作者 | 聿風

編輯 | 璇子

See you next time

In the end of 2024, my friend R returned to China for a short stay after living in Canada for 14 years.

His schedule was quite busy in one month, including a few cities and a trip to Japan.

"I probably will drop by in the end of this month." He messaged me in mid-November.

"Sure, just text me before you come." I replied. At the time I was staying at a maternity center, about one month ago I gave birth to my daughter.

R took it as a day trip--my city is only one and a half hour by bullet train from Shanghai. He arrived at about 3.00 pm in the afternoon.

I prepared some fruits and desserts for our reunion. I also borrowed the maternity center's meeting room from the manager, so we wouldn't wake up the sleeping baby.

"Just unreal to meet you again in this place." he kept repeating this.

I understood that. We hadn't met for about six years, since my graduation in 2018. He was in charge of the photo shooting of my graduation ceremony. (However, I still haven't got all of my pictures of the day until now.) During the years apart, we both had new happenings in daily life, though we did update each other, periodically. But I kept my pregnancy as a secret from most of my friends, he didn't know it until two months ago.

Yet he was actually the first friend of mine to see my daughter offline--face to face in reality.

"Hello, baby." He whispered to the baby. "It's so weird that I feel more intimacy seeing your daughter than seeing my sister's child." he signed.

"Really? That's so funny." As the only boy in the siblings, he had kind of drifted away from his three sisters' life.

We talked in the meeting room for about two hours, until it turned dark in the room. He noticed some buildings far away in the window were gold plated in sunset. It was a clear day.

"I have to take a picture of this." he muttered, then took out a mini camera from his bag and took a few pictures from his seat. "This is a good one." He checked the pictures with excitement on his face. He used to work as a part-time event photographer back in Toronto.

"Many of my friends living in China got married and had babies." R said, "maybe I should move on, too." He finished the last few slices of oranges and said.

"Why not, your girlfriend would be glad to hear that." I said. They had been together before I left Canada.

His train's departure time was approaching. We cleaned the table and walked out to the elevator.

I hugged him and said, "Live your life to the full."

"I will. Take care." He smiled and waved to me when the elevator closed.

I waited for another elevator and returned to my room. The baby was still sleeping.

R flied back to Toronto two days after visiting me. I don't know how long would it take until our next reunion in the future, but I believe we would meet again in a better shape of ourselves.

See you next time.

Good Luck

Bin and I met in Xintiandi (Shanghai) late at night to find a barbecue shop for a midnight snack. He had just finished his training at the gym.

It was the summer of 2021, when I had finally returned to a daily routine after dad's four-month hospitalization due to a sudden illness. I was eager to meet up with my friends to relax and unwind.

We used to meet at least once a year when I stayed in China during summer vacations. Then the quarantine began, two years had passed since we last saw each other.

Bin is the only secondary school friend I still keep in touch with regularly. We exchanged updates on our lives. Since he gave up going to Spain for his master's degree, he had been working in our hometown, Bangladesh and Shanghai, and his career in game industry (which started in Shanghai) had been flourishing in the past few years.

By the time we met, I was still waiting for my master's degree certificate to be issued and shipped to me. I was standing at the crossroad, had no idea where I should go next.

We climbed to the second floor of the barbecue shop, sat down and scanned the code to order food. I was not yet used to the latest technology utilized in consumption scenarios in China, which was more advanced, so I just let him order for me.

"I just ordered some stuff I like. Do you have any preferences?" He asked me while scrolling the screen, checking what he had selected.

"Get some needle mushroom for me," I said. I was not very hungry.

"Sure," He quickly tapped on his phone.

He looked a little bit withered, maybe from the long hours of overtime work everyday. I heard that his income at the time was quite decent.

"I might try to build a startup later." He said casually.

"By yourself?"

"With one of my colleages now, also my friend."

"Sounds cool. Good luck!" I said. Not many people of my generation have the passion to create something from zero.

"Not anytime soon, at least next year. We are still working on the business plan," He added.

"It's just great you have a plan. I'll wait for your good news." We laughed together. No matter how long we hadn't seen each other, our conversations would always be relaxed and smooth, like we were at school.

We haven't met each other since that day.

Last week, when exchanging some New Year's greeting messages, he told me he had finally started his own business.

The pandemic had obviously postponed his plan, but it's the first piece of good news for the new year.

"Good Luck!" I replied in a second.

Dad's Birthday/Liv's 100th Day Celebration

Our family usually does not celebrate lunar birthdays, except my father. His lunar birthday falls on the 5th day of the Lunar New Year, a day people love to celebrate by greeting the God of Wealth. Dad's friends always gather on his birthday to have another big meal during the holidays.

We made a reservation at dad's favorite restaurant for today's lunch a few days ago, and luckily we got the largest box room.

A lovely coincidence happened this year--my new-born daughter's 100th day shared her grandfather's lunar birthday. So we could celebrate the two events together. We kept this as a secret until the moment when all the guests raised their glasses before the meal. They were all surprised and moved by this destinied connection between grandpa and grandaughter.

I ordered two cakes, one for my dad and one for my daughter. Dad's friends also brought two cakes. We opened all four and lit the candles together. When Dad blew out all the four cakes' candles, I knew our family had offically crossed over into another year.

Yesterday, when discussing the cake style with the patissier, most pictures I found online for a girl had a pink tone. I don't like pink, and I don't like the default 'pink for girl' concept. I picked the style of a cake picture, but customzied the color to a neutral yellow tone.

I still can't believe the day I gave birth to my daughter was already three months ago. Every moment of those few days has engraved in my mind. Seeing her lying in the cradle as she was moved out of the delivery room was a slightly surreal scene for me. This tiny individual had just appeared in my world.

The first night after her birth, I was so excited and couldn't fall asleep (even though I was extremely tired). And my favorite line from the movie Carol came up in my mind:

"My angel, flung out of space."

I'm not sure how she feels about the very first 100 days of her life, but for me, it was a challenging period during which I never had a full night's sleep (I still have to get up at least once now). Sometimes I couldn't figure out her demands when she was crying. It must have been a tough time for her, too--having someone take care of her who couldn't always fix her problems.

Glad that we made it through the hardest days, together.

And the good (but still hard) days are yet to come.

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