Figs! (an oldie but a goodie)

My grandfather, GungGung, was a man of faith like to walk on water. He absolutely could if he had even the slightest inclination to. Faith like a grain of mustard seed, enough to say to this mountain, "Be cast into the sea."

Sometimes this absolute faith in God led to humanly stupid behaviors. For example, he didn't look both ways before crossing the street because he reasoned that if it was his time to go, nothing could stop it, and if it wasn't, well... I'm sure his guardian angel had a few close shaves. Another time he was bit by a snake and didn't want to have it checked out because, again, if it was his time... his kids, my mom and her sibs, finally convinced him to go to the doctor... He walked there. This is the kind of guy who, since the Bible said that "threescore and ten"^{1, 2}, lived out his seventy years and was completely ready to go. God didn't take him on that day, so he shrugged and said, "OK, God, I guess you want me to stick around here for awhile," and he lived on for a dozen more productive years. Even in nursing care after his stroke, whether or not he recognized his kids and their kids when they visited, he would sing along (with the half of his mouth that worked) if you sang him hymns.³

1 Psalm 90:10 KJV The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
2 For detractors of "new math", this is realllllly old math, by merit of archaic terminology and rhetoric. A "score" is 20 years, so threescore is 60 and threescore and ten is 70. Similarly, Abe Lincoln intoned, "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal..." Fourscore and seven. That's a lot more sonorous than 87. (Similarly, "fortnight" echoes of Anne of Green Gables, but it sure sounds nicer than "two weeks".)
3 This right there is my viscerally strongest argument for retaining old hymnody in worship services, and for holding periodic hymn-sings to tell stories about the hymns and about moments they've impacted individuals. I have done so many sing-alongs with my mom with retirees and with those retirees for their friends in nursing care where music memory brings good times back to those with their facilities, and even brings mentally "lost" people back to lucidity. And don't get me wrong, I like some of the new hymntunes even better than the old ones, but sing-ins connect generations. Also, this.

Anyways, FIGS.

GungGung's faith was strong and childlike in its simplicity.

One time, he had a boil on his hand that would not heal and would not heal. But he read his Bible and he studied it and internalized it. And King Hezekiah, he once had a boil too.

Hezekiah’s Illness

In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”

Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.’”

Then Isaiah said, “Prepare a poultice of figs.” They did so and applied it to the boil, and he recovered.

2 Kings 20, emphases mine (same story told also in Isaiah 38)

Clearly, the thing to do was prepare a poultice of figs.

Except GungGung lived in that fig capital of the world, urban Detroit.
And unlike today's whole-foods movement, this was the postwar processed-foods 1950s.

GungGung hied himself to the store and looked around.
He came home with a package of...?
Fig Newtons.

He laid Fig Newtons on that boil of his.

And.
He.
Was
Healed.

Family history of bargain shopping (and hoarding).

Hoarder tendencies can be explained by a lot of things. My mom, for example, has lots of stuff, but she can find just about anything you need at the drop of a hat. She is one serious recycler, which is to say, reuser/repurposer. One time she was asked for coffee cans for a project... she came up with close to 40 cans of the right size, even though no one in our household drank coffee!

Her parents, my GungGung & PorPor, came to the States prior to Mao coming to power in China. And they raised five kids (born within a 6 1/2 year span) without a dollar of government welfare. Families sponsored other family members to come to the States and housed them as they learned a trade until they could stand on their own two feet. My mom remembers having as many as 17 people living in their home, above the Chinese hand laundry. To say they lived frugally is an extraordinary understatement.

source: Eugene Leong. Photo from 1951.

Also, some photos of old photos¹ of the extended family, including my mom's parents. This one is GungGung & PorPor at mom's brother's wedding, 1971.


1 Album is on snapfish. You will need a (free) login & password to access the family photos

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Recently I asked my mom if she had any index card file boxes. She found three of her parents', and we found a treasure trove in them.
All this was in three index card boxes! I was expecting to find recipes, or perhaps just empty boxes.


Typeface. These were bundled up like a small pile of matchsticks in a tiny square of cellophane. I asked mom, but she didn't know anyone who actually had a printing press. Murg thought they were typewriter letters to swap out. It wasn't until we unbundled them that he realized what a laborious process printing was. These make me glad to live in an era of blogging.


A size comparison w/ galena & silicon. Don't you have mineral samples around your house for this? Mom actually used to work at Cranbrook Institute of Science, which has a fabulous rocks and minerals display, and a better public display than the Smithsonian puts out. FWIW, the galena weighed about the same as the typeface, and each weighed about 20x what the silicon weighed. Size aside, the density difference was remarkable.


Gung Gung's pincushion. He was a man whose faith could move mountains. And what an evangelist -- I remember him sitting me down to show me how the Chinese characters for man appear in come² -- a cross on which was a big man in the middle, and a smaller man on either side. A picture of the crucifixion. My Sunday School kids also get GungGung stories about snakes, figs, and faith on a regular basis. Jesus Saves indeed.



