Red Red Rose

   After the first three days of chinese new year, it always feels like the red dust has started to settle and people have started to move on to some semblance of normalcy - where people only eat three meals a day and people don't wish you good fortune by default. But, in between, it was a lovely red lantern dream of hongbao waltzing and food served, always a course too many.

  And, then the dream awakes, and we all end up queueing at the bank.

  There is something very primitive about chinese new year visiting with relatives (defined as a person connected by blood or affinity). When you only see the person once a year, for many years, since you were born in fact - slowly we are all filtered into our most essential characteristics - male/female, age, studying/working, single/dating/married, children, house/no house, fat/slim, successful/failure.

    And, I actually like it.

   I like it in the way that we grow to like traditions. We inherit them before we had a choice. We grow accustomed to them, such that even when we start to think consciously about them, they have become so much part of the way we live, that it's like disliking your fourth toe on your right foot. Yes, it's not very attractive, but it has always been there, faithfully.

  Becoming annoyed by you, dear respected auntie who likes to criticise everything as if they were matter of facts, or you, dear respected auntie who must compete in everything, is a gift. It comes with the territory of being married, of being family, and I'm grateful for it.

  I'm grateful for being accepted, infuriated, annoyed, loved. Because, at the end of it all, it's all relative. And, when the relative is nothing, all of you, are pluses.