I saw my family for the first time in over two years

The last time I saw my family in person was January 24, 2020. We were meeting to celebrate Chinese New Year, as Canada was just starting to report our first cases of the novel coronavirus. It wasn’t my entire family that night though. One of my sisters was in Australia, where she currently lives. The rest of us met and had a lovely dinner, unaware that it would be over two years before we would gather like that again.

Before the pandemic, my family and I got together regularly but not too often. When we were all in town, our dinners clustered around holidays and celebrations. Christmas, the occasional New Year’s Eve, Chinese New Year. Then we didn’t see each other as a group again until Wong birthday season. We’d have a series of dinners to celebrate Mother’s Day, my stepmom’s birthday, my aunt’s birthday, my birthday, Father’s Day, my sister’s birthday, my dad’s birthday, and my other sister’s birthday. After our frequent gatherings in the spring and summer, we’d have a several-months-long hiatus until Christmas. And then, our dinner cycle began anew.

This pattern continued during the pandemic, but instead of meeting in-person, we logged onto Zoom. It felt a little different, but I chalked that up to the unfamiliarity of being in a virtual environment, even though we had lots of experience chatting online with my sister in Australia. Our pandemic Zoom calls lasted anywhere from 2 to 4 hours, and we still shared many stories and laughs. I still felt a sense of connection with my family, even when our calls got shorter as screen fatigue started to set in.

As we were wrapping up our latest video chat a few weeks ago, my family suggested we have dinner together on Father’s Day, in-person. The pandemic restrictions had been lifted, we were all up to date on our vaccinations, and both my sisters were planning to be in town. It seemed like the stars were aligning for a face-to-face reunion. We all agreed.

So we met on Father’s Day.
At the same Chinese restaurant we last went to in January 2020.

There was an electricity in the restaurant that night. As my husband and I sat at the large circular banquet table, I looked around at my aunt, dad, stepmom, and sisters, soaking in their wide smiles and marveling at how tiny their faces looked in real life. Perhaps I had grown accustomed to their faces taking up the entirety of a Zoom rectangle, but in person, all their faces looked small and delicate. So gloriously 3-dimensional. So beautifully human. We chatted non-stop for the next three hours, as we sat side-by-side in a magical night of togetherness that felt entirely different from our Zoom calls.

If I’m being entirely honest, I didn’t have a difficult time during the pandemic when it came to feeling connected with the people in my life. We still saw each other online, chatted on the phone, dropped off goodies, texted and emailed, and even snail-mailed things to one another. There was a satisfying efficiency to these ways of connecting, and those who know me well know how much I love to be efficient. I developed such a delightful routine during the pandemic that I almost had myself convinced that I didn’t need in-person contact at all.

After seeing my family on Father’s Day, I’m starting to remember that there are times when I do enjoy connecting with people in close proximity. I still feel drawn to efficiency, but I want to remember all the tiny moments with my loved ones as we shared a meal together, moments that simply cannot be experienced over Zoom.

I want to remember how we leaned in and tilted our heads forward so we could hear each other over the excited chatter of the other diners. I want to remember how easy it was to have a side conversation while still remaining attentive to our group as a whole. I want to remember the eye contact that signaled without a doubt, “yes, these words are meant for you.” I want to remember how our stories, voices, and verbal cues layered over one another without any awkward starts and stops. Most of all, I want to remember how the different notes of our laughter wove together to create a sparkly tapestry that was music to my ears, sending shivers down my spine and filling up my heart.