Pictures of the parents

My parents left yesterday, to return to Taiwan. They had been Stateside 5 weeks, visiting their 4 children.


It was great having them here. We did way too much eating and nearly everything my mom cooks involves soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar. Mmmmm.


They were here for Chinese New Year, which occurred on February 7, 2008 this year. That week they happened to be in NYC, visiting Brother Two. Sister, Brother One, and I went up there to celebrate the new year together.

Everytime we were in a car, Ba and Brother One slept. I'm sure Brother Two would have slept too if he wasn't driving.

Here's a picture of Ma and Ba on New Year day. Guess where they are?


Ma's wearing a beret I knit from Colinette yarn 50% wool, 50% cotton, Meditterranean colorway. Ba's wearing a fleece hat he swiped from Sister's stash.

In every picture, Ba has the same expression. We tell him to smile, the flash goes off and then he smiles. But I did manage to get this picture.


Here's an obligatory picture of the Empire State Building.

The plan for the day was for all of us to going into Manhattan and meet Sister's boyfriend at Penn Station. He came up from DC for the occasion. Then we would split up and do some sight seeing or shopping and meeting at Bobby Van's Steakhouse for dinner.



Brothers One and Two split while the rest of us basically walked up and down 7th Avenue. I loved the energy of people rushing about at the end of their workday.


On the way to Times Square we passed Bryant Park, and it's Fashion Week! Sister and I are Project Runway fans and we were pretty happy to see this at the gates into Bryant Park.


Then, totally randomly, I saw Brothers One and Two. We were headed north and they were headed east and we met on the corner of Bryant Park. Here's a picture of Brother Two, a jaded New Yorker now that he's been there 6 months. Notice the look of contempt he's giving me as I take his picture, with the Chrysler Building all lit up in the background.
























The Empire State Building may symbolized NYC (it helps that you can go up to the top and movies are set there), but the Chrysler Building is my favorite. Love that Art Deco top.



Here's a family portrait on that same corner. Sister's boyfriend took the picture.

Husband didn't make the trip with me. He was on 2 trial calendars for that week. In the end, neither case got reached and it turned out that he could have come with me. Oh well.



I asked Husband what he wanted as a souvenir. He said a picture of me with the NYPD. So here it is, in Times Square. Where, by the way, I saw the big scrolling news marquee saying that Mitt Romney dropped out. Yay!
























On Feb 8, we all split up. Ma and Ba took the train to DC with Sister and her boyfriend. Brother One stayed for one more day with Brother Two. I took the plane back to Atlanta.


But before splitting, we hung out in Brother Two's efficiency and he dug out these:


Going left to right, it's Jerry, Ted Jr, and Jerry, all about 3 inches tall. They were Brother One and Two's little stuffed animals that they played with when they were small.


Ted Jr. is Brother One's. He was called Ted Jr. because he was the second teddy (the first one was lost, which was heart breaking for both Brother One and Ma), and smaller.



Jerry was Brother Two's, named after the mouse in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, which we loved watching. Great music too, with all that Gershwin and Copeland.

There are two because we thought we lost Jerry and Ma got him another. Then we found the first Jerry. I made the second Jerry his little vest. This was back when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out. Brothers would play Raiders with Ted Jr. and Jerry. I think I made Ted Jr. an outfit too, but clearly that didn't survive.

So, while Brother Two may be all sardonic and too cool for tourist pictures, clearly he's got a sentimental side too, if he's kept these little guys all these years.

Last picture of NYC: My siblings napping before heading out our separate ways. I got a hotel room for Ma, Ba, and various siblings to stay in, because we can't all fit in Brother Two's 400 sq ft efficiency.

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The week after NYC, Ma and Ba came to Atlanta. Here we are at the High Museum of Art, which has an exhibit from the Louvre.

But we were there for the Georgia O'Keefe and the Women of the Steiglitz Circle exhibit. Alfred Steiglitz had this idea that women artists (as opposed to regular artists who were men), were more pure, more childlike. And he was pretty okay with taking naked pictures of them too. This exhibit did not make me like Steiglitz very much. But I loved the O'Keefe paintings and was happy to see works by her female peers.

Every night, it was quite an eating extravaganza. The beer and wine and other spirits flowed freely. This was a frequent sight, despite Ba's efforts to ward off the camera:

Here's their last night in Atlanta and Stateside. We're playing euchre, a card game which is pretty much a shortened version of bridge. Note the various libations. There's a reason I thought Husband might enjoy making his own beer.

Ma and Ba say that next year, they'll come visit in summer, when the weather will be nicer and they won't need to pack as much clothes. Which will make room for more books.

Every other day in each city they visited (DC, NYC, Atl), they went to a used bookstore. I don't know how many books they eventually got. Ba says 20. Ma says 50. That should tide them over until next year.

And to end this post, a picture of my parents, who have been married almost 40 years. Strangely, they are walking away from the grocery store, not towards it.