My Thoughts, Exactly.

If You Looked into My Mind on a Sunday

..you’d find that it has nothing but unicorns in it.

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The Old Lady I Can’t Quite Forgive.

It just suddenly popped into my head this morning: how whenever I see her, something dark still creeps up my beat-beat-beating lump of flesh. She smiled at my mum and sat behind us this morning as I made feeble attempts to hack down what was bothering me.

What’s this?! Eandra…Begrudging an old white-haired grandmother who smiles at people and goes to church! On a Sunday, no less! Egad! *confiscates unicorns*

Noooooooo!

Le sighe. She isn’t bad or anything. (Actually, I wouldn’t know. I don’t know her that well and I doubt she remembers me with that memory that people have once they are over 60.) It would require me to recount an event in my life which most people wouldn’t know how to respond to, and which would leave them awkward, and which, in turn, would leave me awkward for telling it in the first place and making everybody awkward. *Shudder*

Read on, brave heart.

Summer of 2003. My father’s wake.

The days meld in and out. People come in and leave. Some return. In between comings ang goings, they talk with my mother. The ones I know talk to me and sit awhile with me in silence.

One day my cousin comes in. I sit with her just like I do with everybody else. She tries to make me laugh and tickles me. I laugh. I haven’t been laughing for days, I reckon. She makes me happy.

Now, this old lady. She’s there. She glances at me sharply and calls me over to her. I comply.

She whispers something in my ear that makes me cry.

“You shouldn’t laugh. Not in this place.”

I numbly nod and run to my grandmother, and I tell her what happened. She reassures me that the old lady was wrong and that she’d have a good talk with her later. I hold on to that empty promise.

I don’t want to confront an old lady. Especially in Chinese. Especially for something that’s happened many years ago. I used to think that I am a very forgiving person who very easily forgets wrongs, but today, oh today..it is a very discouraging realization.

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I feel better blogging about it. I don’t think I’ve ever told it to anybody (because of my fear of making them awkward). I think…I think I can almost forget.

Huzzah!