and the vote goes to... <drum roll>... genki japanese restaurant!
the lady says to us, tell me if i'm mistaken. did we not have you just a couple nights ago?
you're not mistaken, we tell her. we love you.
anyway, the junket ends tomorrow and then it's back to the grindstone.
hymns to my heart's content. including the gloria patri, whose awkward strains and beloved lyrics surface from long-term storage. jianti zi and fanti zi interchangeably and unself-consciously alternate on the slides alongside painfully incompetent english. it is a time capsule of a church service and quite attractively vintage.
i eavesdrop on a mother and her young son (he's 7? 8?) at the bus-stop.
do you know the library accepts my bus card as identification? that's why i should bring it to school, he says. no you're not, his mom says. not until you learn to be more careful.
when is the bus coming? i hope i won't be late, he says. you will most certainly be late, mom says. we were late leaving home and you didn't hurry.
back and forth we go, as functionally utilitarian as we come. i drift to another time and another young boy with the same unquestioning trust blithe hope and optimistic cheer. never mind the carelessness, i want to say. never mind being late. very quickly, oh so quickly, his voice will deepen and he will stop taking the bus with you!
our sins they are many his mercy is more
very thankful that his mercies are profuse despite all that i am and am not
and also that they abound anew unsought and to overflowing
i need to say less of, really? i get to enjoy this? and more of, wow, thank you!
W goes to her eternal home, another centenarian that i say goodbye to.
why did you choose this discipline? a young man asks me. the subtext being, why this generalist role that lacks the cachet of its specialist cousins? i say, because it is of all the disciplines the widest most expansive and most inclusive.
because, amongst all of them, this is the one where i may serve to the end, if i so choose.
Aug 2019: i crack my lower molar on a mussel in the seafood soup at oyster & chop in auckland. the pain subsides over the next days.
Nov 2019: the dentist tells me about xrays root canals and crowns and frightens me into (largely uninformed but common sensed-based) refusal.
i skive off for the next six years but pluck up the courage to return to her today. because tartar has a tendency to become a whole shellfish body part over time.
Aug 2025: the dentist tells me if the fractured tooth is not giving me trouble then we can leave it alone. i tell HOM, she has grown up! much relieved and much delighted with the cleaning and polishing. my grinders are rejuvenated.
HOM attends a dinner-and-tell-you-about-my-product affair and now he is burping durian.
as if the private durian fests are not enough. there ought to be a rule against serving durians in dinners open to the public. because you have durian lovers and you have those of us who must smell you.
the washer repair technician was very friendly so i asked him if he could replace my LPG cylinder nozzle as well and he happened to have a spare nozzle in his truck so he did it, mum tells me.
what amazes me is the kindness of random strangers that God in his mercy provides to my octogenarian mother who lives on her own and appears to be thriving nevertheless. it counts as a minor miracle, if you ask me.
my mother went to her eternal home yesterday, L's daughter writes to me. thank you for looking after her.
i feel relief. L was a frail centenarian in a tired earthly tent.
i feel loss. L was graceful and beautiful despite infirmity.
i feel grief that washes over me unexpectedly.
above all i feel grateful that i walked her final years with her without failing her.
i finally cave and install the hanyu pinyin keyboard. that's it, i tell HOM. i will from henceforth be spelling out my chinese messages. efficiently so but i will now therefore be unlikely to ever acquire true literacy in the written chinese characters beyond visual recognition, owing to the path of least resistance and all that.
so i wander the shops and get seriously tempted to buy A the next dress / plush toy / hat / li'l bag and HOM firmly restrains me every step of the way. as he should! gaudy whatnots an' all! frivolous flimsy an' flighty! a mother would not buy them for her daughter! but a grandmother, now! a gramma is allowed to buy stuff just because, surely?
update: J2 says i may buy her a couple of cute outfits. this may strain the definition of cute.
he: i want to correct all the known faults and make this home future ready.
she: i like wabi-sabi.
there you go. that's why renovation ranks up there with major illness divorce and death.
the speaker is eighty, retired from a lifetime of bible translation. her voice is strong and, when she sings, she carries the tune yet. her message rambles (i suppose if i get to share at eighty i would ramble too) but remains consistent. my God called me and was faithful and will remain faithful. here i am, Lord!
would that i would walk my path with the same vigor and joy, P! when i think of the saints who have gone before, you stand there with the best of them!
like a secret thrill like a big hug like a warm cuppa chocolate
going on leave for the next two weeks with no plans to go anywhere
oooh cross-stitch! oooh books! oops renovation!
yes!!
chinese ghost stories - lafcadio hearn (1887): quaint tales told in lyrical prose.
irish ghost stories - ed. maura mchugh (2022): neither bizzarre nor ghostly enough. i stop reading after 1-and-a-half stories.
japanese ghost stories - lafcadio hearn (1890s): back to quaint tales in lyrical prose.
somehow quaint is the word du jour. i must be missing something.
our first in 45 years.
at once exhilarating ear-splitting exciting and exhausting. also bewildering and disconcerting. names crawl out of the woodwork faster than i recall who their owners are. quite often the owners go unrecognized as memory and current reality do not match, not by many kilograms. this applies most especially to the gentlemen.
as high school reunions go, this one pretty much satisfies stereotype.
thanks to google, it does appear that there really is nothing new under the sun. what i experience has been agonized over by others and AI helpfully summarizes their discussions for me.
