My Trip to the Gudetama Café: The Boundary Situations in Life and the Slacker Egg Who Can Help
Plus, a mysterious cantaloupe, fall writing classes, and a fantastic debut story collection.
A few weeks ago, I found myself driving a temperamental rented Nissan Rogue through the packed mega-highways of the Los Angeles area, braving traffic snarls and searing heat to visit a café devoted to a lazy cartoon egg.
I was in southern California to drop my daughter off for her freshman year in college. We'd arrived a few days before her dorm move-in date to buy items that couldn't fit in the three suitcases we brought from Colorado, and we'd worked through our shopping list with a day to spare. Months earlier, I'd come across an article about the opening of the first U.S. Gudetama Café in Buena Park, California, and saw it was less than an hour's drive from her college's campus. "We should go," my daughter said.
Gudetama is a creation of the genius Japanese toy purveyor Sanrio, who gave us Hello Kitty. Gudetama is a lazy, sentient egg—really, the thinking part of the egg is the yolk. Gudetama lolls around on an egg white, often flopping over and mooning the world and its obligations, responding to almost any proposal with a disinterested "meh."
Now we were within reach of the Gudetama Café, and an empty day stretched before us. My daughter asked if we could go. "Let me check the traffic," I said. I was a little afraid of the Los Angeles highways. I'd been driving short jaunts around the college, and our rented Nissan seemed possessed. It had an hypersensitive alert system, repeatedly and randomly flashing a dashboard caution arrow and beeping whenever we put objects on the back seat, loaded the trunk without leaving one-inch of space between an object and the door, or drove over uneven road. We solved the backseat problem by buckling all the seatbelts, but the rest of the Nissan’s vexations remained.
When I checked the route to the café, I found we had to traverse four different jammed-up highways to reach it. But the truth was I was more afraid of saying goodbye to my daughter than I was of navigating these unfamiliar ten-lane highways in a perpetually alarmed SUV.
As I counted down the hours before my daughter would move into her dorm, I thought of all the silly, joyous missions I'd taken her on during the course of her childhood: dressing up for the Boulder Elves and Fairies parade, spraying pieces at a street art festival in Denver, visiting Spirit Halloween and pressing every talking ghouls’ button, touring neighbors' Halloween and Christmas light displays, attending Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion concerts, collecting dozens of National Park Junior Ranger badges, taking a graffiti-spotting walking tour in the Montmarte neighborhood in Paris.
My daughter was my first kid. I learned how to be a parent from her, and didn't always know the right thing to do or say. But I always knew, from the earliest moments of my momdom, that if my kid asked if she could feed the parrot, or hold the tarantula at the petting zoo or said "can we check out that weird thing over there?" the answer was always yes.
So I four weeks ago I navigated the Los Angeles highways with the Nissan beeping alerts at me until we arrived at the café, where a line of lazy egg fans stretched outside. We waited an hour for our turn to order a breakfast sandwich and avocado toast with the face of Gudetama on the yolk. The prices were high and the food was special only in its winsome branding, but all around me I saw families with delighted children of all ages, joyfully taking photos with the Gudetamas and smiling at their meals, and I was glad I had the chance to go on one more lark with my girl before we said goodbye.
Over the past few months, there has been a lot of upheaval at Tumbleweed headquarters—which are inside my mind. Since May, my best rabbit Floppy died, I lost a beloved teaching job I'd held for ten years due to massive debt at the university that led them to lay off the adjuncts, and I dropped my daughter off at college a thousand miles away, which is happy, yet still a stark change to face. Also, I've received nothing but rejections for my creative work for almost two years.
All of these are examples of what my college theology professor, Father John Dunne, called "boundary situations." My teacher said these situations—conflict, rejection, loss, failure, suffering—can drive us into ourselves, can make us lonely, can numb our hearts. We can become like Gudetama, listless and unwilling to act, unsure what the point of trying is.
These boundary situations are horizons—we can't see beyond them. But, he pointed out, the word "horizonless" means hopeless, so the fact that there's a horizon at all implies a kind of hope.
