When my maternal grandmother was fairly old, my mother who was very filial would always get a small pork leg ready to welcome her. She would double boil the short pork leg in a enamel pot and we could smell the aroma as we ran up the staircase to our first floor home.
We would know that Grandma had arrived and that we would have a fragrant pork leg with soup for lunch.
We always enjoyed seeing her use her chop sticks to cut through the skin and she would tear apart the succulent meat for us, each one receiving a good portion on our rice. Then we would all enjoy the lovely sweet soup, with traces of Foochow red wine. sometimes our faces would also turn red because of the alcohol and we would laugh. But at that time, none of us would be chatty. So the alcohol did not do the talking!!
Grandma and my mother would chat more after the meal and my mother would make my grandma have more soup. That was her way of giving nourishment to her mother. It was always very touching to see the two of them together.
My mother never called our grandmother MA, she used the old Foochow term of endearment, Neh (or Nieng)
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