博文
I am thankful to all my families
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I have more than one family.
Like most people my age, I have my own family. I have only one child, who is kind, smart, and very independent. I have two (extended) families in Hangzhou, one is my parents’, and the other, my brother’s. I feel very close to my parents, though we don’t agree on many issues. I call them every weekend now since calling China is about 2c/min, comparing to $1/min in the mid 1980s. Listening to aging parents can be tough, but I am determined to be a good daughter: let them talk, because there isn’t much else I can do for them from afar. I am also close to my only brother, understanding all the burdens he has undertaken as the only child living near our parents, especially when they are sick or grumpy.
I have (at least) four “adopted” families in Honolulu since we moved here in summer 2000. Tina and John took us in first. They love Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I would miss their turkeys (yes, one baked and the other deep-fried), home-made pumpkin pies and bread, among others, if I have to be away during these holidays for some reason. Tina does beautiful flower arrangements, so we go to Farmers’ Market near Diamond Head together sometimes when I have the courage to get up early Saturday morning.
Cam and Sam “adopted” my son in summer 2001, after their son and mine met at at a child-care center during spring break. The two boys made promise to meet again in summer, and they did. Since then, Cam’s mom, Auntie Alice, invited us to celebrate every American holiday with their (extended) families, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. (How could we celebrate Thanksgiving twice each year? We would have brunch with Auntie Alice’s families and have dinner with Tina and John. In between the two big meals, I would do house cleaning.) Thanks to their friendship, my son joined Punahou. The two young men will graduate next summer.
Auntie JoAnn is my neighbor, who adopted us the day we moved into our condo. The movers didn’t take lunch break, so I was trapped in my empty kitchen with nothing to eat. There, a gentle knock on my kitchen windows; JoAnn handed me some manapua (Hawaiian for steamed Chinese bums with fillings). What a warm welcome! Knowing that she wants to lose weight, I would send over fruits or flowers on holidays such as Mother’s Day, Chinese New Year, among others. She would never let me walk away empty-handed: here are some goodies for your son. During watermelon season, sometimes weekly she would give us a quarter of a big melon. I feel so guilty, just for the weight for JoAnn and Joe to carry back from the market!
There is my dear sister Yanli, who is a few years younger than I but so much more mature in so many ways. Since we are also colleagues doing similar work (numerical ocean modeling), you can imagine the benefit of having such a sister. I had trouble submitting jobs for some time, and she told me a trick to fool the unstable server that was determined to send my new job to an unstable node, a phenomenon we called “fate attraction.” The biggest help to me is to have someone to turn to when I need help as a mother. I could always count on Yanli, even when I was on the opposite side of the Earth when my son forgot to mention his winter concert performance and could not find his shoes at the last minute…
In between my hometown Hangzhou and Honolulu, I lived in Qingdao, Guangzhou, South Florida, D.C., and Seattle. Everywhere I lived, I was “adopted” one way or another by people I could call my (extended) family.
Are you as lucky as I am?
Are you as lucky as I am?
(Revised)
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-306792-307050.html
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