Precious moment

The topic for this week is about something precious in our own. Looking around, scanning again and again, the most valuable in my life is religion. But it is not good to talk about here. Buddhism is not Amway, I do not need to develop my membership.

Then the computer, I can utilize this machine to do anything I want except cooking. It is the most helpful tools in my daily life. But the software is changeable like the weather in Chicago, and so does the hardware. It is important, but it can be replaced anytime.

Money may be important and precious. My daughter in her three years old once said, “Money is the most precious.” I really understand how valuable a million dollars are, but I do not know how precious a penny is.

Every time when I clean up the room, the most pleasure is to shake off a large bundle of rubbish. The room can not be more tidy than occupied by heaps stuff which you do not really know whether you need it or not. Throwing away is much easier than keeping. I do not like to own so many burdens.

As regard to my family, my husband and my daughter, of course, needless to say. But I won’t keep my husband beside me. Last week, Philip went back China alone. I decided to stay in Chicago a few months longer, for I do not want to end a precious dream so soon. The several months in Chicago were a big vacation for our family. In this vacation, my family got reunited.

Philip is a lawyer in China. In today’s China, a lawyer is occupied by clients and the courts. In day time, lawyers may be busy among their office, courts, and companies in order to handle their cases. In night, lawyer should maintain business relationships. In China, the most efficient method is to turn the business relationships into private one. All of these are carried out in wine and feast. Chinese lawyers are busied himself from day to night. I do not need to prepare dinner for my husband, and my daughter would never expect her father would be with us.

My daughter was always complaining that the house was dark and lacked of warm, even though I turned on all the lights. At weekend, the three of us in this family might have lunch or dinner in restaurant, but we could not talk more than his cell phone.

In Chicago Philip got rid of business tangle, and we found out our own family time at last. Some afternoon, we three sat in the small kitchen in our apartment. Usually, the Entenmann’s donut or the Pepperidgefarm chocolate cookies, hot chocolate were served in our tea time. Occasionally, the oven was baking one or two sweet potatoes. The sweet roasting smell full filled the room. It was warm. We talked and laughed, and my daughter loved the father’s joke.

From the kitchen, we could look out of the window and saw the different color of the sky, grey, blue, or bright white, clipped by the building’s roof in distance. From the January, we could see the snow floating in the air, listening to the sound made by the snow drop bounced on the window’s glass. We were warm, safe. We were a whole family.

This is a precious moment, and is fleeting. No one could hold it in hands. I understand if we went back to China, the crowded noisy hometown, after we went back to our busy routine, our precious family time could not spare the pressure, busyness, and tiredness.

All I want is to taste the warmth left in my hands, again and again, in these several months left, when my heart still have a capacity to enjoy the beauty in this world.