An already hot morning at 10:30 on this day 23 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I am on the brink of giving in to the everythings of this world. I haven’t quite fallen in. The sun is unbearably hot with less ozone protection. Researching, I find that Canada’s and the northern regionss ozone have thinned by an average of about 7% since the 1980s. Supposedly the ozone layer is healing. Truth or fake news? Our planet seemed to be heating up every year.
I’ve discovered that cucumber male flowers can become sterile due to heat. My plants in the greenhouse are full of male flowers, more than the female ones. I have pollinated the girls and yet besides the one cucmber we already ate, none came to fruit. So I’m guessing that the males must be shooting blanks. They can recover with cooler weather. If heat can do this to cucumbers, what does it do to us and all living things? Is this not a signal for us to change how we are conducting business on this earth? We can’t eat the greenbacks. Why don’t use them resuscitate this one earth we have?
I probably should stop reading the news. It makes me more melancholic than my natural melancholic self. There’s no fun or use in it. It’s not something I want to bring to the keyboard. I have to pull myself up by the bootstrap, snap out of my old mold, crack the whip and do whatever I have to do. I have to admit that I am a little buried under a little pile of mental overwhelm. Life seems to have no rest stops when you have a 95 year old father. Not complaining. It is what it is. It is not at all the physical thing. He is very low maintenance. It’s the emotional and psychological components that weighs on me.
Enough whining and sighing. Time to get on with the rest of the day. Not sure if my father is being discharged from the hospital today or tomorrow. Will find out soon enough. My brother is there now and he will let me know. Good to have younger siblings. They have more energy and reserve.
July 21, day 21 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I spent yesterday morning in ER with my father. I got his frantic call at 5:30 in the morning. He was having respiratory distress. The guy and I rushed over. He lived just half a block away. We got to RUH ER in good time despite the construction mess enroute. I wheeled my father in though he protested he could walk. It was a eery experience. The place was empty except for 2 security people. I wondered if I had come to the wrong place.
The whole waiting room was empty. It was as if God had cleared the place for us. The staff ushered us right into the trauma room after obtaining a few vital information. The doctor introduced himself to my father and then to us. Then the team proceeded treatment and tests. He was stablized in a short time and moved to an observation room.
This time around the ER experience felt like a honeymoon. It lasted only till late afternoon. The nurse came in and took off all monitoring gizmo and said my father was going to be moved to a hallway. Someone else need the monitoring more. I followed her as she wheeled my father on the stretcher through hallways packed with people. We finally stopped in a hallway by the pediatric surgery. Patients on stretchers were parked along one side of the hall. No curtains, no oxygen outlets, no bathrooms in sight. Call bells were the silver round things on bedside tables you ding for help.
Lucky that my father seemed to be calmer in the hallway than in the observation room. Maybe he felt better seeing he’s amongst other people. He’s been in these situations a few times in the last 2 years. I dare not to ask too much of the nurses seeing how stressed and busy they were. I, too, have learned to adapt. I do not tell them I am a retired nurse. I just observe and listen. And what I noted is that some of them do not take the time to talk to me properly and completely. I let it all go. I’ve learned that there is nothing to gain and quite alot to lose.
I do wonder how I would fare working in their conditions now. I am happy I am not. This nurse was a nurse but not always a nurse. I was grateful that my father got moved out of the hallway into a private room in the evening. The honeymoon resumes. He is doing much better. Home in a few days.
July 19th and 19th day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I am still here consistently and persistently. I try to be like Patience and Fortitude, the two marble lion stuatues standing guard outside the New York City Public Library. They sit stalwartly through all the weather. I’m trying to do the same through all the heat and my moods.
Today is a much pleasanter day. There’s a cool breeze flowing through the windows. I did not get much done yesterday. No housework. Just barely managed to cut my hair and showered. The heat was the excuse. I didn’t feel guilty as I gave myself the day to do or not to do as I please. It was my home alone day. The guy went to see his sailing buddies off on their annual week long sail. He decided it was time to let it go though he had organized it over 10 years ago. If anyone wants to buy a sailboat, we have one for sale. It’s almost brand new. He spent a year building it. Sailed only a few times.
My friend and fellow blogger, Kebba, said that a life time is not that long. Even 90 years is really a blink of an eye. She is right. So when you recognize a time to let go of something, let it go. There are many seasons in our lives. Some are longer than others. And if something speaks to you, grab it – for however long it speaks to you. At the beginning of our lives together, it was bicycles for the guy. It was a matter of necessity as well as love. The garage became a repair and build workshop. The yard was full of old bikes and parts. I learned to ride a bike, though not well.
