You can’t truly appreciate your mum (or your dad) until you are a parent yourself. At least that’s true for me. When you have kids you are forced to acknowledge the sacrifices, joys, and pains your parents went through. Some people I know don’t need to have kids to know that, but I was stupid until I had little man.
I called my mum today to wish her a happy Mother’s Day. I could hear the happiness in her voice, despite all the challenges recently. My dad is in the hospital, one of his toe has been amputated because of diabetes. The wound won’t heal, my daddy is depressed, and my mum has to cope with it all alone because I am thousand of kilometers away.
I called my dad to try to reinstall the feisty strength into him he always had, and I called my mum to reinstall the sunny optimism that has been always in her heart. I think I succeeded, at least partially.
I woke to a card with a poem under my cushion this morning: “Dear Mama, I have a poem for you. Mums are sometimes a pity but always pretty. You are sometimes lazy but always buzy. Happy mother’s day! From little man”
Little man told me that he had a hard time to find the rhyming words, that it took him two hours, but he never gave up … :)
I gave up on waiting for the storm at 2am this morning, only to be awakened by heavy rain banging at my bedroom window at 5.30.
It was a direct hit, but the winds were relatively benign. The rain on the other hand…
was and is still heavy. It’s coming down in sheets.
Hong Kong already had very heavy rains throughout May with lots of landslides. So it’s a good thing that wind and rainstorm warnings were hoisted this morning, and kids don’t need to go to school. Little man is very, very happy.
100 American sailors are very happy too. Their aircraft carrier left Hong Kong one day earlier than planned because of the storm, and they were stranded in town. What tough luck…
“A couple of sailors who were in Mong Kok when their ships left without them spent their Sunday night drinking at a Wan Chai bar.
“Hong Kong is a fantastic city to be stuck in,” one said.”
I have been listening to Buena Vista Social Club ever since the heat started…
(Ibrahim Ferrer and the Buena Vista Social Club “Dos Gardenias”)
I started to sing and said “play that please”
Two gardenias for you
with them I want to say to you
I love you, I adore you, my life.
Look at them carefully,
they are your heart and mine.
Ry Cooder heard it too
and when I went to him
I had sung the song
only for fun
and he recorded it.
Two gardenias for you
with them I want to say to you
I love you, I adore you, my life.
Look at them carefully,
they are your heart and mine.
Two gardenias for you
with all the warmth of a kiss.
Like the kisses I gave you.
Those that you will never find
in the arms of another love.
At your side they will live
and speak to you, as if you were with me.
You will even believe
that they say to you:
I love you.
But when one evening
the gardenias of my love wilt
it is because they guess
that your love betrayed me
because you desire another.
Here is the full-length version. While listening to it, imagine sitting on a verandah in Havana on a sweltering late afternoon, sipping cool drinks and ceiling fans swirling overhead.
CeeCi, Leo Solo, and Lime gave me a Thinking Blogger Award… gosh guys, you obviously have no idea about the chaos in my head. I am extremely flattered. Blogging is mostly a way to keep my insanity at an acceptable level…
… and being part of a wonderful community. I have met so many interesting people living in all corners of the world, expressing their thoughts and creativity. People I would have never met, had I not stumbled upon this medium. I think, this meme is a wonderful way of creating new links around the blogger world, of making the web a little denser.
Onto the task of passing on the torch…
Keda at mamahog ‘n the lets blogs from Istanbul about the beauty and madness of life, and rounds it all up with the occasional political rant when the world deserves it. She does it in her own, wonderful style, which inspires me and always leaves me feeling happier than I was before visiting her blog.
Anastasia at Sexualité has already received a dozen Thinking Blogger Awards… here is another, I can’t help it. She writes erotic short stories and posts with sexual topics, but doesn’t stop there, which I like very much. She eloquently steps over the lines that some draw between our sexuality and the rest of life. In her posts, Anastasia discusses social and political issues as well, all in a very intelligent and independent way.
Mustang doesn’t blog often, but when he does he always finds beautiful, simple words to express the most profound. His blog is titled Zen Bunny… don’t know about the Bunny, but Zen definitely hits the mark. I found him via Lecram, who will get a golden thinker from me as well, after he has freed some shelf space next to his golden soup bowl.
Goodthomas in Chicago writes poems and short stories, which show the extraordinary and beautiful in daily life. His posts remind me of detailed paintings, drawn with words instead of paint. Poetry for me is the expression of a world of emotions in a few, well chosen words, and Goodthomas does just that.
Clarsonimus at Observing Hermann is an American living in Berlin, slightly baffled by the Teutonic experience. He posts daily comments on political news and social idiosyncrasies in Germany. His political views are on the right side of mine (only politically speaking, Clarsonimus!), and sometimes make me fuming mad, but are written in an entertaining style, and certainly make me think. His blog is also one of the few places I have found where Americans and Europeans, right-wing and left-wing, discuss things in a civilized manner… most of the time.
Istanbul, Sydney, Fresno, Chicago, and Berlin… wow, it truly is the word-wide web.
Should you want to carry on the tradition, please play by the following participation rules: 1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think, 2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme, 3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).
The stomach bug of my little man turned out to be a throat infection that also affected the lymph nodes in his stomach. We went to see the doctor today, who gave him a suppository and a prescription for antibiotics. The “butt rocket” helped wonders. It decreased his fever, restored his appetite and his energy, so much so that he wanted to show me all the football tricks he had learnt while I was away. I am not a fan of antibiotics. They tend to be prescribed too often by Hong Kong doctors, but this infection has been scary and long enough to let me think that tougher measures are justified.
Unfortunately, the antibiotics come in the form of medicinal-tasting white syrup with small lumps in it. Why? Why in hell? After a small lick at the spoon, this evil fluid was outright rejected by my son as too disgusting. What followed were more than thirty minutes of coaxing, reasoning, bargaining, tough talking on my part to get this into his mouth. Even the offers to mix it with juice and even sweeter things were rejected. I think it was utter exhaustion that let him finally agree to gulp it down. Wish us both luck for tomorrow and the following days, when we have to repeat the procedure… twice daily.
Thursday, as I read through Osbasso’s post about the death of his blogger friend Betcha, I couldn’t stop thinking how unpredictable life is. You can have the best of plans, and having the most of fun, and then suddenly in a second everything changes. We kid ourselves that we can somehow direct life, and sure we do have choices, but there are times, moments when life is out of control, and all we can do is watch, paralyzed in stunned silence.
As I thought about Betcha’s family and her friends, I just knew that they must have felt something similar, when the mind knows the unthinkable and worst has happened, but the heart just refuses to believe in it.
I didn’t know Betcha, but from reading Osbasso’s and Stealth’s posts I could sense what a wonderful and fun-loving person she was. My heart goes out to her family and friends.
