话说家里种了好几年的火龙果结果了，高兴之余想到千里之外的女儿吃不到(她也想吃)，心念念地等着最后五个相对比较大一点的火龙果成熟了可以寄去给她尝尝。
My vacation hours are full, and I decided to take a day off on Friday, October 9th. To ensure that nothing will come up during my absence, I worked late into the night of Thursday, finishing all the reports in my plate.
Tired as I was, I lay on bed messaging my daughter. As the messages were exchanged, topics inadvertently switched to Thanksgiving holiday. Her hesitance of coming home for the holiday surprised me. “She does not miss us.” said he, chiding me for being too strict in her growth, only adding fuel. Alone, tears started swelling up in the eyes, and my mind was adrift to the old days when raising her sapped my energies. Flashbacks of her intimacy and sweetness at a younger age only saddened me. “What went wrong?” I asked myself. “Was it my recent interventions that put her off?”
She must have realized something, and an ensuing new message soon came that she could come home for a week during Thanksgiving or for my birthday. I reckoned that she was trying to make it up, but that endeavor seemed a bit too little and too late to console me. Her intent of one-week home vacation falls far short of my expectations. For many a time, I’ve pictured her home again working in a sunny room, relishing my home-cooking and our companionship, and caroling through the holiday season together… It is my wishful thinking.
I woke up late the next morning after a wakeful night, and then set off to do chores of cleaning windows, hand-washing the window blinds and curtains. It was a quiet morning. Hours of drudgery work brought back spotless windows, and when the sun flooded through curtainless windows, the rooms were brightened. So was my mood.
I called it a day at 3 pm, resting on the bed and going to nap when my Wechat rang. It was from my daughter, who set herself on a video chat. The minute I saw her, without a word, her message was sent through in the air. Instantly it thawed my heart. I know why she called in the middle of her working day. It was a gesture that she cares about me, or that she holds nothing grudgingly against me. We did not dwell on the vacation issue, but conversed more on her work and her life there. Then she video-toured us around the new apartment she just moved in at the end of September, a kitchen with a window, a laundry room with a washing machine and spacious rooms, with one room still littered with unpacked boxes. We complimented her decision, her progress at work, and the conversation flowed on. As she was to attend the meeting at 4, we had to hang up. I remember that the last few sentences I said were to reassure her that it is at her discretion if or when she is coming home, and how long she’d like to stay. “We are here for you, and I don’t mean to push you.”
Out of sight, out of mind, the saying goes like this. Now that we are a thousand miles apart, distance begets distance. I don’t know if we are still in her picture:), but she is forever in our mind. And tucked deep in our hearts is the unconditional love we have no matter where she goes, and so shall it be reciprocally, I hope.
======================================================
The mentis showed up again in the backyard. As the tree leaves are suffused with the fall color, so is mentis’ outfit, camouflaging from green to brown, in contrast to the evergreen leaves of hibiscus she is hiding in. Her short wings, covering only the upper body ten days ago, are tail-long now, like a model changing her mini-skirt to a long dress for a seasonal show. And the long robe she puts on is so delicately woven that under a camera, we can clearly see the thread-like stitches finely crisscrossed in a pattern.
10/10/2020
Strolling under a still scorching Autumn sun for hours along the bank of the beach mash on October 10 did not give us anything spectacular. Walking over a small wooden bridge that leads us in, we saw schools of fish, big or small, swimming, and a few even shooting off the water surface, leaving silver flashes of its side for a second before it falls back to water. Miles of trails are either bare dirt or paved with gravels. From time to time, seabirds are seen leisurely floating along, diving for food, or scouring for food in the mud. We ended up walking more than 11K steps for the day.
10/11/2020
A nail was found in the tire by a Costco technician when we tried to fill the nitrogen gas to the tire on Saturday. We were asked to come back early the next day (Sunday) for a fix. The next morning, I went before the door was open to get in line. What I expected to be only $10.99 fix later turned to be $225, as the nail is not fixable and a new tire has to be replaced, not with the exact brand, but a similar type.