We’ve passed the seasons of bikes. We’ve still have a few idling in the bike shed. One of these days if I get brave…and it grabs me…
It’s the 7th day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I am late coming to the keyboard. Life is busy in this time of my life. My father is almost 95 and every day can be unpredictable. He has congestive heart failure and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). We spent alot of time at the doctor’s, walk-in clince and ER last year after my mother passed. We were thankful that this year has been much better. Still there are episodes.
Today was a doctor day. We were fortunate that we got an appointment. He has been seen, x-rayed and on medications. He is tough and still interested in life and this world of ours. I think he will be okay. I have accepted that this is what is and that I still have a life to tend to. I will be okay also. It was just a little difficult to manage a wheelchair and doors alone. Lucky for me that there were many friendly hands to help.
After the doctor, we went and renewed our application for wheelchair parking permit for another 3 years. Then it was time for coffee at the mall with our friends. Life is still very good and beautiful. Good friends to have coffee with help. Then there’s my gardens. My front yard is so beautiful. It is hard to described. It is bathed in a certain kind of light in the afternoon. It reminds me of the opening line in the Bee Gees’ To Love Somebody. For all the issues I have with my father, I guess I do love him.
“There’s a light, a certain kind of light, that never shone on me”.
My front yard has been an issue with my neighbour for many years. She objects growing vegetables in the fron yard. She calls my raised beds coffins. She has reported me to the city about my messy yard. The city does not agree with her. Maybe all of this is because she really does not like me. I find that hard to understand because I don’t have a relationship with her. Now in these times I wonder if it is because of the colour of my skin. And I am an immigrant. I feel my yard is breath takingly beautiful in a certain kind of light in the afternoon, weeds and all.
July 1, Canada Day and the first day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. My goal is to show up every day in July with a new post. I’m not a new comer to this challenge. As usual I have no planned theme for my writing. I have no business or service to promote. I write because I love words. They are powerful and magical. They can make or break you. So I am careful with my words. Once said, you cannot unsay them. Say the wrong word(s), good will and friendships can be severed, sometimes permanently.
I will try to tread lightly and carefully through July. These are scary and unbelievable times in the USA and the world. I’ve been reading Heather Cox Richardson and Heather Delaney Reese on the political scenes every morning for awhile now. I am surprised at how I am captured by politics as I was never that interested before. I am appalled at how out right corrupt our world is. I am ashamed that I haven’t been paying attention. We should all be paying attention. What happens to one, happens to all. We are all interconnected.
I was born in China during the times of Mao. I don’t know too much about the politics of my birth country except that it is communist and it is considered very bad and dreaded here in the West. I left when I was 6 years old. I don’t remember much but I do have some memories. I remember standing in line with my mother at the market with pieces of paper to buy meat, sugar, etc. Everything was rationed. You were allowed so much and you give so much to the government. I remember hearing the sound of the firing squad. People get killed speaking ill of the government. My mother had to be a witness at one. She said she couldn’t look, pretended and looked at the ground.
With what’s happening in the world today, I am reminded that we are back in those times again. I cannot help but feel sad and bad at all the corruption, injustices and killings. I am remembering my maternal grandmother thrown in jail by Mao and his gang. They took her in place of my grandfather who escaped to Hong Kong. She said heaven saved her and she learned to write her name in jail. Seems ironic now that she didn’t know how to write her name. My grandfather was the principal and mayor of their village. But they were not land owners.
I am, in essence, writing these words for my grandmother and mother in heaven. Hallowed be their names.
A sunny Tuesday morning. I’m surprised to find that it is -2℃ at 8 o’clock. I’ve had a good sleep. It’s remarkable how good that plus the sun can make me feel. I shall not let that goodness and the day go to waste. I will not haste though, but savour all the minutes at my own pace. I remember the saying, haste makes for waste. So how shall I proceed?
The day is almost over. I surely did not haste today. I enjoyed a leisurely 4 hour brunch with my two dear friends. One of them had just recently lost her mother. I shared my thought that I really had believed that we would never lose our mothers. We had them for so long. It’s really strange now to find ourselves without our mothers. But that is the way with nature. We are losing more people as time goes by. It is this stage in our lives.
After time spent with my two friends, it was time to take my father out to the mall for a walk and coffee with my mother’s friends. I don’t have any Chinese friends except these. I don’t have a lot of friends either. I am not a social butterfly. I cannot handle too many people but I am fortunate to have my little groups of caring loving individuals, at the mall, at the YWCA and my retired co-workers. It is enough.
