My mom loves to tell the story of when she was growing up in Taiwan, celebrating Chinese New Year one night with a bowl of firecrackers on the dining table. Obviously not quite understanding the concept of firecrackers, she lit one--a deafening bang--and the tablecloth became an oversized doily. Normally, she would have been chased across the yard by a stick-wielding father, but since it was Chinese New Year, he could only seethe silently from the other room.
She tells this story with such delight, like she really got away with something, but I think it's more because it symbolizes how important Chinese New Year is to her, the youngest of six children and the recipient of the most beatings. On Chinese New Year, nobody gets angry, and certainly nobody was going to get any beatings. Nothing goes wrong.
When I was a child, Chinese New Year was also a big deal, but for different reasons. I was already an angel, the perfect child obviously, so not getting into trouble was a given. No, it was because my maternal grandparents lived with us, and my mom's siblings, the ones who lived near us, would converge onto our house for the New Year's dinner. For years, we would have as many as 15 or 20 people at our house, and as it is with Chinese families, most families I imagine, it was spirited and raucous.
And how I loved spirited and raucous! Everyone was happy, regardless of how happy they may have actually been. My uncle would pinch me on the cheeks; aunts would smile at me. All of my cousins would be there, and it felt like being on the playground for recess without having to go back to the classroom after 20 minutes. My mom, dad, and grandmother would have spent hours in the kitchen making the vast assortment of dishes that we would be eating. Everyone wore red, and I imagine that if I could have seen a bird's-eye view, the inside of our house would have looked like an artery with red blood cells chaotically flowing and reflowing through its tight corridors.
And at the end of the night, when I started getting tired and everyone began to leave, out came the red envelopes. One year, I opened one up right in front of my aunt who had given it to me no more than three seconds prior. $40, and it was always $40, and it was previously agreed upon, as I learned years later, by all aunts and uncles that red envelopes should contain no more than $40. Still, I was scolded and instructed to only open red envelopes in private. But the scolding was only in that jovial, Chinese New Year way. Because nobody gets angry.
At its height, when our house was one clogged artery, I could clear as much as $400. Those were good times.
My grandmother died when I was 12, and my grandfather, when I was 24. Since then, the scale of our celebrations have withered. We no longer gather big, at most maybe eight people. All of a sudden, but not really, the house seems spacious during holidays, cavernous with the gaps of missing bodies, loved ones who once laughed and whiled away hours there. This Chinese New Year, my sister is away at school, and I am having grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner with Sam.
My mom texted me early in the afternoon: "Happy New Year! May the blessing filled thru the entire of 2011." I could still hear her excitement through those words, and I was so moved, so reminded of when there would be no need to text me because she could have told me in person, when we would barely have had a minute's rest from the moment we woke up to the moment everyone had gone home.
I called them after dinner to say Happy New Year and spoke to my mom. I was nervous to hear her voice, to hear any indication of sadness or disappointment in what once was a holiday of togetherness, now only accentuating separation. But there was no disappointment, no sadness I could tell. I guess it's true that nothing goes wrong today, not on Chinese New Year. I wanted to share with her all these things I had been thinking about, all the recollections I had of those years, but I'm no good with words, especially with my mother. So without any way of taking her hand and walking her down that memory lane, I asked if we could see each other on Chinese New Year next year, whenever it may fall on the solar calendar. And maybe the year after that, and the one after that.
I think, or I'd like to think, or I hope that what I heard in her voice was gladness when she said, "OK! Sure! Of course!" I think I heard each exclamation mark.
(Gong shi fa tsai. None of that 'Gung hay fat choi' business; this is Mandarin.)
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