I Miss My Mom and Her Sisters and . . .

#2021-0818

I miss my mom, her sisters, and many more!

Yesterday my brother Jincan and I went to the funeral of our mother's eldest sister (See the photo on the right).

The funeral was held at 8:00 a.m. in Taipei, but as we live in central Taiwan, we left from home very early in the morning -- about 4:30 a.m. Jincan, who picked me up, said that if we set off late, we might get stuck in traffic during rush hours. He was right. Early in the morning, traffic on the freeway was fairly smooth, and we arrived at the funeral home as early as a quarter past seven.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, only a small number of people were allowed to be indoors when participating in the funeral. Even the bereaved family had to take turns to enter the ceremony hall; in reality, during the Family Service (jiā-jì, attended by members of the bereaved family), more than half of the family members (who were younger) kept standing in line right outside the door. My brother Jincan and I, as well as our cousin Ms. Xiuzhu and her husband, were then invited into the ceremony hall as close relatives, so we could join them in the Family Service.

(Due to the pandemic, there was no so-called Public Service, gōng-jì, for other people to attend, though some of their good friends came to comfort them in person.)

Near the end of the ceremony, we watched a memorial film which reminded us of many good times in the past. Well, you see, in the first picture below, the one in the middle is my mother's eldest sister, with her husband on the right and my grandmother (mother's mother) on the left! Now my grandmother and all her three daughters have passed away. I miss them very much. And my brother Jincan says he misses them so much, too.

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相關文章 (See also)：

1)  母親的故事     (2016)

2)  別了，親愛的母親    (2020-12-16)

3)  妙香園的回憶     (2020)

豪雨 (Raining Heavily All Day!)

#2021-0807

落地窗外，傳來「嘩啦嘩啦 + 轟隆轟隆」的豪雨聲，千軍萬馬般呼嘯而來，不絕於耳，即使把厚厚的窗簾給關上，也隔絕不了那原已轉向離開（且弱化成ＸＸ氣流）的「盧碧」颱風即將（復活）來個「回馬槍」予人致命一擊的威懾。

風雨聲中，從床上翻身而起，是午休時間，原本打算小睡片刻的，怎睡得著？走進二樓靠中間位置的盥洗室（前後都有房間，使之與外界隔絕），竟然還聽得見「隆隆隆隆」的水流聲； 再仔細一聽，那不是窗外的雨聲，而是地板、牆壁裡的水管，此刻正急忙排水。原來，豪雨從屋瓦、屋簷、陽台各個角落，已鑽進屋內的排水管路，灌滿埋藏在牆壁和地板中的管道，再不大量排水，豈不是有水管爆裂（如同「腦溢血」般）的危險？

下樓來到客廳，電視還熱鬧地響著，妻子說：「看哪！中南部災情慘重！北部的雨勢也越來越強大了，真令人擔心！」我看了電視上的畫面，回應說：「果真有點慘！........」我想起五月底之前，全台（包括我們居住的地區）乾旱好久，什麼鯉魚潭、日月潭、曾文水庫、石門水庫等等，所有大大小小的蓄水區都乾涸，水位急降，幾乎就要見底了。那時妻子望著枯乾的草木枝條，總要擔心：「再不下雨，家中就要停水、斷電啦！」

那時，我總是這麼安慰彼此，說：「不要太擔心！沒多久就是雨水季，到時候，不但不缺水，還得祈禱不要水太多（做水災）呀！」如今看來，我的話應驗了，而我們也因為豪雨來襲，再次默默祈禱著 ----- 為家人、朋友，甚至不認識的人；簡言之，我們情願為海內外所有人的「平安」默默獻上最真誠的祈禱。

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相關文章 (See also)：

1)  「落水咧！」（客語：下雨了）     (2021)

2)  音樂水車之雨景     (2020)

3)  雨思  語絲 (Yu-Si, Yu-Shi, Si-Yu, Shi-Yu)     (2019)

4)  雨後即景     (2019)

恭喜 ● 欽佩 ● 謝謝分享

#2021-0802

Congratulations! Li Yang and Wang Qilin won the gold medal of the badminton Men's Doubles!

Congratulations to ALL winners of the Olympic Games 2020, which is being held in Tokyo, Japan! ...

In fact, every participant (esp. competitor) in the Olympics is very admirable. I've always had the greatest admiration (adoration plus appreciation) for all who have tried their best to play their roles!

