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It was 37.6 degrees Celsius here yesterday-hot enough that people were literally cooking eggs outside on surfaces for the fun of it…Maybe I would find this more entertaining if I had not just watched "An Inconvenient Truth" before I came here. And man, I am getting dark like an aborgine, in a land where they sell "whitening" products everywhere.
Taipei, and Taiwan overall, has been a rather odd time warp for me this trip.
As a little party for my departure Dad made the effort of ordering me a fancy chocolate cake from "Awfully Chocolate" a chichi foofoo joint opened by a Singaporean pop star. We ALSO bought passion fruit, longans, lychees, peaches, and almond tofu, as well as $300 bucks worth (US dollars that is) of fine tea. ("Ten-Ren is awful, don’t ever buy it. They are the Starbucks of the tea world", says Dad). It’s kind of like the little parties we had when I was kid.
17 years ago John & I spent my final night in Taipei staying up late, drinking way too much beer, talking about stuff like love & the future. Now, we are worrying about our grandmas, (ages 90 and 92) and he is assisting his father (pushing 80) to ready for bed before he comes over to partake in my little tea party with Dad and kitties. Our binge boozing outings of the past have on this trip morphed into trips to the gym, and trips to the hospital to see Grandma. We talk now, of responsibility, world travel, family, our past loves lost, and soccer.
Dad and I had a 2 day trip to Taichung where we walked to his one of his old homes, and visited his former elementary schools. It was only 50 or so years ago that Taichung was a backwoods, where the kids went to school barefoot. Dad’s family owned shoes, and he admits to walking around the corner from home and taking his off before going to school so he wouldn’t stand out from the others. He talked about playing baseball in the dirt road, and about the public executions where now stands the National Physical Education University.
Now Taichung is a boomtown with highrises, luxury hotels, fancy restaurants, and if you tried to play baseball in the street you’d be run over by about 5 taxis in 3 seconds. One of Dad’s former homes is gone, built over with about 30 stores and homes on top of one another. The other rickety wooden building is still standing-but it is condemned and will likely also slip into the shadows of history shortly.
In this journey, I have become young and old simultaneously. Old enough to face the truth about how time has passed, and the spectre of caring for those who used to loom so big. But like a child again in how my family still tries so valiantly (and does a pretty good job still) of taking care of me. They fret about me being lost, hot, hungry. They want to dress me up, take me places, show me off, tell me about life. I am deeply and painfully aware that these years will not last. One grandma is now utterly oblivious to the world, and the other is wheelchair bound, diapered, and tube fed, but can respond to our talking now. I still remember when she took me to the mega department store Sogo & bought me exorbitantly expensive black slacks for one of my 1st jobs. Or how she came to visit us in Cali and liked pizza and David Hasselhoff.
I leave for my current home tomorrow evening. Ready (I think) to face a giant stack of work on my desk and inbox, and to resume a normal life that includes mundane tasks such as grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, driving, gardening, bird-feeding, man-tending, and (sometimes) cleaning. Nothing short of the typhoon lurking offshore will prevent me from leaving now…off to where there are decent salads, a handsome man who wears my ring (sorry Hon, I havent’ been wearing my rings what with all the heat rash), my engagement car, my birdies, my work familia, and good works to be done yet…
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