Today there was a new helper and keeper of the towels at the swimming pool. Her English was delightfully wrong. I love that. When I came up to the desk with my wet towels to get my card back, she was helping someone else. She gave me a clear glance and with a very precise pronunciation she said, "Wait a minute," and then after the slightest pause, added, "ago." As I was standing there imagining how to wait a minute ago, she took my towels with a big smile. I told her that I was an English teacher. We started chatting about how hard English is, and I suggested that she leave off the "ago" since it wasn't needed, and added a "please" instead, since English speakers love the word "please" more than anything else. She nodded her head, and said it perfectly.
Then she handed me my card and said, "Here is your re-member card." Sweet. Just enjoy it.
Sometimes you just remember something. For me, it often happens when there is an ache in my heart. I will feel that ache, and then I will remember. Of course, there are other times when I remember things, but those times with the ache last for years.
My daughters will remind me about the first time I told them they should remember something. It was just before Christmas the first year we were in China. We had almost nothing to our name since our container of things (mostly their toys and books) had not arrived. We had two rooms and a kitchen that looked out on pine trees along the street next to the "foreign experts" building at Southeast University in Nanjing. The kitchen was laughable. The refrigerator was padlocked and the gas stove didn't work. No one knew why. But it was a kitchen. At least there was a sink.
I bought the day's worth of food at the farmers' market down the street, vegetables straight from the fields with their roots covered with soil, a big hunk of random meat from the butcher who had sides of pork hanging from hooks, greasy and full of splinters from his huge cutting board. Making the day's meals took hours since everything had to be washed and cleaned. No cereal. No mayonaise, no ketchup. No pasturized milk, just milk that had to be boiled before drinking it. What we had was meat and vegetables, straight from the farmer.
We also had no plastic bags, so we used baskets to carry everything home, even dofu dripping a trail of water like Hantzel and Gretel all the way home. There was no butter, flour, salt, sugar, or oil, since we had no ration coupons. These things were brought to us by David who lived in Hong Kong and worked with Peter at the press. These precious treasures were treated with extreme respect. We rejoiced at his arrival - and not just because he brought us these goodies. David was a saint. But he also brought the things we needed most, like a pound or two of butter and a jar of cooking oil.
Christmas had rolled around. It was time to make Christmas cookies. David had brought us an oven from Hong Kong on the last trip, and we had all we needed, so we began our yearly Christmas cookie party. As I used up a pound of butter on the dough, feeling a little faint at the very thought of such excess, the ache feeling began. There was no table on which to roll the dough. More ache - but the coffee table had a glass top, and was big enough, so we scrubbed it to a fare thee well.
I had brought the cookie cutters from the US. Bringing them out reminded me of "home" - more ache. The girls dove into the box of cutters and found all their favorites. Especially the dog bone. But also the Christmas star, a heart, a boot, two tree cutters, and a santa. Maybe a donkey. And all of a sudden, I realized that we were making cookies of light and love in what amounted to a kind of darkness, so I said to my daughters - "My dear ones, remember this day. Isn't this a wonderful smell? Look at the colors. Let's remember this room and who is here." They looked around brightly, taking it all in, and returned to their cookie cutting.
For me, the memory had just risen above my ache. The cultural cues of Christmas were missing - but we were able to have this present moment. For the girls, it was just as good in Nanjing as it was anywhere else. They had no idea of how hard it was to get all the supplies from Hong Kong. They just enjoyed that precious moment when we were all in the kitchen, smelling the delicious smell coming from the oven, working together on the happy project of putting together plates of cookies for Christmas. How much better could it be?
