The 60th Pumpkin
posted October 30, 2009 - 3:49amThis year they will celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary, they married in 1949. His daughter is coming home and he can’t wait to see little Li Fu who will be turning 12 soon. It is too long between visits and his heart aches to hold them both. He wonders if
the nearly teenage boy will still want to spend time with him. He is now 77 and has not seen his grandson for almost a year.
Li Fu lives in Sydney. Ta Hun doesn’t mind this so much when he thinks about the education Li Fu is receiving and the opportunities this creates for his future, but he misses them. He appreciates Li Li’s commitment to teaching Li Fu about his Chinese heritage and making the annual pilgrimage back home to ensure his grandson remains connected to his Chinese family. Li Fu can speak Chinese and these visits are important for him to practice his second language.
His daughter Li Li, or Lily as she is known in Australia, was always adventurous and determined. Ta Hun believes she inherited this from her mother, Li Mei, as she did a number of her more positive characteristics.
He remembers the day he spotted Mei on the hill, sitting under the willow tree suckling the child and crying gently. He was 17 and he had loved Mei for at least 3 years. He had never told her of his love for her, in fact he had never spoken to her. She was the prettiest girl in the village. She was confident and poised, a good scholar and she played a mean game of Mahjong. Her father was the chief administrator and a member of the emerging communist party. Some say he was friends with Chairman Mao. Ta Hun didn’t know about these things at the time. He was a peasant boy and his family struggled to pay the taxes owed to Li Mei’s father. He knew he had no chance of wooing Mei, her father would never allow her to marry a farmer.
He would watch her as she skipped through the town with her girl friends. She always had a cheeky grin and the other girls followed her basking in her charm. Mei was popular for all the right reasons, not just because her father was the administrator and everyone wanted to be on the right side of him. She was quick witted, funny and smart and well out of his reach. This just made her so much more interesting to him. So he was shocked to see her there, with the tiny bundle pressed to her breast, sobbing. He approached her tentatively and asked if he she was alright.
“Oh, Ta Hun, I don’t know what to do. I can’t go home. Father will be so angry when he sees what I have done”.
The child had been born that morning, she was only hours old and already noisy, hungry and demanding. They sat and talked. Mei couldn’t stay out for much longer. The rain was coming, large drops were already apparent on the leaves in his pumpkin patch. Ta Hun offered to mind the baby while Mei went to talk to her mother. He had a shed in his pumpkin patch. It was dry and warm and he remembered the new wheelbarrow he had won for growing the biggest pumpkin in the village. He could prop it up and make a bed for the tiny infant.
Mei had known she was pregnant but just hadn’t known how to tell her parents. They would ask who fathered the child and she just could not tell them, so she kept her secret and now she could keep it no longer. She promised Ta Hun she would only be away for a short time and she would come back for the baby when she had spoken to her mother.
Little Li Li never made it to the wheelbarrow, he couldn’t put her down. He loved the mother and now he loved her child. Mei returned and as she and the baby left his heart grew numb and he knew his purpose in life was to be with them.
As the months passed he visited Mei and Li Li and a fondness developed between them all. They felt like a family, Ta Hun, Mei and little Li Li. Slowly Mei came to look forward to his visits. Their love grew as Li Li did and Mei’s father gave permission for them to marry. They married on October 1st 1949, the day that China became the new China, the People’s Republic of China.
So this year is a special year for them, their diamond anniversary and the celebration of 60 years of the Chinese republic. There will be fireworks. There will be massive celebrations all over China. And Ta Hun will be able to show Li Fu his pumpkin. They will wheel it together in the old wheelbarrow to the centre of town where he is hoping that once again he will take out the prize for the largest pumpkin in the province.
He wonders if the old wheelbarrow will make it to the square and hopes that it doesn’t rain. This will be the best 60th time he has entered the pumpkin competition and this year he thinks he has a winner!
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