Old

"How old are you, Mommy?" Evelyn asked one day.
"Old," I said, knowing that at the tender age of 3, being 4 means she's quite mature, 5 is all grown up, and at 6, one certainly could drink/drive/get married/rule a country.
So, she pondered a bit on my response, and then, "TWENTY?" She said, in an exaggerated tone, as if that is an astonishingly "old" number and I just could not possibly be older then that.
"Yes," I laughed, "20."

I still remember coming home from school one day after we learned the names associated to the stages of life, and told my mother, who was then in her thirties, that she is approaching mid-life. Upon hearing this, her eyes went wide (not quite wild, but almost), she gasped and stuttered indignantly about how foolish my remark was, and how the label of being "middle age" is not going within 20 feet of her, never mind applied to her.

It's funny how the perspective of time changes as more time passed in our lives. I remember an hour being forever when I was little. Yet now, an hour is nothing. A bat of an eye. A turn of a page. Seasons come and seasons pass. A year goes by faster than I can acclimate to the new number shown on the calendar. My mother, who is now really in her middle age, told me that at her stage of life, 10 years is but a unit. If the passage of time was a little creak winding through sun speckled woods when we began our lives, its force gathers and speed increases as we travel through life until it's a roaring river rumbling by.

I don't know how many times people would stop to smile at the little ones, and warn me "they grow up too quickly." "I know," I always reply, for I really do feel it, even though they are still young. My newborn is about to turn one next month, and the older child did not hesitate to wave goodbye when dropped off at school. If I could, I would be bottling up everything I felt right now into jars to be smelled, tasted, and felt later. Unfortunately, memories don't work that way. I can only take pictures and video tape them whenever I can, trying to capture and archive forever what life is like now. And melt into their embraces every time I hold them, cherishing the feeling of their warm, soft bodies against mine.

Innocuous

I used the word "innocuous" to describe how poison ivy looks today. "It looks so innocuous," I said.
If you heard my comment in passing, you'd have thought nothing of it. After all, it was a plain, vanilla sentence that contains nothing fancy or worth noting. It was a simple sentence composed of a fitting description chosen from the vast English vocabulary. However, if you observed the deliverance closely, you might have noticed the slight pause in the sentence and the slight twitch of facial muscle before the word was uttered and the sentence was finished.
That pause there? Many things were happening in my head then.
First, there's the recall of the word innocuous.
Then comes the examination. What does the word mean? Does it really mean what I think it means? Where did I learn it? Is that how you pronounce it? Am I going to make a fool of myself by trying to use it?
Following that is the weighing of risks. How sure am I of the word? How stupid would I appear if I made a mistake? How significant would the price be if I used it wrong?
A slight wavering could happen. An internal struggle of whether I should gamble and use the word, or play it safe and swap it out.
Finally, there is the jump. I form the word in my mouth, bring it to my tongue, and let it out.
Once it's out, I secretly hold my breath and wait for the other person's reaction.
No furrowing of brows in confusions? No delay in reaction followed by a "oh, I get it!" realization? Success!

I've lived in this country for 11 years, 7 of which with my English speaking husband. According to him my English has improved dramatically. And yet I find myself still grappling with the language on a daily basis. Vocabulary, especially when speaking, can dessert me like rats jumping off a sinking ship. Grammar is that slippery soap that, just when I think I got a handle on it, escapes my grasp and falls off the floor with a clunk. If I made a mistake in a conversation and became aware of it, oh my, the language turns its cold shoulders at me and pretend that we are strangers. Then the babbling comes in and the sense making goes out the window. In no time, my children will be correcting my speech. And if they dare roll their eyes while doing so, I shall thank them by speaking in Chinese only.

Hair

I so need a hair cut.
I haven't had a hair cut since, oh, let's just say well before Lauren was born. And Lauren is only a few days shy of being eight months old.
The problem lies not in the matter of looks. Goodness knows I'd let my fingers serve as hair brushes often enough. I'm happy as long as I get to shower in the morning and don't have visible drool, spit up, or food in my hair before I leave the house. The problem lies in the matter of my sanity and the preservation of my hair.
You see, Lauren loves my hair. It provides her a safety hand hold and something to chew on. With my hair reaching my shoulder blades, Lauren doesn't need to reach to get to it. Whenever she climbs into my arms or gets picked up, she first gets a fist full of my hair. A stranger comes close? Grab on tight. Mommy lower her onto the floor? Grab on tighter. Occasionally, the grab would be accompanied by a pull, and off comes a few strands of hair. I am forever reclaiming a fallen hair from between her fingers or between her toes. Have you ever noticed how baby toes pick up random things from the floor?

It's rather pathetic, but getting a hair cut seems such an insurmountable challenge.
First off, I have Asian hair. I need someone who understands Asian hair to do the cut. When I told Evelyn I have Chinese hair and need a Chinese hair cut, her father who was right beside me gave snorted in amusement. Dude, you can snort all you want, but you have no idea how serious I am about this Chinese hair thing. Case in point. Every non-Asian hair dresser I've ever came across commented on my straight hair. My straight, silky hair. Let us examine my straight, silky hair a tad closer, shall we. Let us randomly pluck off a few strands of hair, just as Lauren so often does several times a day, you'd find straight ones, wavy ones, and ones that are so zig-zaggy, they look like non-springy springs. As a matter of fact, during my teenage years, some of my straight, silky hair has such a ridiculous tight curl, it was a dry, puffy mane. I often imagine myself as a walking ball of dandelion. When the wind blows, my hair explodes in all directions. Don't believe me? Ask any one who knew me during my 9-12 grad years.
Any how, the crazy hair is behind me. But getting a good hair cut is still a challenging task. My safest bet is to get it in China town, which involves getting a baby sitter, making the 45 miles drive, and dealing with Boston traffic and parking. Just thinking about it makes me tired and lazy.
Writing this much about hair makes me tired and lazy.
So, I badly need a hair cut...

In order to have a fairy tale ending...

So, while introducing Evelyn to Disney version of fairy tales, I came to realize that except for Sleep Beauty, most princesses or girls who became princesses have lost their potentially loving and caring biological mom at a very young age. Almost every story begins with the young girl losing her mother. What's up with that? I'm starting to think that the stories are telling their audiences to get rid of their moms if they want a "happily ever after" ending.