I brought home a cow plushie for Chinese New Year this year.
My parents chuckled.
As I well knew they would.
Their daughter is known for bringing home plushies that she finds significant and special.
Christmas? Birthdays? Chinese New Year? Vacations?
There will be a toy.
I once brought home a wombat I bought from Brisbane.
Another time I brought home a moose which a visiting festival performer from Canada had given to every staff in the theatrical company I worked in.
This year being the Year of the Bull, I brought home a bull- a cow-whatever.
Again they chuckled.
But this be the charm of how we do our celebrations at home.
We do them whatever way brings us the most joy.
No rules.
We don't need new decor to mark the beginning of a new lunar year.
We don't need (the usual) foods to define what marks a family celebration and a brand new year.
What we need is laughter, harmony, peace and togetherness with each other.
Which we have.
This year we brought out the decor that we had made last year.
We also brought out the rooster which had been snugly wrapped in a plastic bag for the entire year and which we debated whether to remove it for the sake of the picture. (We didn't)
The plastic plum flowers (however a little faded) were there in the big blue vase by the corner.
On the table were the foods that we regularly buy when this season of Chinese New Year rolls around.
It was cool.
There was a packet of individually wrapped orange sweets coated with sugar which I make it a point to have every year because it looks just like sliced oranges, it has a bright cheerful color, and we can snack on it throughout the year.
There was the pack of chocolates which they had bought and which sat wrapped in cellophane paper in its own box.
And there was the jar of almond cookies which I had selected this year to mark the occasion.
There were also oranges.
As were carbonated apple drinks and pink guava juice.
In the center of everything was a plate of store-bought siew mai which we had earlier bought, steamed up in the rice cooker and which we now served with fried seafood balls, cherry tomatoes, chili sauce and mayonnaise.
There is something special about having the plate of siew mais sitting pretty on the dining table.
Maybe because it is one of my favorite selections at dim sum.
Maybe because every time I see it I mm reminded to be thankful that I have a brand new celebration to be in.
And maybe because the colors, the texture, and the familiarity of it all is complementary to every dish we have on our table at celebration time.
I always try to take a great picture of it.
Then of course there were the noodles.
Don't laugh- noodles are a very meaningful dish to me.
They are a part of my life.
They are a part of our family.
Doesn't matter what flavors they are (or if they have any flavors at all), the dish- when prepared in a certain way- brings back wonderful memories of us slurping them up as we sit around the dining table on cold, windy, rainy afternoons, and of leisurely weekend meals with our favorite DVD in the player.
It's all very special.
Made even more special when our noodles have all my favorite frozen balls (cuttlefish!), lots of green leafy vegetables cooked really soft, lots of juicy tomatoes that give the soup a sweet-sour tang, bobbing cheese sausages, and- because it is Chinese New Year- big button mushrooms as well.