money tree

The microwave died this weekend so Mom and Dad spent all of Saturday and part of Sunday looking for a new one. They bought one on Saturday that Dad decided was ugly (because it was black), so they returned this for another one. This one was appropriately colored (white), but it turned out to be slightly too big for the microwave spot in the cabinets, and far too powerful for our weak electrical system. On Sunday morning, Dad perused the circulars in the paper and found a $29 deal for a microwave, white-bodied with a mesh-dappled black door.

We traveled to Target together, and they beelined for the kitchenware while I hovered by the jewelry bank trying to find a suitable replacement for my broken watch strap. It took only three minutes for them to locate the box they wanted, but it took another 45 minutes to escape the store, since we all kept wandering off to different departments, me like a proper lesbian to men's accessories and sporting goods, to look for money clips, resistance bands and push-up handles, Dad to hardware, Mom to the candy aisle to buy Hershey's Nuggets to hand out to customers.

Afterward, we drove to Home Depot to return the too-powerful microwave, and I went to Sports Authority, where another 45 minutes of perusing led me to drop $170 on a pull-up bar, push-up handles, and an impulse purchase of inline skates. I had just read that New York Times article about material goods failing to bring their purchasers happiness except where those objects were sporting goods, so I felt justified, though unhappy, ultimately, with the $170-shaped hole in my wallet. Dad wanted to buy a fleece to replace his beloved Fisherman's Wharf fleece that had finally popped its zipper, and he chose a gray one, made Mom stand in line to buy it, and then pulled her out of the line as she reached the cashier because he thought he had found a better one, this one beige, but upon trying both on in front of a mirror, and proclaiming that each one was better than the other, he settled on the gray one that Mom had originally brought up to the register. She bought it, but Dad shook his head, saying, "You could have bought two microwaves for the cost of this jacket." Later in the day, they drove up to San Francisco so my Dad could find a new version of the Fisherman's Wharf fleece.

Dad installed the microwave in the evening. As I ate my dinner, he leaned on the counter to admire his new friend. "I love this microwave!" he said. "It only cost $29!" He gazed wistfully upon it, as a parent might look upon a high-achieving child, except that I, his actual, non-microwave child, was sitting only five feet from his microwave-child and I was not getting the same fawning adoration bestowed upon my black and white nemesis. I suggested he name the thing, and immediately he said, in Chinese, "Little White! No, Little Black!" He thought for a moment about things that were both black and white, then said, "PANDA!" He said this in English, pronouncing it "Ponda!", and cackling with self-satisfaction. I suggested "Sunbeam," since that was the name printed on the front, and he said, "Sunbeam." And repeated it, in Chinese, then nodded his head, like it was settled.

Mom said they paid $500 for their first microwave, a million years ago, in the Santa Clara house, and they were so proud to finally own one because Dad had a good job with a semiconductor testhouse and the microwave meant they were making it. Later that night, Mom gave me branches of what she called a "money tree." She put a bunch in a dry vase for my room. We went into the backyard and she showed me how she grew it, and how you have to rub the seed pods off the leaves to make them translucent, ghost white, very pretty. She said the cursed gardener had thought it was weeds and had mown her crop down.