new year, old friends

This is a picture of Ping holding a picture of her mother. I don't even remember her mother's name; I called her Chang Mama when I lived with her in Taiwan. That was fifty years ago. I was thinking of her when, in The Great Clearing Out, I found these pockets she sewed for me. 

 

I needed pockets because when I hand sewed the skirts I had to wear in Taiwan, I did not put pockets in them, and I was not a handbag type of girl. I saw one of these that Chang Mama had and admired it (I was a little hippy dippy), so she embroidered these for me. 

I sent the picture of the pockets to Ping, whose birthday by the lunar calendar is in three days, and I thought how amazing it is that we are still close after all of those years. We probably wouldn't be had she not moved to the States maybe twenty years ago. But here we are.

Our epic trip to the Goose and Graceland a couple years ago confirmed the fact that we can still live together in harmony despite culture shock and language issues (I having forgotten my Chinese and her having forgotten, though rather less, her English). 

So the deal is, you can't fang xia people. (See previous blog entry.)