Mystery
The other day, I went “up the mountain,” an expression which has been in my family for the past ten years. What it is is ching ming , an annual Chinese tradition that memorializes the dead. You burn ghost money, bow, pray, etc etc. My grandfather died 10 years ago, and while certainly I see po po (grandmother) choose to re-face the sadness of losing her husband every year, the immediately weight of death has long been replaced by acceptance and respect for gung gung‘s (grandfather’s) life. My grandfather was buried in Mountain View Cemetary in Oakland, CA, which is why we call it going up the mountain (it’s sorta up a mountain). Ching ming is one of the rare times I get to see nearly all of my extended family, and afterwards, we usually get lunch in Alameda at this pretty good dimsum place to catch up.
One uncle I don’t see too often is Uncle Oscar. He’s the only Mexican relative I have and he also happens to be a Jehovah’s Witness. This means he doesn’t often celebrate birthdays or Christmas or anything really for that matter. He was there the other day though and he is actually a pretty funny guy. He has been an electrician for most of his life, married my Aunt, and has 4 kids.
I know this is a pretty long intro to the story, but I guess this sentence will do just as well as any other transition sentence:
Over ha gao and siu mai Uncle Oscar was explaining why one should have more than one kid:
“You gotta have more than one kid, because if you don’t you’re taking mystery out of your life. With just one kid, you can come home and find something’s broken, but then, you know exactly who it is. But if there’s two kids, then you aren’t sure, it’s a mystery.”
He laughed for a second here, and then continued:
“Yeah, there are things in my house that have broken and I still don’t know for the life of me who did it. I’d come home and have three kids in front of me with blank faces. ‘Okay, kids. Who did it…’ I’d be met with three identical faces of innocence. I’d always laugh to myself seeing them just a few minutes before whispering to each other, ‘Shhh dont tell; dont tell!’”
I guess it was best not knowing anyway?
yellow-on-yellow racism, i has it.
i hate cemetaries and i hate chinese boys and even some chinese girls
i think cemetaries would be a great place to pick up those
cute high school asian girls, i wanna holla, is that weird?
maybe it’s the vicinity of death. life in the face of it?
i am coughing from the ashes of the trashcan full of ghostmoney
that that guy is burning right next to us; fuck you old man, move your shit.
i want to kick his trashcan over so his entire family
catches on fire and screams just like in the movies.
i’d throw them off the ledge, i’d kick over their family’s tombstone.
sometimes i wonder at my rage, where is this anger coming from?
