Book Review: Eaves of Heaven

The Eaves of Heaven

What a harrowing, poetically narrated tale of life through war after war.

The world failed the Vietnamese over and over, through its French colonial days, the Japanese occupation, civil war and the notorious Vietnam war.

I wish for his childhood experiences for my daughter, and adolescence and adulthood on not even my worst enemy.

The narrator describes his childhood of running through paddy fields, cricket fights, grasshopper hunts, of Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn celebrations.

As his grandmother taught, the eaves of heaven dealt good and bad in cycles. Devastating floods brought death but fertile harvests, and lovely days brought future storms.

The narrator alternates between this idyllic childhood with tales of famine during the Japanese occupation, plunder and wars during the French re-occupation and its fight with the local Resistance, and the Vietnam war itself. His family, once rich feudal landowners, is gradually torn apart with each and every war and ultimately with the fall of Saigon itself.

One thing that struck me throughout this book was that the true heroes of Vietnam are the wives/mothers/stepmothers. The narrator's mother and Aunt skilfully placate warring factions to protect their families. His wife makes difficult long journeys from the city to bring him medicines when he is held captive by the Viet Cong. His stepmother supports the family by selling lottery tickets at the roadside to support the family while his father degenerates into opium addiction. After his patriach uncle dies, the entire family moves from one city to another, while his wife stays behind to "manage the family estate, as great personal cost to her." He never elaborates on what that means.

So many times whilst reading this book I wondered at how much one human soul can possibly endure. 

What is it like to gradually see almost all your childhood acquaintances and your relatives succumb to war, either with their lives or their souls.

What is it like to put your life on the line (whilst serving in the army), trying to lead your men to risk their lives (and yours) while knowing that your commanders are not just corrupt and incompetent, but don't even blink at the prospect of lost lives on their own side?

I read quite a few books on the war in Vietnam, but this is the first one told from a Vietnamese perspective. I look forward to reading more of his works, and just placed an order for this.

My Prayer in Spring

I should have(?) more poetry in my life.

Let me try again: Poetry should play a bigger role in my life. Beauty and motion in words - I need more of that, more reflection and pleasure in prose, more appreciation in the every day and the abstract instead of trying to pin down certainties and endlessly speculate to no real benefit.

When Emma was born, this piece by Robert Frost really spoke to me. I wanted to write about it but never got to it because, well, motherhood and I could never find the words to describe how I felt. 

Fast forward one year, and it still does. And no, it's not that I can find the words now - it's that I'd better just pen this and just accept the fact that I will never find the right words.

Emma is my prayer in spring. My spark of joy amidst the everyday mundane. Every day is anew. She makes me want to to create and not consume, she forces me to be both selfless and tireless. 

A Prayer In Spring
by Robert Frost

He give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Emma is One Under the Sea Celebration

Emma turned one recently, and I still find myself disbelieving the facts - one, I'm a mother; my baby is no longer a baby, that I'm momma to this joyous, spunky, loving little girl. Sure, we'd love for her to have more hair, but truly, she is perfect.

Notes about motherhood, especially being a working mum, have been steeping in my head for some time now. Maybe I'll find the will and time to share those thoughts before she turns two.

We celebrated Emma's birthday with a simple, 90% DIY party. We hosted slightly more than 30 adults + kids at our humble home. I chose the Under The Sea theme, a loose interpretation of Emma's love for water and sandplay, and, well, I love the colours. 

Wave streamers, balloon "bubbles", and helium balloon "sea creatures"

We spent one weekend in Chinatown KL sourcing for stuff. I bought turquoise and green crepe paper, dark and clear blue balloons, teal paper bags and cute whale bath toys in bags of 20 for door gifts, and I also found these dolphin foil balloons. I also found these adorable wooden pegs with sea/water creature shapes on them, which I knew I could use as part of the gift bags.

Whale bath toys from Petaling Street. These were accompanied by packs of fish crackers and chocolates in the goody bags

DIY goody bags - we glued little sea creatures from Bugs Party onto plain teal paper bags and affixed these cute wooden pegs on them (bags and pegs from a shop in Chinatown)

Goody bags all ready for little hands

From Babyland we purchased plastic sea creature models, and these dolphin and shark boxing dummies (not sure what they're really called), for RM15 each!

