Remembering How to Feel

As I slowly relax, I'm realizing just how stressed I've been since November. This was a really good weekend when I let down my guard and remembered how to feel.

•	Friday night, we celebrated Chinese New Year, making homemade steamed dumplings and hot and sour soup. It was important to Snake and me to give Br'er Rabbit a good celebration. This is the first time he has been away from China and his family for New Years. I learned that the jiaozi (dumplings) are the shape of gold lumps and they represent prosperity for the new year. For this reason, you do not share dumplings outside the family! There's just not enough prosperity in China to go around, I guess.
•	Saturday, Snake and I went to a friend's house to photograph her paintings with our digital camera so she could get down to some serious marketing. Snake and I went for a big walk afterwards, exploring her part of town and enjoying each others' company. After Br'er Rabbit came to Canada, Snake and I became a bit more distant as most of his focus (positive and negative) was on the bunny boy. Since our trip to Montreal last weekend, S. and I have really reconnected and our days are punctuated by sudden smiles of discovery: "Oh, it's you! I love you, and there you are!"
•	On Sunday, I brought one of my dad's CDs over to my cousin's apartment. She wanted to give it to the palliative care physician who's treating her husband in his unwinnable battle with bone cancer. I spent about 90 minutes talking with them. He's very calm at this stage. He enjoys having visitors and does not seem scared. The two of them have lost two of their three children -- one to cancer and one to a sudden heart attack. I've never been that close to him, but at a family function a year ago he suddenly told me that he does not believe in God anymore. No god that he could pray to would have taken away his sons like that.
•	On Sunday night, we watched Fögi est un Salaud, a Franco-Swiss movie about a 16 year old boy in 1973 who falls for a sexy glam rocker and moves in with him. The rocker takes an all-too-familiar downward spiral into addiction and self-destruction. But the performance by the 16 year old kid was amazing -- naked and brave and beautiful. Also notable for believable concert footage of the glam band.