葛莉絲 的世界

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and I walked up to one of the brick houses at Forest Hills in Queens.  The wood arch shaped door was brown and the sunshine on the door made it feel warm. I could hear the birds singing in the top branches of the trees.  All this helped to release my tension and I felt peaceful. I checked the black metal number on the door just to make sure it matched the address I wrote on my note, and then I rang the door bell. After a moment, a beautiful woman in her early fifties opened the door and smiled at me.

“Are you Miss Kerr?”

            “Yes.  Are you Miss Yu?” I replied.

            “Yes. Please come in. Did you have trouble finding my place?”

I told her it was not that difficult to find and she lead me to the back of the living room and asked me to sit down in front of her desk, and then she walked around to her chair and sat down. 

Miss Yu was a fortune teller whom had already published a few books.  My girlfriend Amy introduced her to me, because she told me that Miss Yu had explained very clearly about her life based on just her birthday; some of her other friends had  also seen her before. Amy gave me her phone number and suggested that I call Miss Yu to find out if she was willing to take my case, since Miss Yu had been ill for a while because when a person is involved too much in this type of work it will make their health decline.

I didn’t call right away because I had heard that some fortune tellers were frauds, until one day when I was browsing through some books in a Chinese book store and saw her books.  I pulled one of her books out and started reading; it was a very interesting book. 

When I went home, I decided to call her because I really liked how she explained about why people see fortune tellers, and what kind of attitude they should have.  The bottom line was that a fortune teller should only be used as a guideline of suggestion for someone who was at the intersection of a road and needed a map to decide in which direction they should go. Luckily Miss Yu was willing to see me because she was feeling better.

At our meeting, Miss Yu pulled out two pieces paper she wrote and confirmed my birthday, Chinese name, and my place of birth to make sure this was the correct information I had given her, and then she began my reading. She clearly explained and described me from birth all the way up to when I will be seventy-five years old and then she stopped. 

She told me not to worry; it didn’t mean that I am only going to live to be seventy-five.  The said the reason she stops at that age for everyone she reads is because it’s not right to tell a person when they are going to die, plus it would not be accurate.  Since each person can pick and choose to do certain things good or bad, this will affect their life, health, work, etc. and all these factors will usually change a person’s later life.  She said that she usually suggests a person should get another reading after fifteen or twenty years to compare the two readings and see how well they have done so far and what can be improved to make the rest of their lives even better.  I totally agreed with her, and felt it was reasonable. I would not trust a fortune teller who told me that something will happen to me tomorrow or when I will die, because that’s not believable to me.

Over the years, I forgot most of the details of what she told me, even though she had written it on the papers for me. But there were two things she said that I had never forgotten.  First, she told me I was a very smart person, with a type of natural intelligence that does not come from books or teaching. She said that I have the ability to expand one thing into many in a very short amount of time; just by seeing a person to do something I have that talent to do it and even improve it.  She pointed out that since I have this kind of ability, I didn’t like to study and read, and she was 100% correct – in fact, I hate to study and read. 

Second, right before I left her place she told me, “Miss Kerr, I suggest you must force yourself to study and read in order to improve yourself.  You are very smart girl, but don’t waste it, ok?” 

In fact I kind of knew this since I was a little girl. I met Miss Yu when I was in my mid-twenties.  Before that, I didn’t study hard and I didn’t like to memorize any of  my school work, so after I finished high school, I decided to go for fashion because it was easiest way to avoid having to study since I was already good at sewing, I knew I could always get a very high grade.  I graduated first place in my fashion school at Pittsburgh with little effort.  Everyone told me I was talented, but at the same time I kept ignoring my weakest skills: studying and reading.   

When I first moved to New York City, things started to change.  It is a big city; there are a lot of people who are also smart and talented in many different ways and in many different fields.  Even though I was good at sewing, designing and I was smart, I started to struggle because of my limited of English skills.  I learned all the vocabulary required for my daily work and once I was able to do my job well again and my coworkers had no problem understanding me, my old habits came back.  I drifted along day by day and kept telling myself that I was doing great.

Everything seemed to go smoothly for me, my job position kept moving up, my salary kept increasing, and even my brother who is an engineer was making less money than I did.  I felt that if I was so smart, why should I even need to study? This would be a total waste of my time; I need to use this time to make more money.  So, even though it had been many years since I saw Miss Yu, I still had not changed. In fact, I just ignored her suggestion until six years ago when my personal life started falling apart.

I was working from early morning all the way up to nine or ten o’clock at night.  In the middle of night I also needed to stay up sometimes when my children needed me.  These long hours working, plus never getting enough sleep at night caused my head to hurt and it never seemed to go away.  My husband and I started to grow apart.  I was lost, depressed and confused as to what was the purpose of my life. Because all these years I never bothered to study and read, I had not gained any wisdom to help get myself out of bad situation and bring up the down side of my life.

Just when the situation couldn’t get any worse, I got the chance to meet my master teacher who has practiced Buddhism all his life.  He slowly and patiently guided me through the hardest time in my life.  When I was gradually able to put myself together, without scaring me away, he began to ask me to take college classes.   He told me to take psychology.  At first, I didn’t want to go until he yelled at me.  He didn’t explain anything to me; he only said that if I want to go back and live my old lifestyles go ahead, but if I really respected him as a teacher, then I would go back to school.  I cried so many days before the class started.