Stuff I sourced online: clear balloons, small plastic sea creatures and a very cute octopus balloon. Very quick delivery.

We also paid Spotlight a visit, and I got really overwhelmed. The variety is huge, but the prices ain't cheap. After much deliberation, wringing of hands, taking and then putting back stuff on the shelves, I managed to pare my purchases to a few pieces of felt for Boo's shark costume, and iridescent ribbon for hanging balloons.

I initially wanted to get a catering company to provide the food, but work and life and general carelessness got the better of me and all the catering companies turned me down at my one week notice. In the end, this became a blessing in disguise. We ordered satay from our favorite place, and AK also decided to order 100 mini dessert tarts - banoffee, lemon meringue, chocolate mint from this place. They were pretty good, especially the banoffee and chocolate mint. Would prefer the lemon meringue tarter, though. 

I cooked seashell pasta with my mum's favourite bolognaise, and made chicken nuggets. I also found this adorable project on Pinterest - a watermelon shark! Read up the tutorial, and attempted it on the morning of the party itself. Gotta say, I think it turned out quite well. Filled with chilled watermelon chunks and grapes. I made tinted jelly to pour into the bottom of the tray, to make it look like the sea :) My cousin made the gorgeous cake, an amalgamation of similar ones we saw on Pinterest. I loved loved it. I also made cutout cookies in sea creature shapes - made the dough the weekend before, cut out the shapes and froze them before the party so I wouldn't have to stress just before the day itself. I used this recipe, which turned out well - easy enough to roll out (I divided the dough into 8 parts and had to re-chill each batch after rolling out and cutting, but hey, it's Chinese New Year weather in KL - I was just thankful for the fact that I could cutout and transfer the shapes into a tray)

I cut streamers out of the crepe paper, and AK hung the blue ones on the ceiling (like waves, see?), and the green to look like seaweed on the walls. We grouped the ballons in strings of 3-5, to mimic bubbles. We hand pumped the latex balloons - we considered helium at first (Spotlight offers filling services), but balked at the price of filling them and the logistics of it all. So we decided that only the 3 sea creature balloons would be filled with Helium.

The play area with its beach towel, dolphin and fishing "pond". 

One thing we knew we had to set up was a play area for the kids. So we used our foyer as the space. We put down Emma's play mat squares and I covered the offending red squares with my blue peshtemal to mimic a beach towel. We put down the boxing dummies and a blue basin with a fishing game - with a magnetic rod and fish. We also placed the presents and basket of door gifts there. Turns out the kids were more interested in fishing Boo, who was languid, docile and generally a good sport throughout.

Isn't this just so perfect??

Emma was more interested in her goody bag than blowing out the candles on her cake

Scraps of fabric from Spotlight to jazz up the dining table

Adorable octopus balloon

Homemade sugar cookies in sea creature shapes. Had lots of trouble with the icing, ironically with the purportedly easy instant "just-add-water" mix, it wouldn't spread evenly. 
Next time I'm just going to source the meringue powder and make my own.  

My watermelon shark in his blue pool

Overall it went very well, even if I do say so myself. You know, as I was frantically calling caterers over the Chinese New Year holiday week, I was totally regretting putting myself up to this. I moaned to AK about this party being all about me and Emma won't remember a thing about this party when she's grown up.

The truth is, yes, I was thinking a little of myself when I made up my mind to have this party. But when people started coming, relatives and friends taking turns to hold Emma, the kids got settled into the play area/on the sofa with Boo, and friends started grouping around, eating and chatting, I realized what a party is all about. It's about bringing together our nearest and dearest, to celebrate in our joy with our little girl. And I'm not sure if we're going to be up for this every year, but it was pretty fun coming together as a family to put up decorations, source for food, take turns taking care of Emma, etc. In fact, after the party is over and I don't have something to plan for/a project to tackle, I feel kinda lost. Even my helper got super enthusiastic and was in on most of the decisions.

Sure, I said next year we'll just go on holiday instead, but we'll see. 

Totally unnecessary sea creature mantelpiece