Father to daughter

When my dad doesn't know what to say to me, he asks about the last time I washed my hair. These episodes tend to occur while we are in an elevator or a waiting area, and are often witnessed by uncomfortable  bystanders. While ignoring him convinces him that the inquiry must be repeated so that those in the shop next door can hear as well, answering my dad only leads to questions more cringeworthy and specific. What do you mean "recently"? Wednesday or Thursday? Did you use the dandruff shampoo last time? Did you scrub clockwise? Did you rinse twice? Maybe you should wash your hair again tonight. Ten years of communication have accomplished little: my dad has yet to learn that the other people waiting for their dentist appointments should not be subject to the details of my shampooing regimen, and I have yet to discover a way to deflect these questions without losing it. 

What infuriates me is not so much my dad's tactlessness or his inability to keep his volume down in public, but rather his persistence in asking the questions I don't want to answer. He seems to relish latching onto subjects I have labelled either taboo or pointless, subjects such as my personal hygiene, and pestering me to discuss them. I do not know what he is trying to find in my answers-knowing when I last rinsed my hair hardly offers a glimpse into matters of the heart. It is of great importance whether I ate toast or porridge for breakfast, but arguments I've had with friends, doubts I've had throughout the day, insecurities I've acquired usually go unmentioned. Of course, by the time it occurs to my dad to ask me about such things, I am probably already fuming about having to repeat the lunch menu for a third time. It is as though, in groping through the dark, we always miss each other.

Yet, for two people who must resort to arguing about how often hair should be washed, we also share a strange collection of habits and mutual understandings. Like my dad, I ask lots of questions during TV shows, spend most of my time satiating a relentless sweet tooth, and have a soft spot for rabbits in green pajamas. We both tend to leave sweaty socks behind the bathroom door, cough in a way that infuriates my mom, and care entirely too much about the way others see us. My dad is a stickler for rules regarding anything from traffic to recycling, and though I hold romantic notions about being a rebel, breaking the rules usually leaves me feeling nauseous.There is an understanding that if I let my dad buy a 珍珠奶茶 on the way home, he'll buy me one too, and that if I cook anything, even charred carrot bits, he must praise it. 
Though I sometimes forget it, I am my father's daughter, and this somehow makes the searching worthwhile.

Half-eaten

Half-eaten snacks are the usual fare around here-at least when I attempt to bring home anything remotely edible. An bag of chips already opened, a sandwich with most of the ham and cheese missing.To most, receiving a half-eaten sandwich would be anything but a sign of affection, but Emily has come to speak this language of "leftovers." She knows when I say, "I brought a something for you" and uncover a slightly flattened doughnut with teethmarks in it, I mean "I thought of you today while sitting in Mister Donut, so I left half of this for you."And when I rummage through expired coupons and loose change after a day out to fish out a crumpled bag of grape gummies from the depths of my purse, she knows that it is an apology of sorts, for not spending the day with her.

Of course, if given the choice, I would choose a chocolate eclair untouched in its wax paper wrapping, every sprinkle still in place. Emily would probably do the same-I cannot flatter myself into thinking that every unwrapped, half-eaten pastry I bring home is somehow worth an entire bun to her. Even the waitress gave me an incredulous look when I asked her to pack the few strands of pasta left in my plate into a takeout box. But in collecting these tidbits of food and snacks, it is as though I am collecting bits of my day to share with her-the lemon ice tea I bought at Hi-life after shooting hoops at school, the sausage I ordered from a vendor near the thrift store, the bit of penne with meat sauce I saved from dinner with friends at the Italian restaurant downtown.

I may be hopelessly possessive when it comes to food. I may often find myself absentmindedly munching on whatever I happen to be holding, and may be addicted to gummies, doughnuts, and sugary snacks. Perhaps I bring home half-eaten snacks because I can do no better. But I like to think that, in bringing Emily half of a doughnut or a few rolls from dinner, I am somehow telling her that I wish she could have been there too.   

TV Soulmate

my sister

It is important to watch TV with someone who understands you. Someone who doesn't mind that you spent the past twenty minutes trying to guess what will happen next and so now have no idea what's going on, who appreciates the esoteric humor of uneven nostrils, and who agrees almost as fervently that the two men should just ditch the girl they're fighting over and start a life together. Someone who won't try to strangle you after you've ruined the second kissing scene in film (she also noticed the string of saliva), and who looks forward to watching 我們這一家 as much as you do.

I did not come to appreciate the value of a television soulmate until I spent an afternoon watching television with my uncle's family. The episode we happened to be watching involved scene after scene in which the characters seemed to do little but gaze fervently into one another's eyes while dramatic music swelled in the background. I suddenly remembered that my biology teacher once reminded us to watch for saccades (rapid shifting of the retina to focus on certain parts of an image) when the camera zoomed in on the eyes, and snorted in amusement at the thought of the lovers' eyes twitching uncontrollably to orchestral accompaniment. Once the snort had escaped, I regretted it. Snorting out loud while watching TV on someone else's couch had to be bad manners. Had I been watching tv with Emily, she would have been amused to learn about involuntary eye twitching, but my cousin simply glanced at me, disturbed by my insensitivity to the lovers' plight.

