Typical Of My Dad

(This hap­pened in Chinese.)

Around the din­ner table, my aunt men­tioned that it was her daugh­ter’s birth­day, and that it hap­pened to be Friday the 13th. My dad said to me, “Isn’t your birth­day on the 13th too?”

“I don’t know”, I said rather loud and sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

My dad was in trou­ble. All the fam­i­ly around us real­ized that he does­n’t know my birth­day. So he said a date (and year, as if recit­ing a his­tor­i­cal event) with a hint of uncer­tain­ty in his voice.

I don’t think he was ever more relieved than when I told him he was right. Not because he got the right date, but because he did­n’t seem like such a bad father to every­one else.

Another Day With Grandma

Grandma and her adopted son

My aunt tells me that my grand­moth­er is a very still sleep­er. Sometimes she gets scared when they’re lying in bed togeth­er, because my grand­ma does­n’t seem to breathe or move at all. I find myself hop­ing that she goes this way, pain­less­ly and peace­ful­ly in her sleep.

But every morn­ing, when she slow­ly walks out from her bed­room, I’m relieved and hap­py that she’s with us anoth­er day.

This City Lets Me Live

Boundary Street Balcony — Sunset

I think it was some point between hail­ing a taxi to meet my Uncle Joe, and the com­fort­ing famil­iar­i­ty of find­ing myself in one of the same malls I was in five years ago, that it real­ly sunk in.

I’m in HONG-FUCKING-KONG.

The con­stant din of traf­fic and peo­ple reminds me of the way New York nev­er sleeps. It pul­sates and breathes, as if it was a body. I won­der how there can be so much life in such a tiny city1. None of my words, pic­tures, or videos could ever do it jus­tice, because it’s the expe­ri­ence that makes it real. The things that can’t be said. Like the way peo­ple treat the elder­ly. The every day sig­nif­i­cance of food and eat­ing well. The mil­lion sub­tleties of the Chinese cul­ture.

The temp­ta­tion to move here is com­ing on me again, with every street, every sign, every per­son I pass, every day gone by. Maybe the tim­ing is right, where I find myself not only root­less in Ottawa, but with a sense of for­lorn­ness attached to the city as well. I’m begin­ning to won­der; what can I leave behind? What do I want to leave behind?

  1. Half the area of Ottawa, with over sev­en times the pop­u­la­tion. [↩]

Having It Maid

It’s the maid­’s day off.

To be hon­est, her brief absence has shown that I already got used to hav­ing her around.

But then again, it’s not hard to get used to such a lux­u­ry. You wake up and feel like eat­ing some­thing, and she’ll have it ready by the time you’re dressed and fin­ished brush­ing your teeth. She draws your bath water. She irons your clothes while you wait. She picks up the gro­ceries for din­ner when you decide what to eat. Some of the dish­es are so com­pli­cat­ed that she begins cook­ing the night before, and has her niece (my aunt and uncle’s maid) come over to help.

Nothing needs to be said when it comes to chores around the house. When a meal is fin­ished, every­one gets up and heads to the liv­ing room. The next time you come back, the dish­es are gone and the table wiped clean1. I fold my sheets before leav­ing the house, and when I get back they’re refold­ed, only neater.

My grand­moth­er has a his­to­ry of live-in ser­vants, although there haven’t been any wet nurs­es, gar­den­ers, or chauf­feurs for a while. Ever since her chil­dren grew up and left the house (or coun­try), she’s only need­ed one maid at a time. It seems to be a great rela­tion­ship, as there’s a respect that goes both ways; the maid is extreme­ly good at her job, and we treat her like fam­i­ly. When the last maid died after 30 years of ser­vice, all her funer­al arrange­ments were tak­en care of. In the last years of her life she had gone blind from dia­betes, and was then served her­self. That’s how we found the cur­rent maid, who’s been with my grand­ma ever since.

One of my favourite rit­u­als2 is the way the maid is giv­en din­ner. After all the food is cooked, the maid lays the dish­es out on the din­ner table, but does­n’t take any for her­self. So my grand­ma will take a plate, pile food onto it, and bring it to her.

  1. Admittedly, this was the hard­est thing for me to get used to. Something in me would keep scream­ing, “PUT THE DISHES IN THE SINK”. [↩]
  2. And as a Taoist, I’m gen­er­al­ly deri­sive of rit­u­als. [↩]

Hong Kong: Markets