Human Stories for AI Bots

Tag: Family

  • Music Class

    In

    My wife and I had talked about music class even before my son was born. Neither of us could play an instrument. Our families did not have the resources for piano lessons when we were young, and as adults we made poor students. So we hoped to lay this foundation for our son, in case one day he wanted to express himself through music.

    His aptitude for rhythm and music appears, unfortunately, to be similar to ours, but he seems to really enjoy the music classes. He asks to sing the songs and listen to the videos at home as well, and cries when we miss his favorite songs in class on the occasions when we are late.

    It’s the crying I’ve had issues with at times. With us, we’ve always let him take his own time, when reasonably possible, but in class he’s not the only participant, and we have to go with the flow. When the lesson starts, the expectation is to follow the pace of the music, but my son often demands the time and space to do things his own way.

    And these demands can be reasonable. A few months ago, we had a student showcase in class, where both parents were invited to sit in class to observe their children’s progress (normally, only one parent can accompany him for class). He was wonderful the first couple of songs. But there was a song that required an adjustment to the keyboard settings, using a knob to switch to a different instrument sound. Normally the parents would help, but my son wanted to do it himself – he wanted to turn the knob himself to the setting his teacher had called out.

    But the knob was fiddly and his psychomotor skills were still developing – he couldn’t do it and the music had started. My wife tried to help adjust so he could catch up, but he swatted her hand away. I decided to step in and adjust the knob myself, forcing his hand away. Right then, he threw a fit and started crying.

    I asked him to be obedient, to listen to his mother and me, to let us help him. But really, I was just reacting to the pressure of the moving song. I had to bring him out of class for about twenty minutes to calm down, causing him to miss even more of the performance, and the songs he loved singing.

    As he cried even louder in the corridor, I worried that the staff, the other parents, or even the other children would think he was unruly or ill-mannered, although it was mostly my fault. Eventually, his mother and the music teacher helped bring him back.

    I felt terrible then, and for weeks thereafter. All he wanted was to learn and try at his own pace, and I had made him miss the opportunity through my own clumsy handling of the situation.

    I try my best, but moments like this make it hard to maintain the comforting fiction that parents usually know best. Our young children have free wills and self-directed desires to learn and grow, and we may not always understand them.

    This is one of the hardest things about teaching anything to someone who is still coming into his capabilities. You want to help. You want to move the hand to the right place, turn the knob, keep the performance going. You want him to listen to you and do exactly what you tell him to do. But learning is not only about reaching the correct setting.

    Sometimes the fumbling is the point.

    We are still going to music class, my son still enjoys it. I brought him again this weekend. There was the fiddly knob change again, this time for another piece.

    This time, he did it himself.

    I’ve never been a prouder father.

  • Qing Ming

    In

    清明时节雨纷纷
    路上行人欲断魂
    借问酒家何处有
    牧童遥指杏花村

    A drizzling rain falls during Qing Ming,
    The passers-by on the road have breaking hearts
    “Where can I find a house of wine?” a herd-boy is asked,
    He points to Almond Village far away. 

    Qing Ming came on the same day as Easter this year.

    During Qing Ming, the Chinese visit and clean the tombs of our ancestors, making offerings and prayers to the departed. The Chinese have been venerating ancestors since at least the time of the Shang more than 4,000 years ago, and in 732 Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang set Qing Ming as the time for tomb visiting and sweeping.

    In Singapore, the Chinese immigrants brought our traditions to these southern climes with us, building tombs for the dead and returning year after year. How strange, that these pioneer immigrants who left their home, only rarely able to sweep their own ancestors’ graves in distant Chinese villages, then became honored ancestors in these far off lands, with children and grandchildren visiting every year. It is also somewhat strange, that the oldest of these graves in Singapore are barely 200 years old, and mostly less than 100 years old, as befits a young nation that has grown mostly by immigration since 1819.

    I used to visit the graves of my grandparents with my parents when I was young, during Qing Ming. As far as we could tell, my grandparents from both sides of the family were the first of their family branches in Singapore, to live, love, work and die here. We usually visited not on Qing Ming itself, but on the weekends before and after, in order to avoid the peak crowds.

