Church Chinese New Year

Today, Sunday, we went over to dim sum and then did a Lion Dance for St. James. The rest of the team then headed off to parade in Quincy, which I am sorry I missed again, but Grace was right, it would have been too much for the kids, and it would have been too much to ask her to watch them by herself. I had to help carry and drag them back to the car, where Jonah passed out.

We planned this St. James thing to be Grace's return to lion dance. At Moh Goon we blessed two new heads, and then we used those to perform, Grace doing performing head for one with me and Jonah in the tail. Noah did a little lion  tail for a young student (who is older than him of course.) And Noah even got to be head for a little while in a dance outside the school. I think it was David's (the young student) first lion dance performance as well. And of course it was Jonah's first dance. Actually they had been in the small head for other performances too but I was always right there guiding them. This time they were more on their own. You would think that it was slightly ridiculous of me to carry Jonah while doing tail... but I have my reasons. It's not so much that there weren't people to watch him. There were. It's also not so much that he would have cried and squirmed in their arms when I disappeared into the head and tail, though he has done this in the past.
The truth is, he was really enjoying being in the tail He likes to hide in the tail at home, but that is not the same thing exactly as being in the tail of an adult head while it is actually performing with real big drums gongs and cymbals going on. Laughing an wrapping himself around me he cried out, "Baba I'm doing Lion dance!"
Now doing lion dance is pretty cool, even for an adult. The experience of changing into a mythical creature by means of costume and movement with drums, (and firecrackers and incense are also sometimes present) is cool. But to a younger child it is even a bigger deal, and to a two year old.. just imagine how it feels to be inside what is a giant lion when you are that size and the meaning it has at a time of life when monsters and spirits good and bad are a very real thing. And to have all that good spirit and cheer  going on.. it's cool.
I remember my encounters with heads as a young child and I was afraid they would eat me and my mother. They were real to me, even though I also knew that they were not real, as in, I knew they were made of paper and that it was people under them. But they were real enough that I felt the need to hide and to grab my mother and pull her under the table when one came in the restaurant.
My sons will remember being inside one at that young age.