Today was Ching Ming, or Grave-Sweeping Day - the day one pays homage to one's ancestors by tending to their graves (hence the sweeping) and making offerings.   I am back in California this week for Ching Ming, to attend to the graves of my paternal grandparents.  Or rather, to watch my father attend so that I will know what to do when it someday falls to me.

It's early April and the California hills are still green as we drive the hour or so distance to Oakmont Memorial Park.  We pass hillsides littered with wildflowers, mainly California poppies.  Poppies are associated with sleep and death but these bright orange sunshiney blossoms seem like anything but.  I make a mental note that I want to plant some in my front yard.

With my father as guide, we easily find my grandparents - RueyFu and ShouYing - despite the numbingly uniform appearance of all the graves.   The memorial park has done a good job of maintenance so I make only a perfunctory pass at weeding, guiltily pulling up the tiny wildflowers, wondering why we humans insist on uniform lawns of bladed grass.  My father sets out the offerings.  Dumplings and fruit.  Libations.  For my grandfather, Chinese liquor and a salty snack to go with it.  For my grandmother, because she was diabetic, diet 7-up.  Both get tea, of course.  As my father pours the liquid offerings onto the ground I think about how many cultures do the same thing.  Then, the obligatory kowtows - first my father, followed by my brother and myself.  Three times, heads to the ground.

Having fulfilled our duty to my grandparents, we pay a visit to my uncle nearby.  Uncle Roger died of lung cancer, the same as grandad.   My father does not kowtow to his younger brother, but I get the impression that I should.  I sneak in a quick bow, under the incredulous watch of my mother.

Driving back towards home, I see more golden poppies.  Then suddenly... a hillside absolutely covered in small white crosses.  At first I think it's another, very crowded cemetery.  But just as I'm realizing what it probably is, I see the sign.  4012.   Paying homage to Americans, family, who have died in the Iraq war seems like an appropriate thing to do on Ching Ming.  It occurs to me that ancestors need not be blood relatives... and I am reminded once again that today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King

continued in Ching Ming and King - part II.