The sun was set, so it was sometime between 4:30 and 5PM already. The woman in front of me was still talking. The woman whose story I've come with the pittance of a turkey as a way to connect to her on this Thanksgiving Day. The woman who made the greatest contribution on where I am now. I am in this country because of her, I could afford to go to one of the best universities because of her. And now, in my most humble gesture, I drove here with a turkey I baked this morning for her. And she has been talking, about her life, the life I was never part of or, until now, cared to find out more of.
Her eyes still shone a lot of energy, even though I just learned that she had recently gotten eye surgery. Her voice still clear, though I don't understand all the words and some of them I needed my Mother, her only daughter now sitting between us, to translate for me. Her hair is mostly gone, her back is slightly but noticeably arched, her fingers are tiny and shriveled up, but they still managed to produce some food for me from her sparse fridge. She's short. When I later hugged her to say goodbye, I felt almost like hugging my two-year old nephew. There and then I felt a sudden surge of pity and sadness. Eventually she would shrink into nothing.
For now she's still lively. Her only problems are itchy skins and a mild diabetes. But otherwise, she has been enjoying her alone time. Why not? She's been alone for a while. She left when she was in her early twenties. But before that, her husband, whom she had seen in total just seven months, left her many years before that. But hardship would ensue. Hardship that I have never experienced and, unless the world falls apart in some apocalypse, probably never will. And I thought about her being alone, especially in that boat crammed with all these people, in that airplane to the UK wondering what she was drinking that was called "coffee", and walking the streets of a country where people spoke another language. I wondered.
Because I wondered about my own inability to stand tall in a foreign land because I would wonder why I was alone, I would wonder who was with me. While this woman thought only about her family, finding ways to feed these people she hasn't really seen much. Her daughter she had left when she was only five, and her son, two years younger. Everyday she was missing their growth, being part of their upbringing, and all she could do was make enough money to send cash or food back for them. I wonder how she behaved when she was lonely. Or what about her being a woman, being alone, how she maintained the conviction that her sacrifice for her family was worth it, that she couldn't allow herself to fall for a man and start a new life at the expense of the people starving over there.
I wondered how she felt when I was born. Whom did she share her joy with? She was in London then. She had friends from her philanthropic act of free reading and writing service.
The sun has set and Mom turned on the light, and coincidentally the strongest was shining above me. But she was still talking, even if she wasn't in the spotlight. She never was, for me. I can't remember any mention of her munificence while I was growing up in China, and when I came here I was always driven to her place every year to hang out, but never with her. I wondered what she thought now that the core of the people for whom she had toiled and made personal sacrifices for were all here, swimming in front of her.
There are many questions whose answers aren't just a retelling of facts and events. When words come from the heart, even if they describe memories and feelings from a distant, forgotten past, they come out in long or dangled or just awkward ways. But I think she has the words to utter. She isn't shy about saying whatever. She has nothing to lose and if she could fill out her time with words, why not.
People like me who have all the resources I need somehow get the luxury to think too much, to get too stuck in their own feelings, to get hung up on the most minor details while people who have all the loneliness in the world, like my Granny, have no time to get bogged down on this and just move on. Now she is alone, my Granny. Alone in this house she had lived and served in for over 35 years. I wanted to stay but her excuse for me to have to leave was that she liked being alone, she wouldn't know what to do with a guest. There was probably some truth to that. At that kitchen counter we stood in front of each other as opposites. She was short, frail, and old. Yet, she somehow stopped feeling lonely and enjoyed being in this peaceful state of being alone. Me, taller, could physically exert much more, and much younger, but still, I wake up every morning dreading the absence of another human being propping my emotional spine up. While my Granny gets up every morning for a walk, I struggle to avoid rotting in my own bed.
The way she started her story was recounting how she left China with just two Hong Kong dollars in her pocket. Now she is considered a millionaire because she saved so much over the years as a housekeeper. And what was the point of all this? Not the money. She didn't go to the US when the first opportunity came because there was no diplomatic relationship between the US and China then, so, as she said, what would be the point of making money if you couldn't even send a letter home, let alone money?
There were lessons to learn from the little I learned today. One was that you don't forget the people who've helped you. Gratitude is important for a human being to be a human being. But more importantly and more encompassing is that integrity implies sticking to what you believe in. She believed that she did all this for her family, and she wouldn't waver, wouldn't give up on them. It was never about the money, it was about doing your best to give the greatest chance for your children to be happy. And the energy she is radiating now is a reminder that happiness has something to do with sticking to what you believe in without worrying about the details of how your goals will pan out.
