A Not-so-random Encounter

Jim and I found our seats in the Studebaker Theater in downtown Chicago. With a friendly greeting to our aisle mates, an older woman and a younger man stood so we could slip by. We quickly took our seats and soon the show began.

Three comedians and two hosts entertained the audience with humorous games and riffs on the week’s news. We were fascinated watching the NPR radio show, “Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me!” recorded and produced.

The audience streamed out of the theater after the show, spilling onto Michigan Avenue on a cold, clear Halloween night. We decided to walk the two miles back to our hotel in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, watching trick-or-treaters and partygoers in costume and taking in the city’s architecture lit up for the night.

With a quarter mile to go, chatting away, Jim and I turned a corner, and there were our aisle mates!

I imagine the Universe orchestrating this seemingly random-but-not-random encounter, “What? They didn’t talk to each other at the theater?! OK! This one’s gonna take a little more work to line them up so their paths cross again. Here we go! Speed up the traffic signals on Michigan Avenue…Slow down that subway car just a bit…Have them turn at that corner…Pause and wait for that group to pass…aaaaand….Contact!”

Laughing, we recognized each other and introduced ourselves, immediately feeling friendly warmth and open-heartedness between us. Kenneth Tan and his mother, Olivia Carbonel Tan, had taken the L (the subway) back from the theater. We discovered we were staying at the same hotel.

What brought them to Chicago?  They were on a book tour promoting their self-published, "Tans Interwoven: A family's memoir in words and illustrations" featuring stories of Olivia, Kenneth, sister Audrey Tan Ronquillo, and grandmother Crescenciana Tan, their Lola, illustrated with paintings collaboratively created by Kenneth and Lola, who passed away in 2016 at age 96.

The book was released in October to celebrate Filipino American History Month. They shared that it is “an intergenerational collection of honest, heartwarming, and humorous memoirs" written and illustrated by their very own Filipino American family. The stories are to remind us that “in our own families, with our lives entwining, we won't see the patterns we're repeating unless we take a moment to stop, step back, and look at the entire tapestry altogether.” 

Standing in Chicago’s cold and wind, I was captivated, drawn to them and their story. We walked back together to the hotel visiting along the way, exchanging emails before we parted.

Later Kenneth shared their story captured in the video linked below. He resigned from his job as a graphic designer in 2014 to help care for his Lola. One day after breakfast, he asked her what she wanted to do that day. She rubbed her hands together and said, “I want to do something for purpose.”

Together they did just that. She created simple watercolor paintings and shared stories about her life while she painted. Kenneth took it all in and set about to complete her art with his delicate pen-and-ink drawings conveying the details of her stories. The enchanting results honor her life and memories and the heritage she imparted. After she passed away, Kenneth published “Crescenciana: a memoir in words and illustrations” in 2022. 

The Tans books, art, and stories are truly gifts. I am grateful the Universe persisted in arranging for us to meet the Tans on a cold, windy street corner in Chicago. They inspired me with the power of family stories, as I've just begun working on a family book project. They inspired me as an artist who draws for comfort and joy. They inspired me as a daughter, a mom, a grandma, and a sister who loves her family too, and values all the threads of our stories, the complex, happy, funny, and challenging. 

The holiday season can be a roller coaster of memories and longings, hurts and hopes, expectations and giving up, struggles and joys. And that’s just to get through Thanksgiving dinner! Never mind Christmas, Hanukah, Winter Solstice, and Kwanza and then on to the New Year!

The next six weeks can be a lot.

The Tans' books share stories of a real family with love and loss, hardship and success, sacrifice and celebration as they journey through war, immigration, childrearing, careers, beloved elders passing, and daily life. Between the lines, meaning is made together out of it all.

Whether you gather in the next 6 weeks with “the family you were born with or the family you make along the way,” to borrow the words of Higgins on Ted Lasso, I hope you share love - that uplift and connection we always talk about here - with those you care about. I hope you celebrate the perfectly imperfect meaning you are making together.

And as you turn to the New Year, may you, like Crescenciana, rub your hands together and do something for purpose.

Enjoy this feature of them that aired on CBS Mornings PLUS. Be sure to have a tissue handy!

And you can visit the Tan’s website to learn about and buy their books.