By the way, thanks to our daughter-in-law for sharing with us this memorable picture! (See below.) Do you notice how excited my two grandchildren were when watching the badminton games on TV? 

我國羽球最強男雙李洋／王齊麟於 7 月 31 日（週六）在金牌戰對決中國「雙塔」組合李俊慧／劉雨辰，最終麟洋配只用了 34 分鐘，就以直落二（21:18、21:12）強勢擊敗對手，搶下我國奧運羽球史上第一面金牌！ (From: ETtoday news)

Virtual Coffee Hour

#2021-0725

Since May 16th, we haven't attended in person the Sunday service at St. James'; instead, we've had the ONLINE English service on Sundays, which was immediately followed by the virtual Coffee Hour. (Thanks to Rev. Lily Chang for sharing this picture with us!)

How about the following Sundays? Shall we have a normal, face-to-face meeting at the church on the coming Sundays?

Just now we received from Rev. Lily a notification which reads: "Although CECC lowered the epidemic alert level to Level 2 from July 27 to August 9, St. James’ English Committee decided that we’ll keep on our ONLINE service on the following two Sundays, August 1st and 8th, for the sake of epidemic prevention." (英文堂執委會決議，雖 7/27 至 8/9 警戒降為二級，但為防疫緣故，8/1、8/8主日仍維持線上禮拜，暫不恢復實體禮拜。) So we'll continue to have the Virtual coffee hour on the coming Sundays -- two Sundays at the very least.

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相關文章 (See also)：

(1)  好彩頭 -- A Good Sign!     (2021)

(2)  "柯牧師時間" -- Time Set Aside for "Spiritual Food"     (2020)

(3)  Potluck Brunch Again!     (2020)

(4)  Coffee Hour (photoed by Pop) 美好時光 / 愉悅寫真     (2016)

(5)  Photos of a Sunday Gathering     (2013)

尋雲得安？ (I Took a Break for Movie-Watching!)

#2021-0724

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have stayed home most of the time. And because we had much more "free time" than before, we had to find something extra to do, to "kill" the time. We were not really free in our free time; staying at home for such a long time made us uneasy -- in other words, it would be boring if we got little (or nothing) to do!

So I started to write; to do some "creative writing," so to speak. The problem is that I write very slowly. On average, I added only two hundred words to my Story Ideas file a day. Up to the day before yesterday, I had written 9172 words -- English words, counted by Word. That was a lot behind my original schedule; I wish I could have made my first 10,000 words last month as the draft of my new story.

If you asked me what my long story (novel) would be, I would say, "I don't know." In fact, I haven't decided on the theme, the plot, or the length of this new piece of fiction; I just know that it would be fiction, or a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. And I want to keep on writing -- writing until the whole book (or novel) is completed some day!

Hopefully I'll be able to "kill" the time -- to spend this pandemic period in a more "creative" way!

In the meantime, I noticed that my wife had found her new hobby recently. She watched quite a number of films (movies) in the recent weeks. And she loved most of the films she had chosen to watch on YouTube.

She doesn't want me to be obsessed with writing, though. She often tells me not to sit for too long at a time. She would like me to spend more time chatting with her, or going for a walk together, or even watching a movie on iPad together with her.

"Don't you take a rest?" She reminded me the day before yesterday, "Doctors say that we who have just been vaccinated should not work too hard..."

"On, dear, I write slowly -- so very slowly, as you can see."

"Anyway, don't sit up late," she spoke as if she were giving an order.

"Okay, I promise," I said. "I won't sit up late. And as you can see, we'll go hiking every day unless it rains all day long."

"You know what I've discovered?" All at once she became more excited, saying, "I find that the scenery in the borderlands of Mainland China, as well as the ethnic minorities living there, is so attractive that I will look for more films of that type to watch..."

She then told me what she had watched earlier this week:

1. 尋找劉三姐 (Xunzhao Liu Sanjie, or "A Singing Fairy" in English).

2. 雲上太陽 (Yun-shang Taiyang, or "Close to the Sun" in English).

3. 德令哈之戀 (Delingha zhi Lian, or "The Love of Delingha).
    In Classical/Literary Chinese, 德 = 得; these two characters sound and mean the same.

4. 安妮的邛海 (Anni de Qionghai, or "Annie's Lake Qiong" in English).

