Forgotten Rituals
Essay | Ange Yang
The tiles in my apartment corridor are stained with the mid-morning sun, footprints and dust mites dancing across sunbeams. The crack near the lift entrance still hasn’t been repaired.
I walk through here every day, counting the exact twenty five steps between my door and the lift that will take me down three floors to the front road.
Mondays are usually quiet, my neighbours left for their days. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the same. If I leave my apartment three minutes earlier, I run into the office worker two doors down, with his neatly pressed shirts and his crooked tie. I haven’t seen him smile in a year, and he hasn’t seen mine, but I gather from the way his eyes crinkle in the corner and the way his mask shifts when our gazes meet, that we’re still smiling at each other.
Not even a pandemic can get in the way of polite niceties it seems.
If I leave my apartment twelve minutes late, it means I miss my bus but run into the twins who live two floors down, usually in tow with their tired parents. Sometimes they're laughing, other times they’re crying. We used to talk about what they learnt at school. We don’t anymore.
Saturday evenings are my favourite time to walk through. After my allocated 1 hour of freedom, I meander my way back to my apartment, sweat sticking my outgrown curtain bangs to my forehead. Breath moist behind my mask, I take my time. I love how the different smells of dinner are wafted through the corridor, the sound of vacuums, tv shows, punctuated with laughter echo through the walls.
It makes me think of sitting at a wobbly dining table elbow to elbow with cousins, an assortment of dishes being passed across steaming bowls of rice. Pork covered with thick dark soy sauce, picking dried shrimp out of kai lan and bickering over who gets the last meatball.
These small weekend rituals, still going on behind closed doors.
Behind our covered smiles.
Today I scurry off, already late to my next appointment.
The cheap linoleum floors sneak with each step of my dirty runners. I’m sure I’m leaving traces of the morning jog I went on this morning with every footstep.
The harsh fluorescent light is unforgiving.
I seat myself at the end of her bed. The sheets are white. I try to fold the blanket the way she did, the way she used to tuck in my pokemon themed sheets, a patchwork of technicolour against my nightlight. I take out a few small misshapen onigiris from my tote. I’ve tried to make them the way she did, packing the rice firm between my palms. My mind vividly remembers the rhythmic press of her fingers against the rice, but my hands can’t trace the contours of the memory and as a result, my onigiris look more like nuggets than neat balls.
I’ve tried to brew the tea the way she likes it, strong with a dash of milk, but nothing can disguise the flavour of a polystyrene cup.
On some days, these visits are easier. I’ve learned to look for the signs in the past year or so. If her eyes light up when I enter the room, there’s a good chance she’ll remember my name. If she grins without a pause, or chastens me before I even get the time to put my things down beside her bed, then it’s likely that our conversations will be about the present, rather than a history lesson about our joint past. On other days, these visits are difficult. At best, she’ll school her face into a polite smile, lips stretched thin. It’s an expression she’d reserved for disgruntled parents or impolite waiters.
I try to keep small rituals, as if they will imprint some hidden stream of consciousness and bring her back to the present. I wear the shirt she picked out for my graduation, the jumper in her favourite colour, the distressed jeans with the rips at the knees that she chided me about. I bring her the same food, visit at the same time, like clockwork. I sit in the same seat, the afternoon sun making my thighs stick to the plastic covering on the seat which squeaks every time I unpack the food I brought along with me. I wear these routines like talismans against deterioration that the specialists say is inevitable.
I try to do the things her hands no longer can do.
Today, they sit there politely, resting in her lap.
Today will be difficult.
The rhythm of my mornings go something like this:
I wash my face. I start the kettle. I try to cat-cow my way to happiness before it boils. I place a tea bag into a cup, whilst scrolling through my phone.
The first hour is the hardest. Sometimes, I crave the structure imposed by state mandated education throughout my childhood. Mum obnoxiously opening the curtains, the sound of morning cartoons, the incessant rush of finding clothes and always feeling late. The chaos as we bundled into the car, a mother who was supposed to be on the freeway twenty minutes ago to make it to her 9am meeting.
She’d always leave a lunchbox for us, chipped nail polish slowly packing neat squares of rice into the small plastic container.
Our kitchen always looked like a tornado ripped through it - the chaos of everyday life and demands pushing and pulling us to the door.
Coming back after school, we would throw the same containers to the sink, making a beeline to the couch for the afternoon run of cartoons. Reluctantly pulling pens out and dog-eared textbooks at the dining room table before dinner.
Now, my dining table stands empty. My tea towels are folded the same way that she would, corners neat. The bowls are from her kitchen, the rice cooker settings haven’t changed since I took it from her home. It’s like she’s left imprints of herself in my morning ritual.
Inevitably, the teacup gets forgotten in between the morning’s headlines and the 5-minute YouTube video on how to make eggs I’ve pulled up.
When I see these things, I’m not thinking of the person suspended in between crisp bleached whites. I’m thinking of the person who would wake me up in the mornings and made me laugh, no matter how sleep heavy my eyes were. The hands that would make me pancakes on weekends, eggs on weekdays, and milo regardless of how hot it was outside.
These rituals are how I remember her.
Even though she’s forgetting me.