Life: 32

When I turned 6 my mom threw yet another birthday party for me in the backyard of our house. She put a lot of planning into those parties. In the same the vain that we never wore plastic, store-bought Halloween costumes (except one year, when she caved, and let me buy a Strawberry Shortcake costume which included a plastic bonnet and apron that I coveted for years), our birthdays were always very home-grown and creative.

So when I turned 6, she wrote a full-length story about a princess who had lost her name, so she had to go through a series of adventures to find it again. Any time we reached a new climax in the story, an activity would be presented and we would have to "reenact" the princess's tale. One turn of events found the princess in a "Carrot Forest". My mother set up the big drying rack (normally used for laundry) across the lawn and hung big orange carrots from strings across the length of the rack. All the kids walked underneath the carrots and we had to "eat our way through the forest". I still remember this and how beautiful it was to be underneath all of those carrots glistening like gold in the backyard sun.

Yesterday I turned 32. Things have changed, and things have stayed the same. My sister met me for dinner on 98th street at Hunan Balcony. Before we moved to the big house with the backyard, we used to live on 98th street in a little one-bedroom apartment that was originally my father's bachelor pad. When my mom moved in, and after I was born, they converted his darkroom into a bedroom for me. Then my sister was born and my earliest memory is when we were all gathered in the living room of that apartment, talking about the new baby.

Two years in a row now my sister and I have met at that same Chinese restaurant for dinner on my birthday, underneath our old apartment. Before the city was a place to meet friends, it was a place where our parents would take us out out to dinner for a fun family night. We always went back to Hunan Balcony, even after we had moved out of the city, and always ordered the same dishes, happily.

Last night my sister and I recreated those dinners. But now it was me at 32, she at 29. After our meal, as we lamented our shitty fortune cookies, my mom suddenly walked into the restaurant to surprise me. She had a huge bouquet of birthday flowers and a big smile on her face. We three women ended our evening sharing laughs across the table, overlooking a busy Broadway street in a neighborhood that my mother insists is not like it used to be.

Life changes, families move, people age, names disappear. But chicken with snow peas will always taste the same.