Rumblings & Ramblings

I walked over to your house, with my dismembered limbs hanging from my neck, taking in the kids walking with their parents, the groups of loud teenagers walking in clusters, and the ghoulish sounds emitting from the houses shrouded in cobwebs.

We sat on the porch giving out candy and chips to the neighbourhood children, youth, and the parents who were collecting candy on behalf of their under-a-year-old-infants in their strollers with no teeth (”suuuure the candy is for your baby” we cackled!), while drinking rum with orange juice ice cubes shaped like pumpkins, sipping pisco, and dipping chips in pesto. So fun to observe the waves of people coming up the stairs, some in identifiable costumes (i.e. 4 Batmans, 3 ice cream sundaes, innumerable witches, vampires and demons, a couple cowboys, your requisite 68539 Disney princesses etc.) and some in questionable non-sequitur attire. Funny to note how there are always gaggles of teenage girls dressed in their pajamas and hair in pigtails!

Every time you stepped inside the house, I’d sneak a chocolate bar or two into my pocket…for later, and stuff an eyeball shaped chocolate in my mouth and “test out” the other candy, to see what kids these days are eating. Research.

You would be quick to ask teenagers what they were dressed as(when they were obviously not dressed in anything but their normal wear), in that interrogative fashion that adults use where they want a justifiable and satisfying answer.  As a teen I remember thinking when that would happen, “hey, stop talking to me, you are slowing down my procurement of candy and chips…don’t you know I’m trying to collect as much junk as possible?” and roll my eyes impatiently. But, it’s part of the exchange and so they had to humour us, and I would encourage them to make stuff up, to counter your “serious” inquiries by whispering loudly behind your back “Make it up! Say you are dressed as the night sky! The colour black!”

My favourite:
“Uhhh…I am a 14 year old?!” stammered the pimply faced 14 year old boy who’s voice had barely started to break.

And then there was the following:

“I am a terrorist” — said offhandedly by a girl of 15 maybe, who looked of South Asian descent, dressed normally, covered in a beautiful long scarf which she wrapped around her face.

“I am Asian?” — said by Asian boy.

Very interesting and disturbing indeed! Perplexing too, because you’d have to wonder what they were thinking? The identity and cultural politics in me wants to dissect, evaluate, question their answers…nevertheless.

Parading down the streets afterwards, when most trick or treaters had gone home, and the sidewalks were littered with candy wrappers, the bars were filled with adults, some dressed in costume, smoking outside. The liquor kept pouring into our glasses and into our mouths.

You can be who you want to be.

Scar face kakai pumpkin!

To read about other Halloweenie harvesting activities go here!

I am part of a weekly writing group with 9 other strangers. We are given a prompt, and anywhere between 15 to 45 minutes to write with the option to share our piece with the group right after.

Today’s prompt was “write about a shared meal”, and this is what I banged out in half an hour – impromptu styles!

That late spring night when you wordlessly placed the BBQ duck on my plate at 4 am, surrounded by our friends in Chinatown, did you know what it meant?

I come from a family that never expressed affection with words well, unless it consisted of pointing out flaws or some alleged wrongdoing. Nor were we capable of comfortably showing affection with hugs or kisses. It always seemed weird to see friends willingly hug their fathers, mothers or siblings, or to have them hug me. I’d stand there, stiff, arms outstretched, only capable of patting their backs with my hands, as awkwardly as possible.

Family shared meals usually consisted of deadly tense silence – my father eating quietly with a faraway distracted look in his eyes, the wrong noise or chatter set to irritate him and lead to some admonishment, and my mother picking apart or nagging us about dirty dishes, homework, a messy room, or warning us about some looming danger. My brother would be too busy inhaling/stuffing as much food down his big mouth as humanly possible. He once won a cherry pie eating competition when he was about 14, beating dozens of other competitors, all older and bigger than him, by far.

Despite these tense meals I still managed to learn about love from my family’s shared eating rituals. Communal eating is commonplace amongst Vietnamese families (as well as other Asian groups) – where various hot and cold dishes are placed in the middle of the table for everyone to share and pick up morsels of meat or mushrooms, bean sprouts and watercress or tofu with your own set of chopsticks to put into your own individual bowl of rice. What usually transpires, especially if you are a child, is that elders such as your mother, father, aunt or uncle will take care of you in those little moments: deftly picking a shrimp dumpling and placing it on your plate or bowl. One of my favourite cousins will consistently place without my asking the nicest piece of lobster tail in mine at family events. My grandmother, when I went to visit her in Vietnam distinctly picked the best roast pork pieces and gave them to me lovingly, meanwhile simultaneously commenting out loud how I needed a hair cut badly, question my choice of pant wear, and remark that my skin was too dark.

This eating exchange ritual doesn’t just happen from elder to child but can easily occur between husband and wife, sister to brother, friend to friend, lover to lover … It is a form of bonding and affection that I understand. It is also a way to woo someone….

So when you placed that crispy duck leg on my plate that night without a word, do you know what you were doing? Do you get it?