Our TV-watching ritual at home involves yelling constantly at the screen, finishing each other's sentences, making irrelevant observations regarding asymmetrical eyebrows-and an unnecessary number of hi-fives. "She almost tripped! She almost tripped! Did you see that? Hi-five!" I don't know why I find romantic climaxes so hilarious, or "she almost tripped" worthy of a hi-five. I don't know why I feel a compulsion to make a prediction every few minutes (I am rarely correct, but I always speak with great conviction), or feel a need to substitute professions of love with lines about cucumber sandwiches and boogers. But at least Emily feels the same way. And while none of my friends can understand my obsession with 我們這一家, Emily knows why I laugh every time 花媽 starts lecturing her kids or wages a war against the mosquitoes in the living room. Because we share so many things in our lives, Emily has also come to share my sense of humor. She knows what I am thinking when orchestra starts and the male and female lead get that look in their eye. And she knows our mom looks exactly like 花媽 when she gets starts swatting those mosquitoes.

The Dragon's Hoard

There is something inexplicably comforting about knowing that there is a bag of candy waiting for you in the refrigerator, right behind the jar of peanut butter and yesterday's leftovers.

The summer after sixth grade, my Sunday school teacher handed me a parting gift, a paper bag. In it was the most colorful, most varied assortment of candy I had ever seen. There were gummy bears, chocolate bars, raspberry-flavored candy canes, jelly beans. There was even one of those gummy ropes with rainbow-colored nerds embedded in them. I understood immediately that this bag was something to be cherished, something to be preserved and savored slowly, colorful package by colorful package. Candy was meant to be admired and gloated over, not gobbled down at once. Determined to protect my hoard, I hid the bag in the furthest corner of the refrigerator, and over the next few months, though I peeked every so often, never touched the lollipops, the jelly beans, and certainly not the nerd rope. I congratulated myself on preserving this undiminished supply of sweets, and guarded it as jealously. My uneaten candy somehow made me superior to those who had none, and I was sure my candy starved parents were waiting for the chance to make off with a gummy bear or two.While I eventually did unwrap some of my sugary store, I made sure to leave most of it untouched. It was my greatest fear that I would one day crave a Hershey's bar and realize that the paper bag was empty.

The paper bag was far from empty when I finally took it out from behind the assorted bottles and boxes that had accumulated in the refrigerator just before we moved. Just as I had shaken out the jumbled contents of my drawers to pack into cartons, I eagerly emptied my treasures onto the dining room table. Only then did I realize the consequences of my hoarding. My treasures had been polluted. Most of the candy was no longer edible--some candies had frozen into tasteless lumps and somehow merged into one misshapen mass, others had absorbed the scents of raw fish and meat and were no longer fruit-flavored. The nerd rope was gone.

Watermelons

I consider my mom an expert when it comes to shopping for vegetables and fruits. She knows instinctively which tomatoes are sweetest, which mushrooms are fresh, and even which peas to pick. Over the course of countless trips to the marketplace, I have managed to collect some tips--tips that concern everything from the ripeness of wax apples and mangoes to the benefits of yellow kiwis . Papayas should be long rather than wide (those wider in girth tend to be hollow), and heads of cabbage should be springy rather than solid to ensure flavor and juiciness. Yet, such tidbits of knowledge are just that--tidbits, and this infinitely useful art form never ceases to bewilder me.

As it bewilders my dad. He is not so accomplished in the arts of grocery shopping--his area of expertise lies in physics, and in explaining things like gravity and rainbows in unnecessarily complex terms. But lately, he's begun to dabble in this other field of science, and he's been improving at a startling rate. My dad is now solely responsible for buying the guavas in our refrigerator. Not to mention the fact that he's also gained a considerable amount of confidence in his choice of watermelons.

Over the months, my two parents have formed dangerously different views on how to pick watermelons.

According to my dad, when picking a watermelon, one must vigorously tap the melon in question, and then listen intently for several seconds afterwards, measuring the frequency of the reverberations beneath the mottled green rind. To demonstrate his theory, my dad once tapped a "good" watermelon and a "bad" watermelon. Although my dim ears could detect little difference ("slap, slap" versus "slap, slap"), my dad assured me that the first sound was much "juicier" and "sweeter." (I let it go. He might have momentarily confused his sound and taste adjectives, but he really sounded like he knew what he was doing. I also didn't want him pressing his ear against the watermelons--with unusual tenderness I might add--any longer than absolutely necessary. What if we were seen?)

So when we went to RT Mart last week and stumbled upon the crate of watermelons in the aisle beside the pineapples, it went something like this:

"Look! Watermelons!" (That was me. I tend to state the obvious.)

"Here! I'll choose one!"

My dad made his way to the crate and proceeded to tap every watermelon in sight. The rest of the family winced. What if one of the watermelons exploded without warning? What if someone we knew was lurking in an aisle nearby?

"No, no, that's not how you do it. Here's a good one." No doubt thinking the same things I did, my mom quickly brushed him aside and, summoning her magical powers, pointed to another one. Of course, my dad then began to tap that one, and the echoes apparently told him something else.

"No. This one doesn't sound sweet enough."

"That one." This time, the watermelon my mom pointed to was beneath four or five other watermelons, but such an awkward position did nothing to deter my tireless father. Cramming his hand into the tangle of melons, he finally managed to tap the target. We waited in suspense.

"All right! This one it is then!"

Thus began a five minute struggle to move the other watermelons out of the way so we could place the chosen one into our cart. Emphatic gesturing and serious discussion of logistics was involved, and I am sure the people who happened to wander past aisle nine were shocked by the aggressiveness of our attack and the number of watermelons we balanced in our arms. But what may have seemed like chaotic juggling to others was somehow comforting to me. As we wrestled and heaved, chattered and grunted, I couldn't help but smile to the melon I happened to be cradling.

After ten years' worth of squabbles over toothbrush mix-ups and whose turn it is to wash the dishes, we're still moving watermelons together.