more new work since i've been slacking:

At dim sum in Chinatown, I am wedged in between Kai's Chinese only speaking Grandmother Yin Yin and her daughter Ming. They both wear jade bracelets that are jingling in front of my face, Yin Yin speaking fast and pointing to huge platters of food on the lazy susan in the center of the table then to my plate. Ming shouts over her in English, saying, "She wants you to eat. Thats Chao Se Bao, you'll like." 

Yin Yin's eyebrows are drawn on, even her neck has thick etched rings of wrinkles. She looks so much older than my Grandmother, so much more elegant. Her skin is sprinkled with liver spots, her silk shirt with embroidered butterflies flying up the sleeves to her neck. Every time I sit my fork down on the plate, she says emphatically, "Eat! Eat!" one of the only English words she knows. 

Deftly, she snatches with her chopsticks pale dumplings for me from the passing carts of steaming bamboo baskets. I say to Kai and his mother across the table, the lazy susan spinning, "She is making me eat," and Beth replies, "Thats what she is good for." 

I feel terribly plain here as I look around at all the faces, all the children who came back to Chinatown to take their traditional Chinese Grandparents to Sunday dim sum. But feeling plain isn't a bad feeling here, I feel warmth. Yin Yin- is that her real name?- is poking me with a chopstick in the shoulder, urging me, "Eat, eat!" and in her eyes I am the too thin, too pale, curly haired blonde girl who helps her daughter in law with her children. To them, I am strange. Why do I refuse the black bean chicken feet? Why do I ask what kind of meat is in the dumpling- "Good, you try," Yin Yin insists through Ming, shoving one on my plate. 

Afterwards, once hugs and red envelopes etched with gold Chinese characters full of twenty dollar bills are exchanged, we brave the rain with still wet and tattered umbrellas, stomping through puddles, the sky a canopy of clouds. We walk across the square, to the townhouses in red brick with green doors where Yin Yin lives. She tells me to "Sit, sit," in a chair in the kitchen and everyone else goes to the living room to eat moon cakes and yell at the Bears game in Chinese. Yin Yin moves and flutters about the kitchen, packing food, strange soups made from roots in plastic tubs. 

Ming walks in as Yin Yin is shoving a moon cake shaped like a pig into my growing bag of food for the road, most of its origin unknown, and they talk back and forth for a moment. Ming smiles and looks at me. "The soup she packed you, she says it is for happiness and good health." And I remember Beth saying when she was pregnant with Kai that Yin Yin would always bring her soups especially for those about to conceive, old mysterious family recipes. I smile and thank her. She pinches my cheeks and says something no one bothers to translate. I take my happiness soup home and eat it on my back porch while I watch it rain. I'm still waiting for something to happen, like magic.