Not a day goes by when I don’t grab Melody and shower her with kisses and hugs and say “I love you”. Sometimes it’s a little too much for her (haha), but I’ll take whatever I can get before it’s too late, right? =p (I hear those teenage years sneak up on you. But it’s more than a decade away. Whew!)
Growing up in an Asian home with your typical Chinese parents, there aren’t too many kisses or “I love you”s that go around. I don’t even remember giving or receiving a real hug. But we always know how much our parents love us. With parents who immigrated here as young adults, knowing no English, we know how much they sacrificed so that we would have our needs met, as well as a little more…even if there are 4 of us siblings. They worked long, long hours without complaining about the hard work that they did. As a family, we did enjoy the occasional vacation, but it wouldn’t matter the location because we just had fun together. Going to the library every single week before grocery shopping was love. (Yes, I don’t know how my mom brought 4 of us to the store, but we were pretty well-behaved kids.) Doing the gardening and yardwork together was love. Dad cooking up a scrumptious meal was love. (Everyone loves coming to eat at my parents’ place.) And even sacrifice was love. We may not have demonstrated love in an affectionate way, but I think I’ve been more blessed with love from my family than most people.
My parents made time to ensure that we grew up to love people, and love each other most of all. My mom always told me to cherish my relationships with my siblings because it is the longest relationships we will have in life. As kids, we made up all sorts of games to play. We invented our own board game (haha…maybe we’ll have it made into a real game one day), we made our own “magazine”, we turned big cardboard boxes (from our parents’ restaurant) into trains, we had a pretend grocery store, etc… (Good times!) Most people who know my siblings and I know that we like to spend time together even to this day, even it if it’s just sitting around and chatting. We’re also board game people, so you can find us doing that quite often…when we are able to get together, now that half of us are married and have kids. I hope that Melody will be able to grow up to love her sibling(s) as much as I love mine, and that she will also love those around her.
“This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network in collaboration with Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education for their Selfless Love Contest”
http://blog.parentbloggers.com
http://www.insureyourlove.org
– Joyce
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Keeping up with the Moys 