As we welcome the lunar new year on Tuesday, let us give a collective hug to the year of the ox because in the last year, the COVID-19 vaccines allowed our family and friends to hug each other again. I’m not even a hugger, but I blatantly and desperately went a little crazy meeting my loved ones.
Because the Lunar New Year is tied to the first new moon of the year, it starts anytime from mid-January to mid-February. Last year, the holiday fell on February 12; This year it is February 1. The Middle English word for fortune, chance, luck or luck was “hap” or “happening”. That’s where it comes from fortuitous, unlucky, chance, maybe. If you have experienced more good luck than bad, you are happy.
“Happy”, then, like “lunar” has no possibility of being constant. Unlike January 1 New Year’s Day.
From my diary dated January 1, 2020: “What a big year (this) will be: three kids graduating; a presidential election; a family trip to Vietnam, we hope.”
As the poet Mary Oliver wrote, “What is as absolutely invisible as tomorrow??”
COVID lockdown in the Year of the Rat
January 25, 2020 began the Year of the Rat, which is the first of a dozen animals in the Chinese zodiac. How did the rat beat the ox, the tiger, the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the goat, the monkey, the rooster, the dog and the pig?
Legend has it that a supreme being ordered a zodiac marathon of the animal kingdom that ended in a huge river crossing. One would think that the flying dragon would win easily. But apparently, he is kinder than his myths suggest, so he stopped to help the villagers and other animals along the way.
The strong ox outpaced even the tiger in the swift currents, but hitchhiking backwards. it was the cunning rat, who jumped to the ground at the last moment to take the victory.
You know what brought the Year of the Rat up on the US coast by about a week? The novel coronavirus. He exposed our sick healthcare system, democracy and the economy of supply and demand. But even with hindsight in 2020, the United States is still struggling to effectively fight the pandemic, overcome political divide, and define, let alone defend, racial equality.
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My older children graduated from college and high school, but the family trip to Vietnam was impossible. And then my mom got cancer, again, at the end of 2020. In 2014, she survived colon cancer. This time, it was her womb.
Moderna and Pfizer win the Year of the Ox
Diligent and patient ox, you arrived on February 12. By this time, my mom and in-laws had received their first Moderna shots, but the rest of the family still couldn’t get vaccinated.
Unlike 2020, Mom was not able to celebrate the Lunar New Year with us by making food offerings at the ancestral altar to ask for her blessings and giving the children lucky red envelopes to bless their new beginning.
Instead, on New Year’s Day we stand in front of his apartment building to wish him good health, masked and distanced. I wanted to cry, but that would have been bad luck. Looming over the inauspicious start was his surgery in just a couple of weeks.
I am happy to report that mom, again, survived. Last spring, the rest of us got vaccinated, which allowed me to take Mom back to Arizona to join my brothers and their brothers.
Mother’s Day:‘Rendezvous at the Altar’ – From Vietnam to Virginia
And by September 14, when my first novel was published, the whole family was able to celebrate together.
Going into history this Year of the Ox, the world registers more than 375 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 5.7 million deaths. The United States confirms some 75 million cases and 885,000 deaths.
In August, the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, triggering the fall of Kabul, which was even worse than the fall of Saigon which sent my family to flee Vietnam to the United States in 1975. My husband started a new job as a housing coordinator for the Ethiopian Community Development Council, which started as a non-profit organization in the early 1980s to help Ethiopian refugees, but now it is Afghan refugee resettlement around Northern Virginia.
Although rescue agencies are sounding the alarm of famine in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, world leaders are busy obsessing over Russian troops surrounding Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is scheduled to attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing on Friday, prompting speculation that as a Chinese New Year gift to President Xi Jinping, Russia would not invade Ukraine until next week at the earliest. early. How lucky for the Ukrainians.
Welcome, Year of the Tiger. As you can see, the world needs as much luck as we can get.
What do you have in store for us? Will you bring, as the poet Gary Johnson said, “everything we would have wanted if we had known“? On the eve of the Lunar New Year, my family is making food offerings to the ancestral altar, praying for blessings, health and happiness.
What started out as Chinese New Year has turned into Christmas or Valentine’s Day, giving everyone around the world a reason to celebrate and mark our time on earth. For all of you who do and all of you who don’t celebrate, we’re in this together. I fervently hope you have a happy Year of the Tiger.
Thuan Le Elston, member of USA TODAY editorial board, is the author of “Appointment at the Altar: From Vietnam to VirginiaFollow her on Twitter: @thuanelston
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism