The Love We Choose

Chapter 15

"Ma ma, I'm here!" Huan yelled as he opened the door to his mother's home in Queens. There was no response. This was strange, but Aunt Jieli and Uncle Yang were visiting from San Francisco and staying with Huan's mother. Usually by this time on Saturday Dinner nights, the kitchen was bustling with the sound of his mother and aunties talking and cooking in the kitchen. However, since tonight was only going to be family and not community family as well, his mother had probably finished preparing everything hours ago and was simply waiting for everyone to arrive.

Hanging his jacket up in the closet and switching into the sandals he wears around the house, Huan went in search of his family. It didn't take him long to find the first member of his family, Rose, the only child of his late father's younger brother, Jin. Sitting at the dining room table with a sheet of paper on a red felt desk pad in front of her, Rose was the definition of focus as she executed bold strokes with a bamboo brush. Her straight, blue-black hair was pulled up into space buns with two matching, perfectly placed strands of hair framing the sides of her face. When Huan entered the room, she did not acknowledge his presence until she made it to the end of the column she was working on.

Walking up behind her and peering over her shoulder, Huan looked over the characters she had written in calligraphy on the page. There were a few mistakes here and there that he could notice, but he got the gist of the message of the poem she was writing. It involved the moon, the sea, and their constant push-pull relationship.

"What yah doing?" He asked her in a sing-song voice, effectively breaking her concentration.

"Trying to get the angles on these characters right. I end up lifting the brush from the page too quickly and then the sentence makes no sense."

"Huh. Maybe if you closed your eyes and centered yourself, you'd get it right. From the stack of used paper you've accrued, it seems as though you've been at this for a while." He told her, observing the sheets of inked pages that were neatly piled on her right side.

"Perhaps you are right," she agreed as she put her brush down and massaged her hand. Turning in her chair she put her arms around his neck for a hug which he lovingly returned, "missed you at this year's Moon Festival. Both you and Bao forced me to suffer through it alone with the family. Both of you owe me big for that. What good are my cousins if they leave me out to dry during family gatherings?"

Patting her on the head, he adopted a look of faux sheepishness, "I'm very sorry that our jobs forgot to factor your feelings into the schedules we are forced to keep. It's not like I'm in one of the most competitive fellowships in the country and Bao is trying to make connections with international investors in order to grow uncle Yang's business or anything." Rose had a special place in Huan's heart because he spent the majority of his teenage years babysitting her while her parents worked at their restaurant. He had been there for her first words and taught her how to tie her shoes. Although she was probably just messing with him, he would have to think of something special for her to make it up to her. Their family was a lot to handle.

Sticking her tongue out at him in jest, she replied, "you should be sorry. But then again, it was probably better that you both weren't there. The aunties were discussing both you and Bao's futures again." He sat down next to her at the table. "You would have been extremely uncomfortable with the level of plotting they were doing to get you both hitched. You know, Moon festival traditions for finding your life partner and all. I'm talking cherry-picking through the eligible bachelorettes in the community and consulting the zodiac calendar level nonsense. They make the K-dramas I watch online look docile. It was slightly unnerving," she added with a cringe.

"See, I was right. You did have all the fun without me," he added with a chuckle. "Oh well, at least I wasn't here for it. I guess the fact that no one would switch shifts with me was a blessing in disguise. I don't need them messing with my love life. I have no time these days."