After I dropped my daughter at her dorm, I had one more night alone before my flight back to Denver, so I binge-watched the Gudetama series on Netflix. Gudetama, too, finds himself in circumstances against his will—and in response he'd rather lie around and do nothing, but his friend Shakipiyo prods him to embark on a quest to find their chicken mother. By the poignant conclusion of the series, Gudetama discovers the purpose of his existence, which he could only learn by moving forward even though his will (to nap) was in distinct conflict with the situation he found himself in (on a vigorous quest).
When we allow ourselves to feel all the emotions caused by occurrences against our will, and muster some form of willingness toward what could be next, we are carried beyond our self-focus and into the possibility for new insights and adventures. When my kids were little and they were sad, I told them not to distract themselves with a screen or a substance. You've got to feel your feelings. Paint a picture about it. Play a song. Go on a walk about it. Bake a pie about it. Write about it. Then the boundary situation you have up smacked against can transform you, and you can go through it which is the only way past it. Now I'm trying to take my own advice. I'm feeling my feelings, not sure what will come next, trusting something worthwhile awaits me beyond the horizon.
The Assorted Whimsy Portion of The Tumbleweed
A couple weeks ago, my garden was struck by a puzzling bandit. I noticed what appeared to be an alarming, round growth on one of our horse chestnut trees in the front yard:
On closer inspection, it was a cantaloupe. But not just any cantaloupe—a cantaloupe someone had decorated with a girlish face and wedged in our tree.
What can it mean? If you have any ideas, or if you want to identify yourself as the cantaloupe-wedging bandit, please leave a comment.
The Book Recommendation Portion of The Tumbleweed
Would you like to know about a fabulous new short story collection set in the Southwest by a debut author, published by Tin House? If you’ve read this far, I’m fairly certain that you would! Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights is full of spooky surprises and offers insightful, offbeat takes on the dangers of contemporary womanhood.
In “Dogs,” a Hollywood writer retreats to the Mojave to come up with a new idea, and a disturbing encounter in the desert causes her to rethink the “toughen up” advice she gave her daughter. In the title story, a publicist plans a promotional event in Marfa, Texas with its “desert-minimalist-chic trend that was catnip to the Instagram waifs with their peasant dresses and Manson girl hair” that ends up attracting the crazed followers of an online influencer. Each story is authentic and surprising, and Valencia is a writer to watch! And read—it’s more important to read her work. Just watching her would be creepy.
The Happenings & Links Portion of The Tumbleweed
Good news: the September writing classes I’m teaching at Lighthouse and the Jesuit Media Lab sold out. Even better news: My class Special Topics in Fiction, which will run on Tuesdays from October 22 to November 12, has plenty of space! You can join at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver or on Zoom to learn about multiple perspectives, multiple timelines, and other fiction techniques.
The wonderful people at Stories on Stage have chosen my story collection, Mixed Company, for their single-author show! Join me on Sunday, November 10 at Su Teatro (721 Santa Fe Drive) in Denver as the actors from Stories on Stage present my stories and satire in a 2 p.m. performance that will be followed by a Q&A and milk and cookies for all. Get your tickets here.
On September 21, I’ll be chatting about short stories with one of my favorite writers, Claire Boyles, at the Berthoud Literary Festival at Berthoud Community Library. We’re talking at 2 p.m. and signing books before and after. Check out the library website for the full festival schedule.
I have openings for one-on-one editorial work and writing and publishing coaching from November and beyond. Let me know if I can help you!
Pilgrimage and rite of passage complete! Congratulations
Is there anyone who drops their first-born off to college who doesn't feel the angst and bitter-sweetness of it all, knowing home life will never be the same? Extra tough if they lost their beloved Floppy a few months earlier, find weird lady cantalopes in their trees, and are looking for an acceptance letter after one submission or another. Please take heart; the non-secret lies in how you've taught your children to feel their feelings, and what the floopy egg has learned. Meanwhile, my writing group of four all have tickets to Su Teatro's peformance of your wonderful "Mixed Company" stories, and I want to schedule another editing session in November in follow-up to your feedback last time. Cheers, Jenny!