...they're a funny thing.
This past weekend, in celebration of my grandma's 93rd birthday, my husband and I flew to Detroit to spend time with family! My mom, my aunt and their cousins and the cousin's mom (or my grandmother's sister-in-law if your losing track of all these relations) all thought it would be a great idea for my grandma to visit with her sister one last time before everyone gets too old to be able to travel that distance. My grandma's turning 93 years young and her sister is 86, so sadly this is probably the last time those sister will see each other. They did speak of perhaps taking a train to/from Detroit and LA but only God knows if that will happen. Likely not, but you never can tell. Life's funny sometimes. We all wanted to surprise my grandmother with the fact that I was going too so Victor an I caught an earlier flight and met up with them later when they arrived.
So the family from LA included my Grandmother (my mom's mom), my mom, my mom's sister (my aunt), my mom's cousins (Stanley, Theresa, Thomas - these were my grandmother's brother's kids) and their mom (or my grandmother's sister-in-law as mentioned previously). So that makes 9 people from LA in total, including myself and victor). The family in Detroit with whom we were visiting with consisted of my grandmother's youngest sister (my xiao yipo), her three kids (rong rong ayi - eldest daughter, rong hua jiujiu - son, rong mao jiu jiu - son, and rong mao jiu jiu's wife). so that makes 5 people from Detroit in total. We all had a roaring good time! Yes in DETROIT I know! In all fairness they didn't live IN Detroit but a suburb 40 minutes away in Novi/Farmington Hills. It was actually a really nice neighborhood. Very quaint and cute!
Like all family gatherings our activities revolved around eating! The Detroit side of the family were great hosts and we all enjoyed some pretty tasty meals! My favorite was dinner the first night there at Hong Hua (Saturday 6/15/13), it was your typical canto style banquet foods but, I sure do LOVE lobster! A close second was Dinner Sunday (6/16/13) which was Korean BBQ. Oh my!! I love meat and the short ribs were so tender an juicy but NOT fatty! Slurp! Lunch on Sunday & Monday were at the same place but we had dim sum sunday and "special" lunch Monday. I say "special" because this wasn't your typical MPK special lunch...we were visiting from LA so of course fancier fare was ordered.
Over the meals tons of old family stories were shared, re-shared and shared again! All the cousins grew up together when they were little in Taiwan so there was so much history and laughter among themselves. They even shared stories from when I was little so I was able to join in all the fun!! It was great! An overall fun-tastic time for everyone! And right off the bat on Saturday night my mom was finally able to ask a burning question of one of her cousins that my brother and I have been wondering about for AGES!
You see when my brother and I were little we visited my Grandma's brother (jiugong) in New Jersey and spent some time with Uncles Stanley & Thomas, Aunt Theresa and Aunt Wendy (she's a cousin that did not join in all the family festivities in Detroit - also the person whom I'm named after apparently). During that infamous visit uncle Stanley forbade all us kids to speak english - wanting us to speak Mandarin so we don't forget our mother tongue. "Shui zai jiang yang hua?" (who's speaking a foreign language" and "Bu Yao jiang yang hua" (don't speak a foreign language) were Uncle Stanley's common catch phrases!! To the point that it became an old family joke between my brother and myself to this day! Uncle Stanley's nickname (and yes my brother's famous for comming up with nicknames!! everyone in our household has got one..) was even "Bu Yao Jiang Yang Hua" because he said it so often!! So my mom asked Uncle Stanley what the heck happened? How come his own son (Michael) doesn't even speak Chinese when he's "Bu Yao Jiang Yang Hua?" So apparently the guy doesn't even remember any of this ever happening!
What a sad anti-climactic end to something that we've all been laughing at for the past 25 years!! In the mind of the perpetrator this was a distant forgotten memory!! The upside? At least we were laughing and not feuding for the last 25 years!! Lesson learned - harboring ill-will toward someone is a futile thing. The only one that suffers is yourself. Imagine if the situation was slightly altered and instead of a funny incident that we were laughing over, it was a maddening thing that we were irked over. The guy doesn't even remember and we've been irked and annoyed for the last 25 years. How awful would that be?? So remember the good and let the bad slide! I can't say whether you'll live longer...but you will live happier!
So needless to say my grandma was very surprised I was there in Detroit...
