Status Updates From Hot Chocolate on Thursday (...

‘…this place overflowed with my green. I felt welcomed. This was the first time I felt that green lived me back…My green. Green and me.’

‘—it possessed a fearless vitality, but beneath the surface there was an inescapable fragility and melancholy. The trees looked like they dancing and the leaves looked like they were singing. The green drew me in.’

‘The colour green has always enchanted me. It’s a feeling too intense to simply describe as my liking it. Green is my friend, my talisman, my memory, my future. It soothes me and energises me…I never felt alone when I had the colour green. What dogs or cats or music or books are for some people, green has always been for me. That’s why I always keep green close to me’.

‘I’ve never considered myself an artist but when I hear a woman with a wealth of life experience call me this, I start to feel like maybe I am.’

‘I think humility is true confidence, and genuine kindness is strength.’

‘How many times have we shared a meal like this before? And how many more meals do we have left? Ours was a love marriage.’

‘Yes, looks sweet but is actually salty—isn’t that what life is is like?
I feel reassured when I watch (him) eat a meal. He cherishes every bite of food. No matter how tough things may be, when he’s eating, he smiles and savours his meal. We may have many problems, but if we can gratefully enjoy our daily meals, things will work out somehow. When I think of that, I feel energised.‘

‘I was 36 years old when Peep was delivered to us. Now Peep is 36. It feels strange to think she’s the same age as I was then. If we could time travel and meet as 36-year-olds, what would we talk about? We might even have become best friends. As I watched her grow, I’ve often thought I love her not just as my daughter but for who she is as a person.’

How lovely and endearing.

‘I have someone I feel this way about, smiling next to me—there’s nothing more precious. Undoubtedly, it’s moments like this that will shape us…I can feel our love coursing. It’s OK. I have the talent to love. This is fine…I’m happy. Even if it’s not fated. Or eternal. Or pledged.’

‘Red threats of fate are not merely flimsy lines that connect one pinkie finger to another but perhaps the blood that courses through each other’s bodies. It’s not about reeling in threads that have been connected beforehand. It’s about resonating with the myriad threads flowing within us through a various experiences. Maybe we’re all continually searching for a special connection like that.‘

‘… the other becomes me and I become the other’.

‘Is eternal love difficult to achieve? …Hmm. It’s both difficult and easy to achieve. You can’t just decide to love something. Love is a free and mercurial thing.’

‘I’d never once thought I wanted to be a mother. I always believed myself incapable of giving birth and raising a child…Until now, I’ve never longed for anything. Feelings of love or desire were things that spontaneously appeared from somewhere far away.’

‘It’s astonishing to think that a whole human being emerged from this little old lady. A baby who learned to walk. A little girl who grew up into an adult who gifted her parents a trip and now runs her own store. If these two hadn’t come together, she would have never existed. How amazing. The birth of a person into this world is truly amazing.’