One day while Blessings I was on display at Larson gallery in St. Paul, TH (my husband), our baby Love and I were on our way to the gallery to document the exhibition.

I could not pinpoint it, but something was off about TH that day. I was getting frustrated at his incoherency of words and actions. Rather, I should have been suspicious. When we arrived at the gallery, through the glass doors I saw three visitors looking at my works. Some students, I assumed. Then I noticed they were Asians, and then I thought I may know them, and then came a shock. There they were, two Christines and Sung from California.

It was a kind of misalignment among multiple realities, where continuity of time and space was no longer linear.

In a split of a second I travelled across intergalactic space to come to understand what was going on before my eyes. My friends came to Minnesota from California that morning to see my show and TH knew about it but I did not. After processing the situation with loud laughs and some tears we realised we were hungry so we got into our Volkswagen Golf–five adults and a baby with a carseat–and drove to a pizzeria.

There was yet one more surprising encounter that would be revealed a few days later. Already inside the Golf,  there were five adults and TWO babies not one, who were craving a cheesy slice. My second baby Hope came sneakily like that on a cold day of January 2012.

Pregnancy, for me, is clear in a sense it divides one calendar year into four pieces—three months of a beginning stage followed by three months of a thriving era, then three months of waiting, a grand moment of finally meeting, and three final months of a darkness. All three of my babies, innocent and nonchalant,  came to take a nine-month-lease in my uterus in January in even number years. (Mon Uterus, c’est pas encore disponible!) These babies are Love, Hope, and Faith in that order.

My pregnancy with Hope was the toughest one, especially the first three months. I ate because I wanted to forget about my body but eating only reminded me of it so I wanted to throw up. More efficiently I found movies that would carry my mind away from my body. Among them were the Harry Potter series and a Korean romantic comedy entitled “Do you like the bear of a spring day?”

Weeks passed and snow turned into the color of the earth. I had to pick myself back up to prepare for the exhibition. Gage family art gallery where I would be showing in summer was made of glass walls that shaped the space one long transparent box. The light coming into the gallery and prominent geometric order of the space inspired in me a movement, gentle yet forcefully charged with warmth.

I started my commute to the Highpoint centre for printmaking again, but only by car this time.

(I am trying  not to stretch my story too long but this is the best I am able to achieve this week. My plan was to tell the whole story of Blessings II  but boy, the more I write, the more memories are rolling in…)