liked it. I said, hey you can write one too; if you did, I would love to read. She said but what am I going to write next year?

           For the past few years I have been carrying it on without any difficulty, much to the contrary, it was Xiaofeng who complained: cut it short, or you are going to bore other people. No, I know my lady friends like to read, I said. This year, however, when I first thought about Christmas letter, what crept into my mind was, what am I going to write?

          With the dot-com melting down, economy recession if not depression (it’s recession when you are out of work, it’s depression when I am out of work), highest jobless claims (highest I’ve seen in the IT industry), friends being laid off, friends having to work out of state, I don’t know even if I am in the mood to write, will there be interests to read.

          That was my downtime thought. At other times I like better the attitude of “we're gonna enjoy it anyway”. Life goes on. I see my friends cope with it; some were even happier to be a housewife, with much the same hope that this isn’t going to be forever.

           For half year this year we had the luxury of having Xiaofeng’s parents staying with us. They came in March and left in Sept, so they had fully appreciated the Texas summer, that at the airport before boarding the going back airplane, my father-in-law said he wanted to come back next year, but in winter time.  At least he’s still interested. Kids have fully enjoyed having grandma grandpa around, and I was happy to have a full house, happy to have dinner ready after coming back from work, happy that kids got the attention that they needed.

          In the middle of the year, Xiaofeng made a trip back to China to attend a conference. This was the first time he went back in more than ten years. He felt great about the trip. He said he had met everyone he wanted to see. Endless lunches till 4pm or dinner till 10pm, he only got to eat dinner at home twice. Asking about his impression, he said he felt like the two weeks had really opened him up, history seemed to have stopped for him. If he looked back the ten years that he spent in US, it all seemed like a flashing moment.  I don’t know how it can be that two weeks is like forever and then ten years is like a quick turning page. But he said by looking it that way, he felt that all his problems became insignificant, and I said that sounds good.

          As an exchange (Xiaofeng called it reward), I got to take his parents for a trip to Washington DC. His colleague’s comment was, what? You got to go back to China all by yourself, and now you asked Lisa to take YOUR parents for a trip? What kind of reward is that? We also took my mom with us. So three commanders and one soldier. I felt being pulled in all directions, and they were constantly telling me how wrong the American ways were (given the fact that none of them could read the traffic sign).

          The trip wasn’t as dreadful as I already described, because I got to see my college classmates. I have a few classmates living in DC and another one from Boston also came. So five families, a total number of 22 people, together we made a trip from DC to Ocean City and then Atlantic City. The day we decided this I was very happy, feeling very appreciated. The trip was lots of fun, getting to see friends that I haven’t seen for a long time, playing at the beach and later casinos. Not only me, but also my father-in-law were very overwhelmed by the trip. We kept recalling the trip and my father-in-law said he wanted another one.

          Early in spring I started taking piano lesson at a community college. The course was called “Leisure Piano I”, so nothing serious. It is one of my efforts to do what I love to do out of the disbelief that many of my friends are saying “I’m going to do something when I retire”.  At the end of August we bought our own piano. One week after that I found out that one of our friends was out of work for more than three months. Only till then did I realize how bad the economy had become.  Talking to my other friend, I said I was disappointed not knowing why I needed a piano under such a bad economy. Then my friend told me the story that a year ago with $1000 bonus, one Nortel worker bought Nortel stocks, and the other bought a truckload of beer. At year-end the first guy got $50 back; the second guy, after drinking beer for the whole year, got  $80 dollars back in recycling the aluminum cans. That was certainly some comforting words for me and it was also very convincing. The past four months proved that it wasn’t a mistake, as the music world that a piano has opened up for me is beyond any words.

          Dennis turned five this October. After five years of parenting, I thought I knew a lot about this youngster, but from time to time he still surprises me.  Now that being five, he has enough intelligence to trick me. One day he asked me, “mommy, what’s the name of the deer which has no eyes?” “…” I couldn’t come up with any answer. “No idea! (No-eye-deer)” His school has “show and tell” every Friday, and for a period of time, he liked to take his Froggy (stuffed animal) to the class, having Froggy wearing his (Dennis’) underwear. The underwear covered more than half of Froggy’s body, so I said to him that doesn’t look good, but he insisted. One day he wanted to dress up his Froggy again, but he couldn’t find any underwear in the drawers. Then I heard him murmuring. “Oh well, it’s close to bedtime, maybe I can take off MY underwear”. And so he DID, putting it on for Froggy! “I thought you were a gentleman, I didn’t know you would take off your underwear”, I was literally sitting on the floor laughing.

            Ashley, you all know I am going to tell how sweet she is, and you are right. She’s the kind of kid that is well loved by all ages, be it grandparents, aunts and uncles, or just the bit older kids who like to take her into their play. Once walking outside with her grandpa, she saw grandpa almost fumble over a small rock. That started her effort to look for small rocks and clean them out of the way as she kept saying “Grandpa, come this way…” In some Kung-Fu practice, or the practice that monks used to take deep in the mountains, the aim is for one’s mind to reach a state, a realm, in which one’s emotion is no longer influenced by the delight or sorrow of ordinary life, that one’s mind can forever be peaceful. My friend has once made the comment, it seems like your Ashley has already reached that state!         

             That’s all from us. We wish every one of our friends a great holiday season and may all the happiness be with you in the coming new year!