It's the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar! And that means it's time to hang those lanterns, gather round the family, and eat mooncakes under the night sky.
We're making mooncakes this afternoon and ordering Chinese food to eat outside tonight with the Bambina. The holiday celebrates the abundance of the harvest as well as family togetherness. So we'll think and talk about family (and friends who are family), about family members no longer with us, and no doubt about our Chinese family--Bambina's "Chinese mother" and "Chinese father" whom we will never know but will always acknowledge as real people in our lives. We call them Chinese mother and Chinese father, since your mother is the one who gave birth to you, but your Mama is the one who raises you and loves you forever. It helps in explaining adoption to a 3 year-old, to say that some people have one lady who is both their mother and their mama, and other people have two ladies: one who is their mother and another who is their mama. Bambina gets this explanation, so it's the one we use. "Birthmother" and "biological parents" are terms lost on a preschooler.
Anyway, even if you are not East Asian, how about calling your family just to say hi, if you can't get together--and then how about looking up at the moon and pondering the abundance in your life, just for tonight?
You don't need mooncakes to be thankful for life's harvest.
1 comment:
Many Kudos to Mama and Papa for ensuring that Bambina's "birth-culture" is celebrated and embraced! Many other families, though given the opportunity, do no do so. I'm sure that as Bambina gets older she will have the ability, as many non-majority Americans do, to be at ease in various socialand cultural circles.
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