Lost Post on the Chinese New Year

Is My Child a Dragon or a Snake?

I’ve been editing a lot of my writing for KDP when I finally found this post, which was intended to be put in my final book The Covid Chronicles but which never was. Since it’s not in the book it does not need to be paywalled. I am incredibly thankful for my paid subscribers and any and all encouragement and support for my work that I’ve received on Substack. It’s been a very difficult few years financially and psychologically, as I suspect it has been for many people.

I plan on putting most of my writing on substack for paid subscribers but I’m trying to put it together in an orderly fashion. I also have not figured out how to do a paywall break so right now those emails only go out to a handful of people. It’s growing pains, but such is life.

Sage Hana’s dream analysis corner had me wondering if anyone wants their astrology read (it can be anonymous, certainly). My father’s fascination with birthdays (he could calculate the day of the week you were born in his head and asked almost everyone what their birthday was on meeting them) eventually led to my interest in astrology. This later branched off to become a system that incorporates Thai numerology, Chinese Zodiac, Buddhist interest in the day of week you were born on and traditional astrology.

It’s funny to me how astronomy is one of the most mathematically precise hard sciences you can get. We can calculate with accuracy when a lunar eclipse is going to occur 100 years from now, and whether mercury will be retrograde on February 18 of 2027. Astrology meanwhile is derided as total pseudoscience. Whether the position of the sun, planets and stars has any measurable influence on human behavior or personality is mostly dependent on whether you believe it does.

For me, I fell into it all through personal anecdotes. It’s all just the story of my life. Here’s my lost post about the Chinese New Year. Do you think my younger girl is a dragon or a snake?

The Chinese New Year

Some years ago I was taking a pile of old mail out to the recycling bin at our Las Vegas house. On top of the stack was a list of important dates in a 2016 compilation, probably sent to Mom by some charity. It was clearly from an American charity organization maybe the US Veterans Memorial fund. All of the holidays listed from Memorial Day to President’s Day to Columbus Day were clearly US based and in some cases right leaning. All except one, perhaps included because it’s the most widely celebrated holiday on the planet, with approximately one quarter of the Earth’s population recognizing it.

 Monday, February 8, 2016 was the Chinese New Year. My hand started shaking as I took the stack of mail out to the recycling bin. Oh would have caught that at the time, I’m sure. Looking back it seems to me he had a conversation about that on Skype with Mar in Thai language.

To spare all of the grisly details of my sister in law Tiona’s death, I’ll say this. Her body was discovered in Toledo, Ohio in her room on the afternoon of Monday, February 8, 2016. The coroner thought she’d been dead about 36 hours though, which corresponded to her last posts on Facebook early Sunday morning at maybe 2:00 AM Eastern Standard time. I saw her last facebook posts in real time late Saturday night in Las Vegas but I did not interact with my sister in law online. Her last post was a photograph of a snowy owl. But her death certificate was based on discovery of her body and the pronouncement that she was dead, so it lists Tiona’s last day as Monday, February 8. Had my sister in law died in the outgoing year of the Goat or the incoming year of the Monkey?

In 2020 on the Chinese New Year we were attending to a dying dog in Phuket, Thailand. Snow White had been in the family since her birth in May of 2000, by Mar’s best calculation. She was almost 20 years old and after she stopped eating the dog was going through a natural process of decline. We had wanted to take her to a vet to put her down, but we had no way of doing so. The old dog lashed out every time somebody tried to move her and she bit my husband, drawing blood. Our car wasn’t working and we only had a motorbike. It was simply not going to work to take her somewhere. A friendly pharmacist advised us to give the old dog ibuprofen in her water to make her comfortable.

I suspected strongly that the dog was going to die on the Chinese New Year. Her breathe was labored and she barely seemed to be able to lift her head anymore. I heard the firecrackers going off all around me that morning, bringing back a memory of my child’s birth. My daughter had been born at 7:35 AM on Saturday, February 9. She had the exact same hour and minute listed on her birth certificate as I did on my own. I remembered hearing firecrackers going off all around Phuket Town as I was wheeled out of the delivery room with her. I’d thought at the time that somebody must have won a huge lottery, as firecrackers were commonly set off in Thailand for a lottery win. My husband Oh told me that our girl was born on the Chinese New Year. I’d checked google at the time and thought that he was wrong.

