February 2, 2011

My dearest,

It’s that time of year again. For family members to gather and sit together at a round table, to cook and to dish up and to eat warm and happy meals. To laugh and to gossip, to ask and to wonder, how was your trip, how will this new year be? To come together, to feast, to be a family again.

Reunion.

More food than we can finish, that’s entirely necessary, you see. So we may never go hungry. Chinese people love symbolism and good fortune comes in the forms of auspicious dishes with the appropriate names. They taste good, too.

And the faces of my nephew and my nieces as they get older, as they grow up. Teenagers now when I could swear it was only a little while ago that I was helping to change their diapers. I am growing older too; only old folks reminisce about kids when they were babies, really. That’s fine. Growing older fits just fine.

The years, they pass us so swiftly. My sister is in her 40s now, and I still remember her as beautiful as she was on her wedding day. She has taught me everyone is beautiful, if you look closely enough. And my parents have moved on – from doting on their grandchildren to playing with the latest member of our family, a small bundle of nervous energy named Mickey, a Miniature Pinscher.

Life keeps spinning, and we keep going.

Yet for all the festive cookies, for all the mandarin oranges and the sweet nin gou, the red lanterns and the firecrackers, all the sounds and all the laughter, nothing can keep me here for long.

For I long to come home to you. I long to come home to my family. You are my home, my family. And we’ll be having our reunion soon.

Yours, ever and always.