Happy Home

Back in the October 2008, my mother surprised me with something special. It had been a completely normal Thursday, nice sweater weather, nothing out of the ordinary can be noted. My sister and I had just finished school and are going to go grocery shopping. Everything seemed very normal. The thing is that, my mother just bought a couple of apples and was ripping heaps of plastic bags and stuffing them into her purse. My eyes narrowed, “Mom, seriously. Why do you need those bags?” She looked at me and shrugged and walked to the cash. In the end, we just ended up buying 5 apples.

I disregarded my mother’s weirdness quickly as we were headed out to the car. We got in and she drove the opposite way from home, the way you get to Markham. “Mom, you’re going the wrong way...” I sighed to her.

“Nope, we are going to my friend’s house to do something.” She answered me in Cantonese. My sister and I looked at each other and shrugged, the rest of the way to my mother’s friend’s house we talked about the newest Korean pop sensations that were popular and good looking.

We arrived 30 minutes after and we were greeted by a woman couple years younger than my mother and two fluffy pekinese dogs. The dogs had stubby legs compared to their longer bodies, squished in face like a pug’s, and very fluffy. The bigger one of the two had tan, brown and white spots all over it’s body and the tiny one was completely white. We stood at the door and played with the dogs. Although having fun, I was utterly confused on the purpose of us being in this house. Then it hit me like a sack of potatoes, we were going to adopt the completely white one and take it home. I cursed myself for not being able to put together everything my mother has been doing.

My mother was talking to her friend and discussing on the raising of a dog to it’s name and gender. We found out that this particular dog was named Baby, and a female. As they were done talking, my mother turned to us and asked, “Do you...