Standing like a tree in the rain
Tai chi in the park this morning with the regulars: four aunties and Mr. Huang, who is ninety-one and still has the straightest spine in the whole park.
It drizzled, so we skipped the form and did zhan zhuang, standing post. Knees soft, arms rounded like you're hugging a big ball, and then nothing. Just standing, twenty minutes.
My grandmother used to say the tree doesn't fight the rain. It lets the water run down to its roots. I thought about that with rain running down my sleeves and into my armpits, which was less poetic, but I think still the point.
Chrysanthemum tea for Double Ninth
Double Ninth was yesterday, the ninth day of the ninth month. Nine is the most yang of numbers, so two of them together is a lot of yang, and the custom is to climb somewhere high and look after your elders. I took my father, who is 81 and insisted on carrying the thermos himself.
At the top of the hill in the park we drank chrysanthemum tea: a small handful of dried flowers, five or six goji berries and one lump of yellow rock sugar, steeped in hot (not boiling) water. Watching the flowers open in the cup is half of it. My father says they look like old men waking up from a nap. He would know.
We poured a little on the ground for my mother, who loved this festival, and walked down slowly. Water wins by yielding. So do knees.
Three tosses of the moon blocks
Took my mother to the temple on Saturday to ask whether she should sell the old house. She doesn't trust anything that isn't jiaobei: two red wooden crescents, flat on one side and round on the other.
You kneel, give the deity your name, your address and your question, then let them fall. One flat and one round side up is yes. Both round is no. Both flat means the gods are laughing, usually because you asked badly.
First toss: laughing. My mother had asked 'should I sell the house,' when the real question was 'is it all right to let go of your father's garden.' She asked again, properly this time.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Three in a row.
She cried a little, then insisted on buying sesame balls on the way home. That's how you know it went well.
First day of the ninth lunar month, so incense for the ancestors before work. Three sticks lit from a match, held to the forehead and bowed three times, then planted in the bowl of rice my mother taught me to keep for exactly this.
I open the window a little and I never leave the room while they're burning. My mother used to say the ancestors do not want your curtains as an offering.
Then I tell them the news. My son started his first job. The persimmons are ripe at the market. The bus is late again. Ordinary things. I think they like hearing the ordinary things most.