How We Celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival

Out of the blue, my sister called me at work yesterday.  Everyone at the bench area turned to me as I was speaking in Cantonese.  Yes, I am bilingual.  If you are to count my half baked Spanish, I am quasi-multilingual.

Quickly, I moved into a phone booth as I battled – mentally speaking – on how to react to my sister’s for lack of a better word, ‘ambush’.  An ambush with a good intend no doubt.  Perhaps as one gets older, one prefers to plan ahead.  Like my mother who called me while I was watching The Voice on TV half an hour ago.  She asked, “What time are you going to arrive in Hong Kong?”  I shrugged and looked at Cynthia for help.  Then my mother asked, “Which day and what time are you leaving Hong Kong?”  Even Cynthia, my travel organizer, struggled to remember the booking information.

Back to yesterday, inside the phone booth, my sister proposed that we should – in a few hours’ time – have a reunion dinner and honor the tradition of Mid-Autumn Festival.  Jolly good.  But what would happen to the defrost meat that we were going to cook in the evening?  And my home was in a total mess.  Time, yes we need time to plan doing something, or even doing nothing.

Eventually, we worked through the logistics.  Our close to two years old niece Bethany is adorable.  When she says hi and bye, those moments melt our hearts.  And she is able to address me properly in Cantonese!  I have been waiting for this moment for months.  Months!  My sister said that they may not need to send Bethany for a music appreciation class.  They can send her to my home instead.  I tried to play guitar with her.  Getting a sustained attention from a kid for more than half a minute is hard.  Asking her not to yank the strings off my beloved Spanish guitar is even harder.  I am a patience man.  In my vision, I am still seeing Bethany playing a grand piano, rather than a Spanish guitar.

After dinner, we popped by a playground in our condo.  To be frank, I have not stepped inside the playground after all these years of living here.  The noticeboard says that the playground is strictly for children under 12 years of age.  Since Bethany was with us, we happily stepped into the playground for the first time.

Our niece seemed to have a good time.  The amount of time parents have to spent in order to play and to take care of their kids is mind blowing.  I salute all the parents in this world, including mine.  Mark, if you are reading this, I salute you too as you are going to have your little one later this year.  Years of repetitive dailies await.  Speaking as such, our band’s guitarist’s newborn should be due soon.  I am seeing babies spawning all around me.

In last year’s Mid-Autumn Festival, Cynthia and I were in Hong Kong crawling through the museums.  Our trip to Lamma Island seems so far away.  How time flies.  How time flies indeed.