipment out of the trunk. I ran into the house to get it and it was his Dad calling to see how the class had gone. I totally spaced out and left his big bag with all his equipment behind my car. The next morning late for school again, I backed out of the garage, right on top of his gear and crushed his crush proof helmet.

I was so mortified by my stupidity, but all I could do was laugh. Matt did not speak to me for several days he was so upset with me. One for ruining his equipment and two for laughing about it. I really think I must have been more affected by the anti-depressants my new doctor had given me then I ever remembered. What in the world would make me laugh at such a thing? It wasn't funny to see my son so upset. I stopped taking the anti-depressants. Talk about being in the clouds. I needed to be grounded. There was a lot going on in our world and the only thing positive about it was Matt's accomplishments and his new found activity.

The first year of school was coming to an end which meant Matt was off on his Japanese adventure and I was going back to Malibu to our home. I was nervous about both. I had not lived alone with his father while he was in and out of sobriety since before we got married. I did not know how I was going to handle it. I did not know if he would stay sober or be taking his pills or drinking. I was a nervous wreck. Matt had always given me the excuse to leave the room when I got nervous.

Now What?