Write a short story (600 – 1000 words max) that describes your sense of home and the values and stories that you use to connect yourself to your home.
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I’m writing this blog post late, due to illness, but now that I have a chance, I would still like to share what I think of home.
It’s almost Chinese New Year and as I’m here in Canada, I start thinking of all these years I spent celebrating Chinese New Year. On the eve of the new year, all of us – cousins and aunts and uncles, gather together at my uncles’ place where my grandmother lives. (My grandmother will only stay with my uncle because he’s her only son and hence that’s her only home.. I’m told that in the Chinese custom, girls marry “out” or marry “away”, while boys stay in the family.) By this time, the house would be stocked full of oranges and snacks – lots of snacks – pineapple tarts, mini spring rolls, love letters, coconut tarts, egg tarts, barbeque pork, the list goes on. It’s so delicious, but we know that we’re going to have to eat all of them at every house that we visit over the new year, so we just put off devouring them.
My aunts and uncles are in the kitchen helping my grandmother with the finishing touches for dinner. The cousins are hanging out in front of the tv, letting the sounds of laughter and frying fill our hearts. We sit down as dinner as almost ready, and when everyone is ready, we have to “call” our elders before starting. My grandmother says its rude to make clanging noises (with the spoon on to the bowl) so we have to be careful. It’s the usual festive feast – roasted duck, roasted pork, chicken, seafood soup, noodles and rice and dessert. The cousins sit at a separate table, though I suspect this is just for logical reasons. We eat and try to make conversation. The distance in years and the miscommunications and any tensions between our parents, result in awkward silences, but the food is more than enough to fill the gaps. Plus, the tv is going on in the back, so we didn’t really have to make an effort to bridge the gap that our parents made.
After dinner, we bring out the cards and the cousins start a round of rumi. Our parents start talking, and I listen as they talk in dialect. This is where I’ve learnt the language they speak – from family dinners. They’re talking about the government, about immigration, about my grandmother’s siblings, about who’s making how much money, about the price of ginger. My grandmother was the oldest of 11 children and had to stay home while her younger siblings all received an education. A lifetime of taking care of her siblings and her children and her grandchildren, while watching her siblings and their children build companies and live overseas, has led my grandmother to resentful sometimes. Sometimes it seems like she’s envious of her siblings and their children and how successful they have become. My aunts and uncles internalize my grandmothers unsatisfied feelings of her life into their own unsatisfied feelings of their life.
The night is still young as the adults join us in rumi and it starts getting competitive. We start talking how much we are looking forward or not looking forward to visiting certain distant relatives. My grandmother starts telling us stories of her mother and the time they came from China. There was 2 children that were washed away during the flood of the Yangtze River. They called it the River of Tears. She reminds us the various ways to address our elders when we go visiting over the next few days. It is very important to get that right. There’s a specific way of addressing each elder depending of whether they’re on the maternal or paternal side and whether they are older or younger than the mom and dad.
The score is accumulated and the winner is one with the lowest score. Most of the time my grandmother or my aunt wins. We pack up pretty early on this night, because we have a whole day of visiting relatives on the next day. As we head out, we grab at least 8 oranges in preparation for the next day. It’s going to be a great new year. It always is when you have your family around.