A day in my life

My day is so long and dreamy that at the end of it, I usually forget how I started.

Prepared lunch boxes and breakfast for the children, woke them up and got them ready for school. 

Then it was the one whole hour of musical storytime for the 4-to-5-year-old TK kids. Two classes back to back. So fulfilling when they were immersed in the stories. Sometimes with a worried frown, sometimes with a curious smile. Bright eyes beaming with light. 

Feeling very light-headed after the hour of non-stop storytelling in a dynamic and engaging style, with my efforted loud voice and a face full of expressions. Not sure if I could do this after turning 50, granny is gonna need a lot of rest in between. 

Only two weeks into the new school year, when I go to the campus to pick up my own children, there are already children from my musical storytime classes recognizing me, waving at me, and calling "Ms. Momo! Ms. Momo!" Before the storytime section, when they enter the room from recess, seeing me inside the classroom, some sweet ones would call out my name, gather around me and show me their proud possessions or tell me some news of that day.

Today was also the first time for my son's 2nd grade class' "mystery reader" section. The sweet teacher almost forgot about it, but it was really good for her to open up such a section and arranged parent signups. 

She absolutely loved what I did with the children there, eyes filled with surprises and admiration. She kept saying, "This is perfect! Oh my goodness, you are so good! Oh my goodness!" She is truly such a sweetheart. 

I felt that I excelled in reading some of the story books now indeed. Because I am so familiar with each line, a lot of meaningful add-on conversations emerged naturally. Most of them went through ample rounds of field experiments. 

I am proud of myself for teaching the kiddos to love reading books, and passing down some important values like self-love, self-respect, and love for diversity and co-existence. I am proud of myself to try so hard to open their hearts and minds, to shine more light into their already beautiful lives. So they could hold on to that light for a longer time, turning into a sad adult a little bit later. 

Life is short and I am not easily letting go of any encounters. All of the encounters in current life, it's some sort of fate, some entanglement from previous lives. It's very tiring for sure, but I rather spend a little more time and make a little more effort smiling, saying "hi", asking "how is your day?" and leaning down to listen to them attentively and compliment them passionately. 

Found myself chatting with everyone nowadays, so different from that introverted version of myself in my youth. If I introduce myself or my story first, interesting people usually open up after a few back and forth. 

Spent an hour answering this very gentle Kerela woman's questions about authoritarianism, suppression, brainwashing, and all those crazy things happening in China. She was working in the fancy Indian dress store, and I was getting myself ready for the coming festival season. Only want to wear sexy short lehenga tops from now, no long Kurtis anymore. 

She got completely swooped by the kinda monologue of this "China expert", kept asking interesting questions, and wrote down many keywords like "Chairman Mao", "Xi Jinping", "Baidu", "Cultural Revolution", "1978", etc, besides my contact number and measurements. Normal people who enjoy life should be like this, generally unaware of the tragedies around the world, but are open to knowing more, intrigued even. 

She kept telling me, "I really want to know more, I wish we could keep chatting" and "I am very interested in the humanitarian situations around the world". When she asked me to "keep doing what you are doing", her eyes were getting wet. I promised to chat with her for many more hours when I came to pick up the dresses. 

Had a very successful meet-up with the web3 experts. Wrote a summary for my traveling prof and he was floored, I can feel. It's such a great feeling, knowing and daring to acknowledge how smart yourself is. It only comes with age, especially true for women who are intentionally put down by people around them for a wide range of societal reasons. 

All I knew was I had to keep saying "sorry" to people who wanted to be part of my life and that got me real busy. Occupied for being sorry, always head down. When I realized I would stay forever a victim just because of some physical features such as being a woman or because of where and when I was born, I finally stopped feeling sorry for random people. Lost all appetite for that, like I said, life is too short.

Who are equally intelligent as me? I can count with one hand, throughout my life till today. Luckily I set up my memory to be partially unfunctional, or you could say that it was a self-protection mechanism. As a result, I could never appear to be too sharp and aggressive. Always head in the cloud and disorientated. Except for that five minutes when I need to get something done. I utterly enjoy such a state, a constant state of being disorientated I mean. 

The good thing is that the men who hold importance in my life are all smart enough to know my worth, thus we could build up relationships based on that. Relationships with mutual understanding and respect. 

What more could I ask for right? At the end of the day, you just want people to love you and get through the endless darkness.