These Lunar New Year red envelopes remind me of a time when I felt both the richest and the poorest in my life. My immigrant parents always worked hard to carve out a living for our family, and there was never spare money for the concept of an "allowance." We children were expected to help out with chores and everything else we can, and our payment was food and often hand-me-down clothes. If you were the older ones, you were expected to look after your younger siblings.
The exception was Tet, the Lunar New Year, where children would receive lucky red envelopes from their parents and relatives, a once-a-year allowance that most of us treasured and saved. I always liked to spend mine on book orders from Scholastic and Troll, bookworm that I was, but I always put aside most of my money for a rainy day and, even at a young age, for when I needed to go to college.
One day, someone broke into the duplex my parents were renting in the seedier side of town, and the thieves made out with our tube TV, along with my entire stash of red envelopes saved across the years and hidden in my sock drawer. I remember counting the money after the three days of Tet and being proud of how well I had saved, how my money was growing, and how it was all gone in an instant through no fault of mine.
These days I give red envelopes to my siblings, nieces, and nephews; we have alarms, gates, dogs, safes, and banks guarding our valuables, so maybe they'll never have to experience the injustice of being robbed of everything they have. But like anything else in life, it is a lesson, and for me, it is the value of saving money, and the resilience it takes to have lost everything, and to build it from the ground up again.
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