Seasons Greetings.

24 December 2001

Javier says that I've become more Australian that he is. Here I am, having migrated only six years ago, already married, settled in the suburbs, the house, the car, the dog, with a child on the way, and child-toting in-laws popping round every five minutes. Javier, an Australian, is jet-setting around the globe (okay, driving around England) in an apparently high-flying job for the rarified world of corporate finance (he assures me the job is not as glamorous as it sounds).

A house in the suburbs, a wife and child, a steady job... sounds a world away from the restless, continent-hopping days when I was a student. And it is. But you know, that really was a long time ago. Part of me thinks I should still have the thirst for new experience, the energy to seek out hip, intellectual people and have hip, intellectual discussions. And then I remember that I've done all that, and that I tired of it, and that most of those hip, intellectual people were full of crap and trying too hard to impress. Give me a quiet, comfortable room alone with my wife over a cheap, fashionably post-grunge bar full of elitist backpackers anyday.

I guess I'm just older now. Or, as some in this family might say, "I was younger then."

I can tell you that my new life, whilst somewhat quieter, is as much of an adventure as my old life was. I have no idea what awaits me after the birth of my child. I plan to be with Lisa until we grow old and wrinkly and who knows what surprises, both domestic and otherwise, will find us in the years ahead? The past six years have given me a real appreciation for the delights of family, especially during the holidays. Every family has its quirks and instabilities ("ISSUES!!!") but when they can get together for a day or an evening and share food and drink and be content for a small time, it is a wonderful thing and it doesn't have to be so rare.

I will miss my family on the other side of the world this Christmas. For the past few years we have made a tradition of gathering around my maternal grandmother, to share with her what we could during her last days in this world. Now that Po-Po is gone and my mother's family remains on opposite sides of the North American continent I think about migration, and traditions that die hard. Po-Po left her own family behind in China many years ago to make a new life in America. She never went back home. My parents moved to the opposite side of the country before I was born, so I have only fleeting childhood memories of my Po-Po, the small, grey-haired old woman who came to visit every few years and sat in the big chair and smelled of Chinese food. Yes, migration was easier for us than it was for her because the world keeps getting smaller, but the distance is still there and it makes a huge gap in space and time that a single airplane ride cannot easily diminish.

Now I have extended the tradition and again the family starts over in a new world. I wince a little bit, knowing that Mini Moo will grow up without a chance to know my parents in a constant way. I wonder if this is fair. Is it a purely selfish desire of mine to want to live here, so far away? But now I have good reason: I am married. Yet truthfully, the migration happened long before the courtship. There are so many contradictory feelings about it that I find it easier to ignore the whole issue. The strongest, easiest reason wins out. I am already here. I want to be here. Mini Moo will grow up in a loving home, and will not want for extended family: Lisa has five sisters and one brother and a mother and father and nine nieces and nephews and most of them live within a half hour's drive. Christmas will not be lonely with this family.

It's a far cry from the days when I spent Christmas with a ragtag group of foreign students in a dirty flat in the middle of England, or wandering around Buddhist temples in Japan where it isn't even a holiday. But I was thankful then and I am thankful now and for all the Christmases in between. September 11th means this Christmas will be poignant and painful for many, but spare a thought also for those who never get the chance to spend a day or an evening at any time of year sharing joy and love with friends and family, no matter whether it's in the suburbs of Melbourne, the streets of Manhattan, or the deserts of the Middle East.

Bless you all, and Merry Christmas.