In each of the above-mentioned films, the setting (or background) of the story is equally attractive: You'll see the beautiful scenery in a remote area (for example, in the Guangxi autonomous region) and you'll find the different cultures of the ethnic minorities (for example, the Zhuang people, 壯族). How amazing they are, the land and the people!

Invited by my wife, I finally finished watching all the four movies yesterday afternoon. And as I put the Chinese titles of them together, I was surprised to see the first Chinese word in each line (four words in all) forming such a meaningful phrase: 尋雲德安 (or 尋雲得安), which literally means "Seek the clouds, and enjoy the peace!"

A Dream (昨夜今晨夢)

#2021-0722

I woke up from a dream. What a real dream! And what time was it? It was 5:20 in the morning, a time when I should be sleeping soundly.

I was anxious about forgetting the dream; such a special dream, I felt I had to write it down...

[I am a man who can remember a dream when waking from it; the details of the dream, everything happening in it, being so vivid that I can describe well after I just wake up from it. My wife says that I am lucky to be such a man. She says she forgets her dream (her real dream) easily; just knowing she has had a dream, she cannot describe it as clearly as I do.]

But then I was anxious about forgetting the dream; I had to jot it down before it became hazy, or completely gone -- lost!

It was a familiar setting for me. A few rice paddies where I had passed by, one after another. When I was walking by the fields, I had a chutou (?) in my hands -- yes, hands in plural, because it was a farm tool heavy enough for me to "hold" in both of my hands.

"Son," my father once said to me, "I hope you'll hold a small pen when you've grown up."

He meant a pen so light and small that one can hold it well in just a hand. 

"Don't be like me," he said. "I hadn't had a chance to go to school, so I must hold a big, heavy pen to earn a living!"

My father, who passed away several years ago, had worked on the farm all his life -- either on the mountainside or in the rice field. You may call such a person "farmer" but in my case another English word ("peasant") might be better used to describe my dad, as he used to be a poor peasant.

Oh, in the dream I had last night (or this morning), I didn't care about whether I was son of a poor peasant. I forgot what I had been doing most of the time in my life. I even totally forgot that I was in my later sixties already. In my dream I was still a teenager.

I passed by the ladder-like rice paddies, with a farm tool called chutou in my hands. I was helping my father; I went around our small paddies to check whether or not they had enough water in them. Then I returned home, and saw my father walking out of our old house -- a shabby cottage or lodge, a simple dwelling typical in the remote countryside.

"Dad, going out working?" I greeted my father.

"Oh, you're back home! Good, good," he said. 

He told me there was something to eat on the kitchen table. And he noticed that I had a farm tool in my hands. So he asked, "Where did you go? -- Why not put down the chutou (hoe) and have something for breakfast?"

I was happy to hear that. And, in the bottom of my heart, I was a little proud of myself because I took the initiative to help work on the farm -- I just checked and saw that there was plenty of water in our paddies. We were able to grow rice as usual, or as before, because we had enough water in this season.

Yes, it's important to have sunshine, and fresh air, and water.

In the real world we all need these kinds of things to live on. In the real world, in fact, we've been suffering the COVID-19 pandemic. We need a good dream, and we need many more, don't we?

By the way, I can not only remember a dream that is interesting to me, but I can also realize why I've had the dream. Take this new dream (of my passing by the rice paddies with a hoe in my hands) for example: I have found out why I had such a dream.

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I took a walk on the nearby hillside; we stood up there for a while, seeing the water in the new fields far away from us -- the water in the paddies reflecting the strong sunshine, which made those distant paddies so brightly white, just like a landscape water painting with many small snow-white parts in it.

We Miss James and John!

 #2021-0619

As a grandpa and grandma, we miss our grandchildren so much during this pandemic time.

Since the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on May 19 raised the COVID-19 alert nationwide to Level 3, our grandchildren (and their parents) have stayed in Taipei all the time and we, living in Central Taiwan, have never paid them a visit.

Fortunately, we can "see" our two grandchildren by making a video call. And their parents sometimes send us a couple of interesting pictures through LINE, so it won't be too hard for us to keep track of them all. 

30 Pictures / Images / Illustrations

#2021-0601

Here are 30 pictures or images that I'll use to illustrate my Fiction Writing in the [near] future. They will be picked at random, and used freely as some inspiring "scenes" (or scenes and sequels) in my new story (or novel).