Terry had his birthday yesterday, one year older, still works in the farm, feels good about life.

Before his birthday, I asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday, or anything he wanted for his birthday. He said:” I don’t really need anything, I have everything I need. How about I buy a present for you?”

I smiled, said: ” Really? ……. OK, let me see, do I need anything?” Searched in my mind, there is one thing I need to buy. Then, Terry suggested another thing, I agreed it without hesitating.

Sonny was doing his home work and heard it, he said:” Good idea, dad. Buy me a bag of toy soldiers too. On your birthday, mom and I get presents, on my birthday, I get some presents again. Yeah!!!” He was really loud, we got his message. He even wrote down “toy soldier” on a piece of paper, handed it to dad, make sure we won’t forget his present.

So Terry and I went to shopping on his birthday, bought toy soldier, Lego and some camouflage clothes for Sonny;then he ordered the present for me on line.

Sonny liked his new toys, played with them before bedtime and the morning time before school time.

I made birthday cake.

Here is one of Terry’s old pictures, a good one, he looks very cool. He still looks great, he is a wonderful man.

Happy birthday to the man of Da Kine!!!

On Valentine’s day, Sonny came back from school; first thing he told me was that they wrote poems for Valentine’s day, and asked ” Do you want to hear my poem?” .

I said :” Yes” .

Sonny :” If you want to be my Valentine, kiss me “.

I loved it and kissed him.

Sonny just finished practicing piano 10 minutes ago. The last piece music name is ” The Rose “, it’s a slow, beautiful, easy song. He has practiced this song for two weeks, he can play it very well along with the CD. We both like it a lot, we played it over 20 times.

When he played, I sang the song along.

” Some say love, it is the river that drowns the tender reed. I say love, it is the flower, and you are the only seed.”

When I played, he sang along. I tried to sang with him, he asked me to stop singing, because he has a beautiful voice. Even I claimed I have a beautiful voice too, he won his way.

This was the most special moment for us ever since he started taking piano lesson. I can imagine we will have more times playing music and singing together like tonight, if he gets too good for me to catch up with his pace, I will just enjoy listening his playing. It’s one of my dreams, some day when I’m old, my son can play music for me.

We say ” I love you ” to each other in our family every day, not once or twice, many times. Still, sometime these three words are not quite good enough. To me, the best way to express your love is to play and spend some time with the one you care and love. You can feel the love is flowing among you, and the love is touching your heart. This special moment doesn’t happen all the time, but when it happen to you, it will stay alive inside of you. And you sure know, what is love.

Wish everyone find these special moments in your life. Don’t look too far, look around you, you might find it right beside you all the time.

Sonny had two weeks of winter break, even no school, we still got up at our regular time in the morning. He had morning walk with me, and he had lots to say on the way.

We had to carry weapons to protect ourselves. He likes his rifle, which is hockey stick, he got it when he was 1 year old from Uncle Rodney; on the stick has a maple leave and word ” CANADA” . I took one of his toy gun, a small one.

Passing a mac nut farm, he picked up two mac nuts on the road or beside the road, gave me one, we stood on the same line and threw the nuts; together. Whose nut roll farther, who is the winner. I couldn’t win this game, because he was the one making rules, and he made the rules after we threw the nuts. Many times my nuts rolled farther than his, but I still wasn’t winning, because my nut didn’t reach the finish line.

When we saw a junk avocado or coconut on the road, he would roll them down the road, pretended he was dropping a bomb from fighter jet.

If we heard any vehicle coming from either way, we would hide inside the bush or behind tree by the road side. Sometimes, I didn’t hide good, our imagine enemy shot me. I told him, don’t point his gun to stranger, only to people he knows well, they would be the one to understand his game.

He is in his soldier faith right now, even we didn’t feed him any military storys. Now he can pick out books himself from library, those books are his interests. We only wish, that he will retire from this when he is 18.

Nobody know what kind of child you will get, you will find surprise on your child while they are growing up.

One morning, before we reached to our drive way from morning walk, we passed by vegetable raising beds. Somebody just harvested veges and left a pile of old leaves on the ground. I knew those leaves will dry out there, nobody will use it, I saw they abandoned old leaves like this before. So I picked them up and planed to give to our chickens. Sonny got excited about it, he insisted I should first  ask the lady, who is the worker. I explained to him, I’m sure they don’t use those old leaves. I knew I didn’t convince him, but I didn’t know this story has second chapter.

Four days later, we had our morning walk. We were about 100 yards away from the same veges beds, where a lady was working.

Sonny said :” Mom, you need talking to the lady. ‘

” Why ?”

” You need to tell her, you took the leaves from the ground last time. Remember?”

It took me a second to realize that he has been carrying this load in his head for several days, maybe unconscious. I said :” OK “.

I said ” good morning ” to the lady, and told her the story. From her, Sonny knew it’s OK to pick up veges they throw away. And the lady praised him ” it’s very honest “.

I’m very happy about what I learned from it. Children do not necessarily learn everything from parents, even they are very young, they have their own ability, to judge what is right and what is wrong. I’m glad, I listened to him and did what he asked; I didn’t confuse his judgment.

Once there was a little boy, who loved toys and loves to play with them all the time.

He met uncle Jim, who works for Boeing and sent a fighting jet pilot video to him. A dream seed started grow in him, he want to be a pilot, flying helicopter, fighter jets, or space ship, as long as the object can fly in the sky.

He called the family car “helicopter”,and the truck ” air plane”, and he was co-pilot when he was in the car or truck.

One day, he asked his mom” Mom, Can you find a mask for me please?”

