Mum cooked me "mi sua" or what was known as vermicelli for me today. She always cooks "mi sua" for her children on their birthdays. It's standard fare, and the mi sua is garnished with pork kidney, minced ball and 2 hard-boiled eggs. Though simple, the dish is tasty and delicious. What's more significant is the message behind the mi sua and the two eggs. The former represents longevity; and the eggs symbolise that one is now a year older.
Anyway, mum, getting on in years, somehow got my birth date wrong. My birthday is actually on 九月四日 (tomorrow) and not 九月三日.
That bowl of mi sua sure brought back memories of the time when I was just a little boy. Those days, Mum not only cooked mi sua for us, she also wrote numbers on little scrap of papers, crumbled them into little balls from number 0 to 9, placed them on our head and made us shake them. She would then collect the last two numbers remained on our head and bet in a game known as 十二字。 This is really a form of gambling but the stakes were much lower then 4D. Those were her simple pleasures.
She no longer makes us shake our heads for numbers but I savoured her mi sua with much appreciation, knowing that she would not be around to cook for us forever....
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I am sure you are one of your mum's favourite children, if not her pet. Our mums never forget our birthdays even though the birth dates they remember are always the lunar calendar dates and not the solar one.
I can also tell that you greatly appreciate your mum's love and care for you. Yes, she would not be around forever. My own parents have both passed on - my father left us more about 12 years ago while my mum passed away more than 2 years ago. However, our memories of how they loved and cared for us will remain with us for as long as we live.
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