After coffee at the mall, I still had a little time to do a bit of weeding, planting and watering in the greenhouse. My spinach and lettuce are ready for small pickings. I planted 2 sweet one million tomatoes. There’s 2 blossoms on the snow peas. Our days are still a frosty but it was toasty warm in the greenhouse in the afternoon. Now it is late and time for bed. It was a very good day.
spinachlettuceblossoms on snow peassweet 1 million tomato
It feels like winter is reluctant to leave us. When I woke this morning, it was 0℃ and feeling cooler than that. It hasn’t gotten much warmer, sitting at 5℃ and feeling like -5℃ at 2:40 pm. The sky has remained grey. There’s a strong wind blowing though not as bad as yesterday. The planted snow peas and celery in the raised bed remain under covers.
It’s a good day to cosy up with a hot cup of tea. I’m sleepy, tapping and trying to keep up my joie de vivre. I’m finding I can choose how I feel. I choose the brighter side unless I’m too cranky. Sometimes I revert to my childish side and slip over, Then I have to give myself a talk to get my adult self back. It’s all okay to slip, stumble and fall. It keeps me humble.
It’s almost Mother’s Day. How does one celebrate it without a mother? She’s been gone a year and a half now, a short and a long time ago. It’s short but long enough that the pain is not the sharp searing kind. I’ve adjusted to her physical absence. Her essence is, of course, forever in me. I do not need to do anything for Mother’s Day. I no longer have a Mother and I have never been a mother. Anne Lamott speaks so well on the thing about Mother’s Day. Here it is from 2025:
“Here is my annual Mother’s Day post, ONLY for those of you who dread the holiday, dread having strangers, cashiers & waiters exclaim cheerfully, mindlessly, “Happy Mother’s Day!” when it is a day that, for whatever reasons, makes you feel deeply sad. I told Neal last year that I didn’t think I’d run it, because I always get so much hate mail, and he said, “It’s never stopped you before.”
This is for those of you who may feel a kind of sheet metal loneliness on Sunday, who had a sick or abusive mother, or a mother who recently died, or who wanted to have kids but didn’t get to, or had kids who ended up breaking your hearts. If you love the day, and have or had a great mom and happy highly successful kids, skip this piece: I’m begging you.
I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother’s Day. I didn’t want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some obligatory annual display of gratitude. Perhaps Mother’s Day will come to mean something to me as I grow even dottier in my dotage, and I will find myself bitter and distressed when Sam dutifully ignores the holiday. Then he will feel ambushed by my expectations, and he will retaliate by putting me away even at a PlaceForMom.com sooner than he is planning to — which, come to think of it, would be even more reason for me to resist Mother’s Day.
But Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.
The illusion is that mothers are automatically more fulfilled and complete. But the craziest, grimmest people this Sunday will be many mothers themselves, stuck herding their own mothers and weeping or sullen children and husbands’ mothers into seats at restaurants. These mothers do not want a box of chocolate. They may have announced for a month that they are trying not to eat sugar. Oh well, eat up or risk ruining the day for everyone.
I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or lost children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark and See’s. There is no refuge — not at the horse races, movies, malls, museums. Even the turn-off-your-cellphone announcer is going to open by saying, “Happy Mother’s Day!”
You could always hide in a nice seedy bar, I suppose. Or an ER.
It should go without saying that I also hate Valentine’s Day, even those years when I’ve had a boyfriend or random husband.
Mothering perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents. Meanwhile, we know that many of the most evil people in the country are politicians who have weaponized parenthood.
Don’t get me wrong: There were a million times I could have literally died of love for my son, and I’ve felt stoned on his rich, desperate love for me. I felt it yesterday when I was in despair. But I bristle at the whispered lie that you can know this level of love and self-sacrifice only if you are a parent. What a crock! We talk about “loving one’s child” as if a child were a mystical prancing unicorn. A majority of American parents secretly feel that if you have not had and raised a child, your capacity for love is somehow diminished. They secretly believe that non-parents cannot possibly know what it is to love unconditionally, to be selfless, to put yourself at risk for the gravest loss. But in my experience, it’s parents who are prone to exhibit terrible self-satisfaction and selfishness, who can raise children as props or adjuncts, like rooms added on in a remodel. Often their children’s value and achievements in the world are reflected glory, necessary for these parents’ self-esteem, and sometimes, for the family’s survival. This is how children’s souls are destroyed.
But my main gripe about Mother’s Day is that it feels incomplete and imprecise. The main thing that ever helped mothers was other people mothering them, including aunties and brothers; a chain of mothering that keeps the whole shebang afloat. I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, who unconsciously raised me to self-destruct; and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, my own best friends’ mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, including my mom, even after their passing.
