Aunts Come Marching By

"The ants go marching one by one... ..." I don't know why. But I had this song singing in my head when I was getting ready for two aunts and cousins to come for a get together. We ended up having 10 people, old and young, sitting around the table. That's just a very small fraction of our very big clan.

My grandfather, my mother's father, a prolific and well-known playwright and author, participated in producing 9 children besides his mountain of works. Aunt Ying, my mother's sister, who came to have dinner with us is the eldest of all. And the other visiting aunt is in fact my mother's half brother's wife.

Aunt Ying recounted a lot of family anecdotes that are little known or unknown to us: How my mother was named, how my grandfather was adopted, how his first and family-arranged broke down when his wife ran away from him (how advanced for that age?!)... We encouraged Aunt Ying to write them down over her stay here in Canada. Those would be interesting not just to us but to the huge readership he enjoyed over the decades. So my Aunt Ying does need to march on with a big project.