I skipped jujitsu today because my wrist and knee aren’t feeling up to par and I don’t want to risk further injury, and because my family has relatives visiting from Taiwan and their tour group put them in a local hotel tonight. So I had dinner w/many relatives I hadn’t seen since November, 1998.

I was a bit pensive going to dinner and took care to look presentable because Asian relatives like to make physical observations and commentary. “Your head’s unproportionately big for your body.” “You Americans must like the unruly hair look. We proper Chinese prefer the neatly groomed student look.” And because I threw my clear contacts away and am wearing out my gray ones before I throw these away, “I’ve noticed you American-grown Chinese kids like to pretend you’re white.” But it turned out that no one made any such commentary at me. Instead, my mother said to her cousin (in front of his wife and kids and everyone else) “You’re a lot fatter now than the last time I saw you.” “That’s rude,” I told her under my breath. She looked surprised.

I remember that cousin of my mom’s fondly. When I was 4 or 5, he let me run ahead of him while he followed me on his bike, then when I got to the finish line first, he panted and said to me how impressed he was that I beat him. It was years before I realized he had let me win. For years I claimed to be able to outrun a bicycle, and everyone thought I was a conceited liar. (And by “years,” I mean until I almost finished junior high.) Then, on 11-13-98, I stayed with this same cousin’s family (him, his wife plus 2 young sons) in their apartment when vacationing with my mother in Taiwan. That evening’s journal entry reads:

As the kids were being annoying & violent to each other yesterday morning, their dad suddenly said, “Hey, I just thought of a great game!” That stopped them from fighting over their stupid water balloons. “Wanna play?” he asked them. Of course they wanted to play. He said, “You two run downstairs & stand under the balcony outside.” (We’re on the 7th floor.) “…I’ll throw the water balloons down and you try to catch them.” I had to bite my tongue, but the kids’ mom said to her sons, “You think you’ll catch them? Don’t let Daddy trick you!” So they didn’t go for it.

Later, I told my mom about how my coworkers think I’m getting too skinny and how I think I could still stand to lose a few more pounds, and she readily agreed, without any malice aforethought, said “I think so, too. You should lose at least another 15 lbs.”