The point is, have a beautiful, wonderful Mother’s Day if it is a holiday that brings you joy, but just be conscious that for many, many people, it isn’t. Proceed thoughtfully. Deal?
April is gone. Today is May 3. I meant to show up 2 days ago but I never made it. Some days are easier than others. Today is not one of those. The sky is cloudy. I’m heavy with it. I’m saggy and draggy but I’ve started the day. I still start it reading the two Heathers. I’m also reading Nobody’s Girl now that I got it from the library. It’s no wonder that I’m weighed down.
I wish that I’m not so serious minded. I wish that I am more light hearted. But that is not who I am. Whether it is because of genetics or how life shaped me, it’s hard to know. It is probably both. It is not easy being an immigrant child of immigrant parents. Being the oldest is not a cake walk either. I bear/feel the brunt of the responsibility for helping them navigate in an English speaking country. Life was and has been a serious affair. There was/are good times and laughter but not the uproarious kind. Our lives always seemed to me to be smaller than others.
That’s my feelings growing up. You don’t shed those feelings of inadequacy easily. I haven’t. They’re still there somewhere just underneath my skin. Not that I feel like a failure. I know I have done very well. I am a well informed and educated person. I am financially independent. I am retired with many interestests. I am never bored. I am occasionally melancholy. Who isn’t, especially in these times?
And so I come to this space to tap out my melancholy, my angst and sometimes my joys and excitement. I do get those happy exuberant feelings once in awhile, too. It must have been what I felt yesterday. They carried me through a whole day of gardening. I repotted seedlings, cleaned out 3 raised beds in the back yard. I planted 3 cucumbers in the greenhouse and 7 celery in the raised bed. Hope I wasn’t over eager and too early. Hope is a good antidote for melancholy.
Nowadays I like to start my morning reading the two Heathers. They are strong women. They speak the truth. They educate me to care, to listen and that I can make a difference. I’ve become politically interested and engaged. The Heathers are Heather Cox Richardson and Heather Delaney Reese. I’m always a truth seeker and speaker. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I find life difficult. Another one is I am a woman of colour and an immigrant. Though I come from a culture where sons are preferred over daughters, my parents weren’t of that mind. My paternal grandmother was though.
She had no influence over how I felt about myself. I grew up feeling I am a person of worth. I’ve never thought I was less because I am female or because I am an Asian. I come from strong stock. My maternal grandfather escaped the clutches of Mao but not my grandmother. She was thrown in jail in his place. She survived and thrived. They had done nothing wrong. My grandfather was a teacher and mayor of their village. My grandmother was a housewife. They were not landowners. They were persecuted because of jealousy and fake stories. That’s been many years ago. Both of them have been gone for many years but their story still lives in me.
It is the 10th of March. We had snow overnight. The sun is shining bright. The thermometer dips and rises unpredictably. One day is spring. The next it is winter. My cold is better but the cough lingers. I feel better and worse at the same time. I am sickened by Donald Trump and his wars. I wonder what all the bombing and destruction are doing to the environment. In this moment, I have no positive bone in my body. It is a difficult life but I must rise and take charge of this one precious one that I have. What will I do? A little this, a little that. It all adds up. What will you do?
It is March 8th. It rained this morning. It is day 15 of #the100dayproject. I have been working a little on it each day. My cold is still hampering me. I can’t go great guns with anything. However, I am happier with this slower pace of living and sewing. I am enjoying the process more. I have 5 completed logcabin blocks and 2 partial ones. I continued to be my usual disorganized self, not having my fabrics sorted to darks and lights. I don’t have all the strips cut either. I am in continuous state of search for the best strip.
It is a grey dismal day.This world is going nowheres fast except maybe to war. I am astounded by this world we’re in, aren’t you? I feel as if we are in a fake reality show. The only trouble is, it is not fake. It is not a bad idea to stick my head in the sand, ignore all this madness and do the things that nourishes me. Wake me when it is all over.
I had coffee with my 94 year old father this afternoon. We talked about the times from way back. He still has a good memory. The very first house we lived in was behind the cafe. It was owned by the town doctor. The rent was $7/month. It had 2 rooms. The linoleum was peeling. The next house was by the highway, across from the railway station. It was owned by grain elevator company. The rent was $20/month.It was bigger but not really better. My foot went through the floor board in a bedroom.
It was good to have memories to share. We hadn’t shared or conversed much before. We had a laugh over the rent. Who would have thought I could do this with my father?
