Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the top three Chinese festivals. Last year, I celebrated it with 2 friends by a feast of seafood pasta, wine, and Barossa cheese with tomato. We walked around “Little Italy” (North End) to help “digest” afterwards. Then we watched the moon with Boston skyline while sharing the moon cake on a swing at downtown park. It was lovely.
This year, due to Covid, I’m not going to a restaurant, neither Chinatown to get moon cake, nor getting together with friends. Instead, aunt threw a backyard pot lot with a few old friends. We enjoyed pizza, lobster, bao, rice noodle, pickled cabbage, chicken wings, sesame ball, and moon cake while chatting and laughing over masks. Life is as normal as it is…clear sky, fresh air, low humidity, and temperatures in high 60s, we couldn’t ask for a better evening to be outside. I walked around the neighborhood searching for the moon…suddenly, a big bright yellow circle appeared on the tip of a house…quiet, calm, and hopeful.
I thought of mom, dad, and sister on the other side of planet watching the moon. I won’t be able to go home this year yet I send my best wish to them via the moon. Later, I read mom’s email, she wrote中秋月圓心圓事事圓 (Mid-Autumn Festival, moon is round, hearts (people) get together, and everything goes well). There is no distance for love in our heart.