2 Come.

source: left: zazzle.com; right: Messianic-Torah-Truth-Seeker.org

Frog buttons from where? and when?: These wired frogs (frog buttons is redundant, but makes for greater clarity) are so much prettier than western buttons (although my knitting friend Dee gets some pretty nifty ones, like the Legos she put on a pair of mittens recently). The fasteners are frogs, regardless of the shape of them. These particular ones are frogs shaped like butterflies.
Interesting bit about these frogs. First notice they're from Toronto. I asked mom when her parents would have been in Toronto. She said they were back and forth across the border all the time. Sure, but that was when they lived in Detroit. My grandparents moved from Detroit to the San Francisco area before I was born. Then take a look at that phone number! There's an exchange on that phone number. So these frogs are at least 50 years old.


Mom says her parents were big on finding "good deals". Then they'd tuck them away and find a use for them later. Well, even years after they went home to Jesus, their treasures made for a delightful evening of discovery and storytelling for my family.

30. An exercise in parentheticals And maybe a story at the end.

30. No, not me.  This Wednesday, my little brother* Murg**, unbelievably, is turning "the big 3-0"***.

*He hasn't been shorter than me approximately since he started to walk.  At which time I was four and he was one.  I was a really short kid.

** Why do I call him that?  I don't remember the story  behind that at all, because I simply don't remember not calling him Murg.  Affectionately, of course.  And not because of any speech impediment, either.

*** Not that 30 is so very old.  In fact, I never get to angst about turning a certain age because I have to help Big Frog through those numbers years in advance of my hitting them, so they've lost their impact by the time it gets to me.  He, in turn, is waiting to turn 41**** because that means his sister will be 50. 

**** This June.

Anyways, there's not much of an age gap between us, so I don't remember much of the leadup to Murg's arrival, or his actual birth-and-homecoming.  What impacted three-year-old-me was that my PorPor (mom's mom) and aunt (mom's only sister) came to visit. 

I have a huge extended family, as my mom was number two of five and my dad was three of six.  There are a dozen first cousins on each side, and the tree keeps expanding with cousins-in-law and nieces and nephews*****.  But my immediate family, just  the three-turned-four of us, Mom, Dad, me, and Murg, were the only branch in Maryland.  In fact, it seemed to me growing up that every vacation we ever took was for a family reunion... because whether we drove north to Detroit or flew west to SanFran, all it took for nearly everyone to be together was for us to show up.

***** By genealogical reckoning, the classification is first cousins, once removed.  But for purposes of respect and relationship, if there's a generational age gap, it's "auntie".  My godkids call me auntie, too.  It's the family you build.  Similarly, I still call some of my parent's longtime friends auntie and uncle, except for the one who, once I was grown, told me that she didn't have sibs and her (ex-)husband didn't have sibs, and my brother and I were the only people in the entire world to call her auntie, and while she put up with it for my mom's sake when we were little, now that we were all adults, could I please just call her by her given name. 

I'm pretty sure this was the only time PorPor ever visited us in Maryland.  She wasn't much of a traveler******, and most of her kids and grands were right around her anyways.  Except for us. 

****** You know, aside from traveling alone, ostensibly by steamship, from Guangdong, China to Detroit to join her husband in the Beautiful Country (America), and she had to marry him again in the States because even though they were properly married in China, the paper identities under which they'd immigrated weren't married.  Perhaps it's better to say she'd about used up her quota of lifetime miles?

I remember going to the Inner Harbor with her and we all came home with marionettes.  Don't remember what mine was, but my aunt got a unicorn. 

I remember before she came, I had a "rice table" -- not a sandbox out back or pots and pans in the kitchen that I banged on, but a Tupperware sheetcake box half full of rice, and measuring cups and spoons and forks to dig around with.  A little zen garden, if you will.  But mom explained before she pieced everything back to their proper places in the kitchen that Chinese culture (meaning PorPor) valued food too much to see it as a plaything.  The rice table never came back after PorPor and my aunt flew home.  Maybe it was just a convenient reason?

I remember she brought Haw Flakes.  Are they still around?  I'm delighted to have a good asian grocery in Harrisburg, but Haw Flakes are not exactly something I look for.  If you're wondering what they are, mom found an english ingredients list on a multipack once... just one ingredient: haw.  What is haw?  I have no idea.  But Haw Flakes were pinkish, about the color of a pencil eraser.  Flat wafers in rolls the size of half a roll of lifesavers.  They were mostly a texture food to me; they didn't have much to offer taste-wise.  Only place we ever got them were PorPor's (or YenYen's, my dad's mom's) care packages. 

Speaking of grandparental care packages, I remember the herbal liniment they brewed up (Really, brewed is the right word.) and packaged into baby food jars.  If you opened up that jar, the smell would hit you in the face like a walloping punch, but boy did the liniment ever work.  My frequent sprained ankles were dosed up and healed right up... possibly to get away from the smell?  My GungGung (mom's dad) used to say that ithe stuff would get a railroad spike out of a board.  Don't know if that's fact or hyperbole, but I can tell you without a bit of exaggeration that we had a jar of liniment that went unused for awhile (healthy is good!) and the liniment ate through the metal jar lid.  Bubbled its way right through.  And we put that on our skin.  Eastern medicine.  Be careful what you ask for, but it works.

Well, happy birthday, Murg.  I don't remember your arrival but I can't deny you're here.  Here's to your next 30 and beyond.