A Photo

Four years ago today, I took my favourite photo of all time. It’s not really that impressive considering the miserable quantity and quality of my output. But it is an important photo for me. Please allow me to bore you with a short story.

It was late 2020. We were about 9 months into the pandemic. The Hong Kong bureaucrats had no idea what they were doing, which was, sadly, business as usual. Luckily, Hong Kong’s medical experts were good, and the Hong Kong public, scarred terribly by the 2003 SARS outbreak, were ready to comply with the most draconian COVID measures thrown their way. As a result, despite some policy blunders, Hong Kong was in a decent shape as 2020 drew to a close. It’d been a bleak year, and we needed to blow off some steam. Then came my birthday. My wife and I decided to go out and celebrate. I had an extremely busy day that day, so my wife said she was gonna book a restaurant. I messaged her as I wrapped up for the day about our dinner plan. She simply replied: “Come home first.” I have to say, that ticked me off a bit at the time. But I went straight home anyway. I walked into our tiny apartment on the western end of the Hong Kong island, and she walked out of her makeshift office. Before I could ask about what happened to our dinner plan, she said: “I’m pregnant. We are gonna have a tiny tiny buggy(an inside joke.)” I blacked out for the next three minutes. Or my brain was spinning out of control trying to figure out the logistics of this pregnancy. There was no end in sight for the pandemic. Being pregnant means my wife wouldn’t be able to get the vaccine, leaving her vulnerable to COVID. I’d be out of a job in two weeks…, which wasn’t because I was terrible at my job. There was so much to think through. Plus, dinner. We had takeout pizza that day.

Fast forward to July 2021. We were fortunate enough to go through the pregnancy without any major issues, no COVID, no complications. I even managed to survive a friend Kevin McSpadden who tried to kill me just 5 days before the baby was due to come out.

On the night of July 8, my wife made dumplings as she was keeping track of her contraction intervals. She’s a real life Wonder Woman. As we cleaned up after dinner, her contractions were coming in every two minutes. We hopped on a taxi for the hospital. I brought my camera. At the hospital, we had to be tested for COVID before admission. Everything went smoothly. Anyway, baby George was born the next day, July 9th. He was an ugly little thing.

The next day, I came back to our room and found that the nurse had trolleyed George in to let him get acquainted with us. The ugly little thing was in mommy’s arms, peaceful, eyes closed, not even a day old. I grabbed my camera from the couch, and took a photo. When I think back about what my wife had gone through: supporting the family while pregnant during a once-in-a-century pandemic, I always find myself lost for words. I am glad that my camera did its job, and there’s my ode to my wife, and our ugly little thing.

Thanks for indulging me for this long!