Bensonhurst Senior Center Holiday Party 12/30/2020

Celebrating with our students is a perfect way to see out the old year and welcome in the new. 6am New Year’s Eve I logged onto zoom to smiling faces and a very warm welcome from everyone. Thank you to Hong for organizing our holiday party and a huge shout out to Chip Ma, Winnie Don Lee, and Karen Zhou for all their support and encouragement during this most difficult of years. 

 

This is the season when we traditionally give gifts but separated as we are because of COVID-19 restrictions, we can still share the greatest gift of all, togetherness via technology. We shared stories of family.

 

Lao Yu inspired us with the story of how her family has spent their quarantine by documenting their footprint in the USA back to her great-grandfather. Original documents such as passports and birth certificates, family belongings and research at City Hall helped them trace their family tree. Lao Yu used her drawing skills to sketch two grinding machines from her hometown where grains were milled.

 

So Sim is an only child, and her father was in the USA when she was born. She came to New York when she was 52 and met her father for the first time. He was 84 years old.

 

Hui Fen’s husband’s parents moved from China to Taiwan with his elder brother and sister when he was 6 years old. Too young to travel, he was left behind. After 40 years he was reunited with his family in the USA, but they couldn’t recognize each other. Time had distanced them to the point where they could no longer appreciate each other’s thoughts. Even their clothing was strange. Expectations built up over the years did not match the reality of the reunion and there were no deep emotional connections, as we are often led to believe will happen from the movies. 

 

Hui Fen’s family first arrived in California but as it was difficult to find a job there, they decided to move to New York. Settling in Queens, they knocked on doors asking for work and received the same response, “We’ll call you later”. Naively they waited for the phone calls which never came but couldn’t understand why. However, she eventually landed a job in a garment factory. Many of our students worked in this industry, So Sim, Pun, Stella and Lao Yu. 

 

Jing Wei’s husband was a high-level government translator who traveled to the USA. After his second visit she came to the USA to study while he returned to China. He was there in 1989 when the Tiananmen Square protests broke out and was put on the list of those not permitted to travel. Eventually he was helped to leave and came to the USA to study. Jing Wei supported him and then graduated herself as a textile designer.

 

Spica shared the scroll she made of her family’s story for our “Scrolling Through Life” residency, which we did at another senior center. 

 

Some of our seniors are babysitting their grandchildren. Susanna received yarn as a hint to start knitting for her newborn granddaughter. Hui Fen lives with her extended family. She babysits her son’s 6-month-old while he works from home because of the pandemic. Stella’s grandson is 5 years old and she babysits because her daughter lives so close. 

 

So Sim knitted a beautiful white and green neck warmer and a burnt orange cap which she offered as lottery gifts. Ru Ping and Spica were the lucky winners!!

I shared the Season’s Greetings pop-up cards my niece Sarah and I made, which she cleverly decorated with Australian animals. 

 

We danced and then sang a popular song about a beautiful mountain in Taiwan to watch the sunrise. A perfect way to end the year!

 

Wishing all our friends a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year filled with the joy of creativity.