The Wilful Sunflower

"Do you have a full-length mirror in your room?" Mom asked.

"Yes," I told her.

"Do you look at yourself sideways?"

"Mooooooooooooooooommmm!"

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When parents and extended relatives get together and start focussing on me, I know I can look forward to hearing extremely blunt comments & questions on the following topics:

1. my weight,


2. my non-existent love-life, and


3. my weight. Oh, did I say that already?

As far as the no-existent love-life is concerned, this year I managed to sort of pre-empt them. When my uncle organised a family worship time and asked us to share items of thanksgiving from the past year, I told them I'd finally learnt to be content in my singleness and described how I'd given up the dream of marriage -- and how, a few months following that, God had told me that it's ok to dream.

I wasn't what you'd call terribly comfortable telling this to Mom & Dad, various cousins, and the three pairs of uncles & aunts, though, since my family has never done this "talking about personal stuff" thing. However, I couldn't think of anything more neutral to share, since I really didn't think the extended family was ready to hear about my commitment to sexual purity, and other more, uh, potentially explosive things...

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Where the weight issue is concerned, my 16-year-old (oh, ok, 16 in November) cousin, Yean, said this to me:

"Ping jie-jie (Chinese for "older sister"), you have beautiful hair, beautiful eyes, beautiful skin -- well, except for the bits on your soles --"

"...and my elbows," I interjected, knowing she was referring to the eczema --

"...and your thighs," she added. "But apart from that you have beautiful skin and a beautiful body, and if you could... um, let me think of the nicest way to say this... All you have to do is get rid of the redundant flesh syndrome -- no, I mean redundant adipose syndrome -- and you'd be REALLY hot!"

"You mean I'm not hot now?" I asked, all ready to get huffy.

"No, now you're cool!" she earnestly replied!

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As long as I'm talking about Yean, I ought to mention that she and her younger sister, Grace, and my bro, popularly known as Blink, visited this blog on Saturday.

"Go to my site," I told Yean, who was sitting in front of the computer. "I want to check the latest comments."

Once that was done, Grace clicked the link to Who is this Wilful Sunflower??!?! and then the three of them proceeded to have a mini conversation right there in a single comment! As Yean and Grace both professed to be profoundly disappointed at not appearing in my blog, I've now hopefully mentioned their names enough times to redeem myself in their eyes. Have I? (I know you're reading this! There's no point pretending you're not!!)