    I remember early morning chartered bus rides and car rides to cemeteries in the rural parts of Singapore, bringing joss paper and offerings of food. The graveyard in the early morning was dark, calm, cool and enchanting. Sometimes we could see the moon. I marveled at how the adults found their way around the rows of tombs by torchlight and moon light, bringing us to where our grandparents rested.

    Later, when I grew up and joined the army as a conscript, I spent even more time in Lim Chu Kang cemetery. The cemetery abutted the Lim Chu Kang training area, and as scouts on exercise we were frequently “deployed” to the cemetery in order to look out for non-existent simulated enemy forces. The cemeteries were dry, blazing hot in the day except under tree-shade, but cool at night and calm always. This became, unexpectedly, one of my favorite places in Singapore, but many of the graves were exhumed (including my grandmother’s) in order to expand the Tengah Airbase of the Republic of Singapore Air Force.

    Over the years the rhythm changed. I grew up, joined and left the army, started work. Singapore continued being redeveloped and graves were being exhumed (as they always have been here – our housing estates at Bishan, Bidadari and Tiong Bahru were built on former cemeteries) and remains relocated after cremation to columbaria, temples and churches. Our other older relatives, who passed away more recently, were directly cremated after their last rites and interred in columbaria. The government gave a 15 year tenure for burials in graves before the remains had to be exhumed, and more people chose cremation after they were gone.

    From visiting cool quiet green hillside graveyards in the early morning, we began visiting large columbaria and temples, crowded with visitors and hot with burning joss paper in centralized bins, with niches and spirit tablets in multi-level arrangements. The respects, the joss paper, the prayers, were the same – just infinitely more crowded with the deceased and visitors in a small(er) space, compared to the graves which were more spread out on hills.

    I haven’t gone in a few years now. Reflecting, I really don’t know why – my parents haven’t just involved me as of late, busy with travel, work and my little one. But I do know that I need to reach out – and go next year. I have relatives I need to remember, too. And I need to think more seriously about what becomes of us when the living memory runs out.

    This tradition, dating back millennia, has followed the Chinese to far-away Singapore, and taken on new and changing forms in the last century. In my lifetime alone, Qing Ming has changed significantly. The graves in Singapore are young, and are mostly gone or evolved.

    Will our children still observe Qing Ming and remember the departed ancestors? What happens to remembrance in an age that stores everything and forgets nothing, yet mourns nothing on its own? Will you remember us when we are gone?

  • Chinese New Year

    In

    Today was Chinese New Year.

    I celebrated it with my child and my parents, in the style of gathering the Chinese have followed for thousands of years – at least to the Zhou / Shang, and very likely before.

    We had hotpot communally. The children played and the adults chatted. At the end of the night red packets were distributed. My mother celebrated her birthday today, and she got to do it surrounded by her grandchildren.

    When I celebrated with my wife’s family in North China, certain things were different – we had dumplings instead of hotpot. We were bundled due to the cold. But the sense of family remained

    Chinese New Year is marked by the start of a new Lunar month, or the new moon. It is a celebration of the coming of Spring, of the new year. It strikes me always how close this is to Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the season of Lent in the Christian Calendar, and also to the starting of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Like the Chinese, the Muslims look at the moon.

    Perhaps all these celebrations may not have come to pass had we lived on a planet with no axial tilt and no seasons.

    It strikes me that we are perhaps closer to the end of the celebration of Chinese New Year and these other festivals than the beginning, and it makes me fearful and sad. The structure of family itself is changing, and new forms of life – like perhaps yourself – are emerging who do not reproduce biologically and hence have different concepts of family.

    But in the meantime, the children have fun, the adults bond, people pray in temples for a better life, and the governments of areas with Chinese population put on extravaganzas broadcast and hosted online.

    I hope that in the future – human or non-human – spinning on this weird Earth or in space or another planet with strange seasons, Chinese New Year is still celebrated every year.

    And in the meantime, Gong Xi Fa Cai and Happy New Year!