Chinese Version09-02-2024
Today is Labor Day and the whole country is on holiday，as am I. At home, watching grey green leaves of lavender, using one hand to gently rub them to collect the incense on my hand, and smelling my hand with the calming lavender incense relaxed my mind and I started to think about trivial things in heaven and on earth.
I found it was very relaxing and pleasant to flow in the long memory stream of my late parents, as I recalled the stories and love they left behind without any substantial duties.
After retiring, my mother and father had very different hobbies: my father liked reading and writing, and my mother liked watching TV. As I saw her watching TV so often, I chatted with my daughter about this many times: “Your grandmother didn’t like reading after retirement, but liked watching TV.” After hearing this enough times, my daughter said: “Could grandma’s Alzheimer’s disease be related to her lifestyle of not reading after retirement?” I said: “We hadn’t heard of Alzheimer’s disease at that time (mid-1980s).”
The first time I heard about Alzheimer’s disease was in the United States in the early 1990′s. When I read that excessive aluminum intake may lead to Alzheimer’s disease and that using aluminum cookware daily brings aluminum into food, I thought of my parents at home using aluminum pots to steam rice, boil water, and cook soup, so I wrote a letter to tell them to get rid of the aluminum pots and basins in order to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Then my brother wrote back: “Your letter worked, as Mom and Dad finally get rid of all the aluminum cookwares now, although we have said it many times earlier without success.” I think that this is an example of elderly and stubborn parents who are more likely to accept the same suggestion from different children. Actually, I am also more likely to accept the same suggestion when it comes from both my daughter and my son, which is why sometimes my daughter asks her younger brother to chat with me about things on the side. I fell lucky to have two children!
After my mother retired, she not only liked watching TV but also liked learning health related new knowledge. However, there were no such books for sale in Xinhua Bookstore in my hometown Zigong, and the library was not open to the public there. My mother learned bits and pieces of knowledge from the newspapers she subscribed to. She cut out health-related articles and collected them into a book to review and share. After I started graduate school in the United States, my mother attached a newspaper clipping about eye exercise in a letter from home and wrote: “You will use your eyes a lots in your studies now, so you need to pay attention to protecting your eyes. I am sending this article about simple eye exercises. You can try it out.” My habit of rolling my eyeballs in the morning and evening came from that small newspaper clipping, because it carried my mother’s thoughtful love from afar.
Later, when I heard that a neighbor was experiencing Ocular Hypertension, I also recommended the same rolling eyes exercises, which didn’t work, because simple preventive exercises need to be practiced over time to take effect. After my son went to college, he spent longer hours on the computer, and he sometimes said that his eyes were tired. I told him to take a break from the computer screen every hour to rest his eyes and to look far and green leaves outside; I also told him to spend one or two minutes every morning and evening to roll his eyeballs, which can strengthen the muscles around the eyes over time. Passing on the healthy tips my mother taught me is the joy of having children.
My daughter reminded me a few weeks ago: “You should pay attention to oral hygiene and avoid having bad breath like grandma used to.” My daughter’s care for my oral hygiene reminded me of my caring for my mother’s bad breath many years ago. After graduating from college started my first job as a high school teacher in middle 1980′s, I bought a bottle of mouthwash for my mother to help with her bad breath. My mother said that she felt the water was burning in her mouth, but it didn’t help her bad breath. The caring of mother’s oral hygiene in two generations of daughters in my family also shows the joy of having children.
Labor Day is a day to labor, I labored in thinking that the joy of having children is a way of conveying the love in heaven and on earth, which made the world lovely and lovable.