Whirlpool and disarray (memory tiles/memory pieces)

One can imagine a hardworking granny, hunched over the tiny pieces on the tiled pavilion, with her thumb moving in vigorous friction against each glass. Each piece is utterly immaculate, like a terracotta warriors. As though my grandmother was the original artist of the tiled green pavilion, each day, she takes an assortment of pieces and arranges them into her thoughts as a whole for the day. She was gathering these undamaged memories that have come like uninvited distant family members, and coagulate them so to ignite another round of impromptu game of Majong.

These impromptu games, lively and full of swearing brought together people from far and wide. They were the long forgotten sisters from who had resided in China, my great-grandmother who had died when my grandmother was still a young child, or my grandfather who had spent most of his life in England, or the woman that had owned the store four doors down in the birth place of my mother, a small fishing village of Sai Gong. They would sit around the Ma Jong table in full allegria. I pause for a moment, searching for an English that embraced the exultation of allegria. I could not think of one. So I continued. My grandmother would fling her arms around drawing full circles in the air, magically encircling these characters back into her present. The players would mimic this action as they create multiple whirlpools atop the plastic Ma Jong pieces of green and white.

What a seemingly a common process in this game, would affect my grandmother more adversely than one could imagine. These ghostly characters that appears in her impromptu gathering would mix the tiles in preparation for a new round. The carefully constructed combination of ingenuity of each game would collapse in the man-made whirlpool. However, in doing so, they were simultaneously swirling my grandmother’s memories into dizzying circles. In time, the chatting would subside, the circles to which the hand was drawing would become smaller and smaller, until finally, the pieces would rest in disarray. Perhaps, if she was equipped with the agility of the blessed youths, those winning combinations would not be so difficult to rebuild. However, as the word resonates, perhaps…