Willed to Love

According to the Lunar calendar, it is Valerie's birthday today. The family celebrated it for the second time tonight. On the 11th of February, we had a hearty sushi sashimi buffet at Raku along Greenwood Avenue. It was Jac's treat to the family and she bought Val her favourite ice-cream cake with butter sugar waffles but we were too full that night, so we left the cake until today.

What joy that smile brings.

This year, we had our family dinner and yu sheng at the Peach Garden restaurant and we had additional seats; two new faces in our annual new year family photo. My mom seemed rather excited to have new company at the dinner table.



I looked at my family today and remembered that my favourite author G.K. Chesterton once said, "They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words -'free love' - as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free."

It dawned upon me that it is the nature of love to bind itself and to love, is the will to do so. It is that disposition of the mind, that will choose a path and bind itself with love, even if pain is mixed with the choice. I think I have willed myself to love all these people at home.

And here is my man! :D