In 2020 I was suddenly inspired to check the English translation of my youngest daughter’s Thai birth certificate. I went inside the bungalow and began sorting through our phone book sized stack of documents.

Two things that are not listed on a US birth certificate but that are important in Thailand are the phase the moon was in when the child is born and the Chinese zodiac year. My youngest daughter was born on the cusp, making this calculation difficult. Google lists the date of Chinese New Year into the incoming year of the Snake in 2013 as February 10. The US is behind Thailand on time zones, so technically my daughter had been born the evening of Friday, February 8 in real time in America. I’d taken this as gospel and had not checked into it further. I assumed my daughter was born the last in the outgoing Year of the Dragon, on the equivalent of Chinese New Year’s Eve.

 Except Eliza’s Thailand birth certificate listed her zodiac year as the Year of the Snake, the first of the new year. What the fucknuts was this?

Dogs don’t get issued birth certificates or death certificates, of course. It was becoming obvious as Friday afternoon progressed that Snow White didn’t have much time. Ka tried to move the dog she no longer lashed out and didn’t even seem to notice what he was doing. “Gen!” My husband had made the grisly discovery that there were many maggots under her body. How had they come so quickly? Natural processes were at work here.

Snow’s breathing was slowing as she laid on her side, sometimes letting out a sad whine. I was trying to clear the maggots that had been under her Ka was getting nervous. “We go Chinese Temple! For New Year!” My husband said to me. I knew he didn’t want to watch the dog die. I felt I’d been called into this situation. Why hadn’t Snow White faded out in any of my many months in America, instead suddenly falling ill right after I came back to Thailand? I’d been here every time she’d gotten sick and rebounded. Why was I always here for this stuff, no matter where here was? Over the years I’d been in attendance for the deaths of dozens of animals. Some died in my arms. They were attracted to me in their final moments as many people had been too.

“I go Temple now! Without you!” My husband said as Snow’s breathing slowed more. I petted her head she tried to raise her head meekly. She didn’t even have the strength left.

“Do that if you have to.” I said back to Ka. “I stay here with Snow. She die soon.” I patted her head again. “I’m sorry Snow that it has to be this way. It’s the way of the world. We haven’t found a better way to do things. You’ve been a good dog.” Snow’s death was reminding me of my Grandma Hawkins demise. She’d been 94 years old, had been slowing for years, and had a series of setbacks. But then she’d rebound. Perhaps the survival instinct is so ingrained in the very old that it takes a lot to really shut it off.

I watched the dog take her last breath at 4:38 PM local time. All things considered it had been quite peaceful. I was happy for that. There had been no violent spasms or the predictable release of her bowels, perhaps because the old girl hadn’t eaten in so many days. Who knows what system had finally shut down on the dog perhaps they all had at once. “Snow die.” I said to Ka as I got up from my spot by the car. He was still sitting in the chair he hadn’t gone anywhere. I popped open the Chang beer we’d bought at the local shop earlier in the afternoon while Ka had another shot of Thai whiskey. To Chinese New Year. This was nuts I had some calculations to do.

“Well wouldn’t their New Year start at midnight?” Mom asked me the next afternoon as I was explaining this curiosity.

“You’d think so. That’s the obvious Gregorian calendar way to do things.” The Chinese New Year is based on a system that incorporates both a solar and a lunar calendar. I was able to get the basics of it from Google it was the second new moon after the December 21 solstice, generally falling between January 21 and February 21. But I needed to go deeper than that. My google search for what minute does the Chinese New Year start yielded no relevant results. I get that a lot in my personal searches.

This was ridiculous. Chinese New Year only happens once a year, of course, and now I had three events that were exactly on the cusp requiring minute calculations on a once in 365.25 day event. My sister died and the coroner said it was in the outgoing Year of the Sheep, while her death certificate listed her as dying in the Year of the Monkey. My daughter was born in the outgoing Year of the Dragon according to Google, but her Thailand birth certificate lists her as being in the Year of the Snake. And now Snow White the dog had rounded it out, dying either in the outgoing Year of the Pig or the incoming Year of the Rat. I was incredibly curious.

I did a Google search on minutes of phases of the moon. I was looking for the exact minute it was at its lowest point. This did yield a good hit but the most recent results were from the month before. Then I wondered if the exact lowest point was the same no matter where you were on the Earth. Perhaps it changed. That was too deep for even me to think about…