Eccentric, that’s the word. I’ve been trying to find a term to describe the latest stage in the evolution of my Mother-in-law’s character. When she elected to become a Buddhist nun, sometime in her 50’s, I would have described her as devout, determined to spend the rest of her time on this coil performing various exercises that would ensure her next rebirth would be less filled with work and disappointment.
Over the years I think she has moved from devout to ever so slightly potty and frequently a bit grouchy. Yesterday was one of those grouchy days. She always gets up early and wanders down to the kitchen where she spends way too much time over a pot, stirring up some virtually inedible concoction of bean curd and vegetables (no onion or garlic please!) but the family assures me that she was always a pretty miserable cook so no real change there. What impresses me is the amount of time that she invests in cooking and eating. The quantities of the muck she consumes are impressive – I figure she stays rail thin because she has managed to boil out all of the food value of whatever ingredients she mixes together. Even the smell is faintly repulsive; normally Chinese cooking is a welter of smells, many exotic but virtually all enticing (except for a type of pickled bean curd whose olfactory characteristics are not attractive).
So my Mother-in-law finishes her cooking and eating – she needs to rush because she will have to begin preparing her next meal shortly. Meantime, my wife is busily cutting and chopping and so on, getting things ready for a family shabu-shabu in the evening (our New Year’s banquet if you will). The ingredients are fresh – seafood, beef, lamb, tofu, vegetables.
My Mother-in-law looks over my wife’s shoulder, ‘What are you preparing?’. When informed that it’s a meal for the family and the ingredients are enumerated she mutters and wanders off, ‘I guess I’ll have to go to the temple’.
Buddhists are generally the most tolerant of the religious amongst us. I frequently tell people in the middle of arguments about how Christianity is a religion of the emotions that no one ever charged into battle shouting the name of Buddha at the top of their lungs. This doesn’t, however, seem to be the case of my Mother-in-law on one of her grouchy days.
My Mother-in-law is now getting on for 80. I suspect that her mental faculties are as good as ever they were. What I also believe is that they don’t come into full use except when she is grouchy. It is during those periods that she gives play to a sharpness that is otherwise disguised by what I suspect is a form of piety that includes both generosity and an inward focus that seems to be an objective of being Buddhist.
So, Mom-in-law was not pleased, on this grouchy New Year’s Eve, by the notion of a family dinner where the attendees would stuff themselves with God’s creatures. All day, after learning it was her plan to go to the temple, I wondered what would be the end-game. Evening and the arrival of family brought the answer.
I should explain that ‘Amah’, as she is referred to by the family, is not exactly Kate Moss. She shaved her head when she became a nun and has kept the same hairdo ever since. It’s not unattractive, it’s just there – and I think that’s the point of shaving it for Buddhist nuns and monks, you get rid of sexual differentiators. And her clothes? She dresses in a loose shirt-like thing and some even looser pants that are tied at the waist with a string. The color is a becoming and uniform washed-out gray (from daily laundering).
Amah’s teeth were pulled a couple of decades ago and, since then, her smile has been one of the sights of Pingtung, enhanced as it is by her brilliantly white dentures. But this evening we were not to be graced by a dazzling display of her oral prosthetics. I saw her half an hour before the first relatives were to arrive and she was toothless, her lips compressed into a depression around the gums. Very attractive. It was clear that she was heated up and not in a party mood.
Recently Amah has taken up making notebooks of cheap computer printing paper with covers made of intricately decorated cardboard from used boxes. I am not digressing here ….
New Year’s Eve and the pending arrival of family for a slap up dinner was, in her view, exactly the right time for Amah to decide that she should park herself on the marble steps just inside our door to cut used Christmas boxes into notebook covers giving her an excuse for being there so that, toothless, she could glare at every relative as they came in, wordlessly condemning them for the cannibalistic rite in which they were about to participate.
Being Chinese and inherently polite, everyone made note of Amah’s presence as they entered, nicely circling around her and making appropriately respectful noises. They then traipsed into the dining room to eat. Eventually with all the guests at the table and Amah absent (after everyone was here she managed to trans-substantiate herself from the downstairs entrance, past the dining room and upstairs to her room, unseen) I innocently supposed that we had seen the last of her for the evening; she would go to bed, it was getting on for 7:30 or 8:00 and that’s lights out for most Buddhist nuns. I was wrong.
It was at this point that our Buddhist Banquo showed up. Gliding down the stairs, all gray and toothless, Amah percolated into the room. Refusing a seat at the table where the slaughter was underway, she hovered behind various chairs, murmuring vile imprecations while still commenting on our cooking techniques (around a family shabu-shabu pot, culinary skills vary widely, mine being particularly unique).
We managed to wind the evening up very nicely. Everyone ate their fill and I rate the dinner a success. The shadow of Amah hung over things for a bit but optimism in the face of adversity is our watchword and, with enough alcohol, specters become illusory. The last guest stumbled out and we went to bed just after midnight to the echoing booms of what were clearly celebratory bombs.
The rest of the night passed peacefully except for the ruckus around 3 AM when a spectacularly lit neighbor’s wife noisily tried to prevent the man of the house from taking a leisurely drive around town. Ultimately she convinced him that bed was a better bet but by then the first dawn of 2010 was on us.
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