Dear Fauchon,
Unless the Spice Girls have a reunion tour in another ten years or the 90’s revival stays cool in the 2020’s, I don’t think you’ll get the reference for the title to this letter (it was one of their songs). The Spice Girls album was one of the first CD’s I ever owned. True story. Twenty years later, I don’t really remember what it feels like to even hold a CD in my hands anymore. The last time I used one was to install a game back in college.
But the song title makes a good reference to our 默契 (mo qi), which refers to two people being in sync and understanding each other. It’s an immovable force of nature, an inevitable fulfillment of destiny for two people despite pushing back as hard as they can to remain as two independent people. “You are each your own person,” a friend would say. 默契 just laughs.
It’s like telepathy in the situations where your mother and I are out to dinner with a few friends and everyone starts talking about going to get a drink afterwards, and all your mother and I do is look at each other and we know neither of us wants to go. So naturally, I have to do the dirty work and make up an excuse for us because your mother’s doesn’t like lying. If you ever overhear me say we have to leave a social event because I have work to do, it’s probably because we don’t want to be there.
It’s one of those elusive things that always seems to be there when everything is going well, but is nowhere to be found when we’re arguing. She’ll say what she wants to eat for dinner, which is exactly what I want to eat too. Or what movie to watch, etc. etc.
I’ve written about the concept of 夫妻相 (fu qi xiang) where two couples look more alike over time. I suppose it’s the psychological counterpart where we both start wanting the same thing. Just this morning, I started scratching your mom’s face exactly where there was an itch. Amazing, right?
Well that’s because she was scratching that part of her face first. We’re not crazy.
PS. It’s your Aunt Terriann’s birthday today.
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