Asian Heritage Month 2025
June 16, 2025 – Happy Belated Asian Heritage Month
Asian Heritage Month was last month. It’s taken this time to everything to slow down enough for me to go through my emails, feel rested, and to have the will to get on to other work. April was spent closing off the winter teaching term and transitioning to a non-teaching term. May was spent preparing for the CSSE 2025 conference in Toronto, finish off someone’s practicum, and tidy up loose ends from other work I was doing. Admittedly, it was a messy (mental) month. I could not believe how soon CSSE 2025 came up and voilà, it’s June. I have to look at my calendar to see what’s I’ve actually done. There was convocation and other manuscripts I have been working on otherwise. I can see was very scrambley up until yesterday. I just had to give myself the permission to just be and there will always be tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is today. And I feel 100%. I feel that I can proceed with life and work with an intentional step. It feels good that I can be intentional and not feel pressured or expected to do something, even though I have a few things to do. It feels good to have agency.
Today, I was looking over some of the emails I keep open and on my desktop to address. Some emails have expired while others are re-read and then minimized to be dealt with at a later time. Yesterday, I was looking for LEADERSHIP FOR CHANGE literature for a course I am teaching in the fall. I found one on DIVERSITY LEADERSHIP co-edited by a person who worked at the university. I downloaded on of the chapters that looked at Chinese Canadian Women and Leadership. Of course, this chapter would capture my attention. Today, I finally opened up the Asian Heritage Month email from the Knowledge Network and just finished watching a documentary on Amy Tan and her life/career as an Asian American and author. Finally, when I was in Toronto for CSSE, I stayed at my aunt’s place, who lived only a 20-minute walk from the conference site and she is one of the younger sisters of my mom. My mom was the second oldest in her family. It was nice when my aunt and I connected that we spoke of my mom from time to time. The conversations brought me a lot of solace.
The images of the flowers above and below are ones that I got for my aunt to say thank you for letting me stay at her place during the conference. Although my aunt lived so close to the conference venue, there were very few places where I could by “a gift” for my aunt that was not a souvenir of Toronto, Canada. Across the street from one of the conference venue sites was Loblaws. I love that name. I always thought it was a funny word when I was a little kid. I even took a selfie in front of the store’s entrance because I thought it was funny. See below. First of all, Toronto was fairly hot that day, so the air conditioning was welcomed. Second, this place was HUGE. They had a Starbucks and so many lunch options. I was seriously looking around for something to eat that day. I was not a big fan of having to “eat out” everyday for meals at the conference, so I got Sushi, chicken wings, and an iced tea that day. It was exactly what I needed. Finally, there was a florist and other things to buy for gifts for my aunt. I got her some flowers (see photos), a thermos, and a couple of mugs.
I had just learned from chatting with my aunt that she loves PURPLE. I had no idea. This colour preference was verified by her closet near the exit/entrance to her place of which was filled with many purple coloured jackets. LOL. Confirmed. She likes purple. Also, her place was recently renovated and her bedroom has a slight purple tint on the walls and her office with pink. The rest of the walls were neutral. Subtle, but not so subtle. LOL. I shared this colour preference with the florist. I was very conflicted because the pre-made bouquets were not predominantly purple. There were purple flowers, but not as a bouquet. A long story made short, the florist suggested that yellow was a good complementary colour to purple and made her this beautiful bouquet. I could not be more grateful. As you can see from the top and bottom images that my aunt made two flower arrangements. There were too many flowers to fit into one vase, so she made two. I love them both. I bring up this story because her act of flower arranging reminded me of my mom. I loved that so much. My aunt also shared with me that my mom said that she liked the water (as demonstrated by all the art images of water in her place), because I too made that comment. Finally, at one of our meals out, I was watching the food come out, and my aunt commented that my mom would do the same thing. Ah yes… learned behaviour. I’m not shy about that, neither was my mom, because she was a foodie at heart.
My tribute to Asian Heritage Month is really a time during the year when I can remember my mom and think about the ancestry I have acquired from her. I do give my mom a lot of credit for this acquisition. I often felt disconnected from my dad. Was it because we are very similar people? That’s what some people say. I think that I give more credit to my mom is because she made an effort to stand by me and she always wanted the best for me, but for me to realize it for myself. I miss my mom and I think my love for Chinese food only resembles hers, and that it was our common attachment, tangible connection, or love language to our heritage.