Mom asked：” What are you going to do with a mask?”

The boy said:” Pilot always wear a mask when they fly a plane, without a mask I can’t be a pilot.”

His mom found a snorkel mask for him, and he was very happy and content. Every time, he would wear his snorkel mask in the car wherever they would go.

One day, the boy and his mom went to library, a librarian was going to read books for kids. Then they would go to beach with their play group friends.

As usual the boy wore his mask all the way to town. At library parking lot, he got out from car with the mask on his face.

His mom asked:” do you want to leave the mask in the car? ”

Very seriously, he said:” No, I’m still flying a plane.”

His mom laughed and confirmed again, ” Are you sure? There are going to be lots of kids and people, they might laugh at you.”

Determined, he said: ” Sure, I’m sure.”

Mom opened the door for him, he walked in very proudly, like he had the coolest costume ever with hundred percent confidence in his heart.

That’s how he appeared in library, and sat with other kids,and listened to the stories. Nobody laughed at him, no kids teased him, only his best friend Lily said:“You are silly.” and sat beside him with sweet smile on her face.

Half hours later, the reading program ended, they headed to beach. As soon as their car parked, the boy took off his snorkel mask.

His mom said: “You know, you can use the mask when you play in the water.”

He answered: ” No, pilot don’t wear their mask when they swim.”

That’s just one of many stories happen to this boy when he was little.

Birthday is a big deal for kids; cake and present are not enough, inviting friends to  their birthday party sounds better. Usually kids always have fun at a birthday party, and birthday party pictures record their special moments of growing up.

When you grow older, you don’t care so much about having a birthday party.

My brother, sisters and I were all born at home in a village, no clinic, no birth certificate. Villagers keep their children’s birth date by a lot of interesting ways. Like: planting paddy rice season, peach blossom season, mushroom season; rooster’s first crow in the morning, cooking smoke rose up from houses in the evening, group of villagers came back from field. You see, how accurate our birth date could be, we just take our parent’s words. Nobody seems to really care about it, every one has a birth date on their ID.

My family didn’t do much for birthday, lucky if my parents cook a couple of meat dishes for birthday occasion. I was the one who always remembered my birthday and would remind my mom in time. So my mom would boil an egg for me, the whole hard boiled egg just for me.

At that time, most family’s were poor, meat was a rare dish on the dinning table. Lucky we grew up in tropical area, people collected wild vegetables for themselves or livestock on the way home from working the field, we kids picked wild veges by the stream or paddy field on the way home from school. Every year’s rainy season my elder sisters went to the jungle looking for bamboo shoots, they always came home with a full sack of shoots on their shoulders. Bamboo shoots were made into dry bamboo shoot or preserved bamboo shoot, both ways are ideal to store the shoots. But stir fried fresh bamboo shoots are delicious, we ate it a lot during the season. At wild fruit season, my friend and I went 2 , 3 kilometers away to hunt wild fruit, that’s how we dealt with our sugar cravings.

My family had 6 children, 4 kids still in school, only my dad had a job ( My mom couldn’t speak Chinese and she was close to retirement age when we moved to Han community, so she didn’t get a job). My dad’s small salary fed the whole family.

In the community there was a crazy man, who originally came from Shanghai, an educated man. I only remember his last name was Li. During the Culture Revolution, the horrible treatment drove him crazy. Even after the Culture Revolution, he didn’t go back to his home, he lived alone with filthy clothes wondering around the community, looking for cigarette butts. I’m not sure, did he have a place to live, can’t imagine he had 3 meals a day. He always carried a dirty big mug around, some times people gave him food. Wonder, did he ever beg for food?

He didn’t do any crazy things to frighten kids, most time he was quite OK and had common sense. Even though, he got money every month from government. I know one way he spent his money. Many times he bought a kilo of pork and gave to my mom, asked my mom to cook for him, he only took less than half of this meat, left the rest to my family. My mom cut the meat into small bite size, fried with home made preserved soy bean; salty and strong taste, very good with rice and lasted longer time too. That’s how my family got special treat from Mr. Li. I don’t know why Mr.Li picked my family to cook for him. Maybe he felt easy to ask my kind and humble parents; or he felt pity for my family, that was his secret way to help us. We’ll never find the answer for this quiz now, I heard he went back to Shanghai and died many years ago.

That’s a side story my mind led me to. It is amazing, even in my life time, I have experienced so many changes. I usually hear more bad news than good news about the Chinese government on media here, and I agree there are lot of problems in China. But I have to say, the Chinese government did a pretty good job to feed their people, the most populated country in the world.

Birthday party, I never dreamed about it before I came to Hawaii. I had my first birthday party on the first year I moved to here. Terry wanted a party for me, he made it happen. Friends, lots of food, music, and cake. That was first time I had Chantilly cake, a local favorite cake, became my favorite cake too.

I didn’t plan for a birthday party this time, Terry ordered a roasted duck for lunch, we just wanted a easy day. On the way home from store, Terry stopped at a bakery, said” buy a small piece of cake for your birthday”, I didn’t even get out from car.

When we get to home, there is not one small piece cake, but two cakes. Look the picture, they are not only pretty, but also very yummy. Our friend made them for me, and Terry helped to keep the surprise. If I knew it, I would rather have a small party to share with friends. There is no way to eat them all by ourselves, even Sonny said ” I can eat them all” before we started, he couldn’t even finish the first piece.

I phoned my friend, thanked her for the wonderful cakes, and asked her family to help eating some cake.

Getting older, I’m still smiling to my life.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

TO ME