When I brought the text book home and opened it, I remember there were a million English words showing to my eyes but I didn’t know most of them and I began to cry again.  I looked up each word in the dictionary slowly, word by word, while at the same time crying even more. Each Saturday when I went to the class, I was barely able to finish reading that the professor had assigned to the class. 

There was a time that the professor gave us a quiz and I didn’t know how to spell some of the words so I drew a picture to answer her question. She was nice enough to give a few points to my test.  That was the hardest class I ever made myself sit through every single hour, every single week, no matter how stupid I felt and how uncomfortable and infuriated I was.  At the end, I received a C for this class and until today I still have no idea how I did it, I was sure that I would fail the class.

Just when I thought I only needed to take one class, my master teacher asked me to take more classes, so I took a ceramics class that I thought would be fun.  Once in a while my ceramics professor would check our notebooks just to make sure we were taking notes.  One time he took me aside and told me that my writing was not acceptable and I needed to go to the writing center to ask for help.  I was so embarrassed.  When I was in the car driving home I cried again.

After taking a few different classes, I was getting a little bit better at handling school. Then finally my master teacher asked me to apply to college to get a BA degree. He told me he didn’t care which major I chose, but I must finish my four-year college education. 

I tried to apply to FIT, since I was already working in the fashion industry.  FIT asked me to take the Tofel test.  I took the test three times and was still not able to meet their requirement scores, even though my scores were improving each time.  It was not easy for me.  No matter how hard I tried, I just could not get my foot into the FIT door. 

Then I began to think maybe this means something, maybe I should not go to FIT, because I was trying to take the easy way out again, just like after high school.  So I looked around the Queens area to see which college was close to where I lived, and I found Queens College.  I submitted my application but they told me that because I was an out-of-state transfer student, plus it had been so long since I graduated from high school, I should go to Queens Borough first, and then transfer over to Queens College in the future.  So I followed their instructions, but I needed to take an ACT placement test in order to determine my level.  Of course, I didn’t pass the writing again.  I didn’t know the proper way to write this paper. 

The school asked me to take an English writing class and re-take the ACT, and then if I passed it, I could start taking college level English class. That semester, besides writing class, I also took some other classes: math, aerobics and higher level ceramics classes.  I started to notice that I had changed; I didn’t have the same learning attitude I did when I was young.  When the professor gave us suggested math exercises of one hundred questions, I would finish them all, even though it was not required.  I took aerobics class because I didn’t like to exercise, but I ended up liking it very much, it was not as bad as I thought.

Finally I passed the ACT test, and also received all A’s in all my other classes.  Today, I am able to attend Queens College, even though it took me five and a half years.

Although I read and write a little bit better now, I still need to invest a lot of time in reading, writing my home work or preparing to take a test.  For other people to read one chapter probably only takes a few hours, but for me I need a few days since I still read very slow and still need to check a lot of words in the dictionary.  When writing an English essay, the 1^st draft of the paper due to the professor might be my 3^rd or 4^th draft…by the time for the final draft is due, it might be my 8^th draft or even10^th draft. But I don’t cry as much as before, maybe only once or twice in a semester. 

School life is getting better and better.  Even though it is difficult and hard work for me, I have begun to enjoy it very much.  I am starting to realize that for all those years, I was like a little frog living down at the bottom of a well; I thought I knew everything, but in fact I didn’t know everything.  The more classes I take, the more I realize how little I really know.  If it was the “old me” I would hide myself in the last row of seats in the class, because that way the teacher would not pay that much attention to me. But from the time I started at Queens Borough College until now, I make myself sit right in front of the professor in the 1^st row, so I would not fall behind the professor’s teaching.  

I have realized that I have so much to learn from each professor’s teaching, and since I don’t pass judgment on any of the classes I attend anymore, it broadens my view and I find the learning so interesting.  So now that I finally have made it into 4 years college on my way to achieving my BA degree,  my master teacher gave me another instruction - that’s right, to get my MA degree.  I knew he was going to say it some day, I could see it coming. 

I have decided to major in Philosophy and they also offer a BA/MA combined program through which a student can receive their master in an equal 120 credits.  It is a dry major and I know it’s going to be very difficult for me, but I think I have learned that no matter how I try to avoid or run away from my fear, it will always chase me and follow me anywhere I go. 

Sometimes I feel that maybe I am here to learn this life lesson, and if I had taken the fortune teller Miss Yu’s advice fifteen years ago, I may not have wasted my life for this long, and maybe everything around me would be so much better.  I feel that nothing ever starts too late, it’s just a matter of when I am ready to start or not.

My friends and many of my coworkers have asked me if I am already a manager with a high paying salary, why would I want to go back to school and to use up all my free time going crazy trying to prepare for my tests and home work?   Well, I am not just going to school, I am facing my fear.  Maybe I am slow, maybe my English isn’t good, but I know for sure one day when I am old and laying on my death bed, I will laugh and leave my body peacefully, because I did it, and I have nothing to regret.