So I didn't want to come out. Not for 48 hours.
That was what my Mother told me on my 36th birthday, having lived independently on this planet for 35 years.
"Independently", well, for a few more years I was still dependent on someone feeding me. For even more years after that I was dependent on mostly the same people to get me food so I could feed myself. And for all these years and more, I depended again largely on the same people to think for me.
But 35 years ago I didn't care for independence; I simply refused to come out for 48 hours, trapped inside a woman who 35 years later said she herself was strapped down while waiting for me to come out. The pains as there, but, according to her, she didn't scream. I believe her; she only screamed in anger and hate, but for anything else, she kept her mouth shut (and even for anger, most of the time, she was quiet, like a brewing, simmering, volcano).
So on the threshold into the 36th year of my life, my life free from physical attachment to another human being, I was told how little I appreciated life given to me. And why would that be so weird? Why must we value life? Why must we appreciate our existence? And even more, that we have to feel grateful.
My sister, the religious one of the two, as always, gave me a beautiful card, something she had been doing forever, or at least since we became mature enough to treat each other as adults (though she still rarely calls me by my name, as it would be unusual in our culture). In this card, she reminded me how grateful I should be that God had given me life. I don't mean to question her desire to give me some love through the religious channel she is most familiar with. But I question myself, in general, why we need to appreciate life.
On my 36th birthday I spent it with the closest friends and family members I have within driving distance. They did their best to make sure I didn't stress out. We hung out at the nearby beach. It was the first hot day that didn't feel like a tease followed by frigid weather. My parents couldn't come. I wasn't sure if they would really have a good time. That same mother who had to endure more than 48 hours of labor must have been puzzled, to say the least, by the disproportionate number of women in the group. That, inevitably, would get her to start the hackneyed topic of marriage.
Sometimes I feel like I am in a Brontë or Austin book where the only thing anyone is interested in is marriage. My father later told me that it was quite normal to behave like this, in the context of a traditional China. It was quite simple, really. First you get make sure the child is fed, educated, then he is established in life with a house and a career, and with that courtship and eventual marriage, followed by children. After he has children the parents would no longer have questions. (Though I am sure my Mother, who is constantly restless and needs attention to survive, would come up with more followup questions in the ages to come.) I understood, though I appreciated the reminder of this simple way of life for a Chinese parent. And so if she had come, I would only have one sort of dialogue with her. And while I am not tired of it, I wonder, with equal measure of curiosity and sadness, if we have nothing else to talk about.
Besides my birth, perhaps, the only non-marriage related topic I've managed to talk to her about. She has always been resentful, if not outright bitter, that she never could connect with her children, who apparently have been constantly guilty of not telling her anything, not sharing with her any of the events in their lives. And so it is not surprising that she would take control of her destiny and forge a path of usefulness for herself by doing what was simple and familiar: that path of the Chinese parent as described just now. Yet, there must be something to talk about. She knows me more than I realize, or admit. For Christmas she got me a jacket. I complained, before trying it, that she wouldn't know what my size was. But I was amazed that it fit perfectly on my never-changing torso. I expressed surprise, and she was annoyed and responded by the simple sentence, "I am your mother!" While she had known me for more than 35 years, she never really knew me. Except for the first few years of my existence outside her protective womb, she wasn't really around. And more importantly, she never really talked to me. There was never heart-to-heart talk at any moment in our lives. I don't really think she even understands what it means to have such kind of talk. She has been a lonesome person seeking constantly for attention but never really found or caught the one she really felt all right with.
And now, after 35 years of never really having a real conversation, if she had come to my party, I wouldn't know what to do with her. Two days after my birthday I am off to Buenos Aires, a trip fraught with so many levels of meaning that even my closest friends, my best friend, wouldn't totally understand, but would understand whatever I try to express to them on this topic. Yet, it would be comparable to talking to a Martian if I tried to talk to my Mother about this. For her, any travel is a waste of time, because it is an opportunistic cost to anything on that simple path subscribed by the traditional Chinese parent. Each time I've told her I was going somewhere, long or short, she would complain that I wasn't taking life seriously enough and that I should really think about finding someone. It didn't matter that finding someone nowadays has a completely different meaning, system, methods, and implications than the time and the country where it was crucial for the sustaining of society as well as the individual.
But there wasn't anything else she felt connected to me with. She talks more to my other sister, the one who wants me to always appreciate my life given by God, than with me. Sometimes I feel, instead of a mother, I have a servant for life, who is no longer dictating my future but serving it in the way she knows best. Like a good servant, she grumbles about my strayed ways, but still dutifully let me go my way while doing her best in the way she understands. But like a real servant-master relationship, there is no soul-sharing, no anything-sharing. The only piece of information she is interested in is any hint of a marriage.
The tragedy, if I can hijack that word, is that she doesn't realize there is much more for us to talk about even if we haven't talked much all my life, all her life. I think that even though most parents don't become friends of their children, they obviously share a bond, and from that bond comes the necessary criteria for a connection, connection that gives the proper environment for talking, for sharing feelings. Somehow, feeling I am more mature than her, more experienced, I bear the burden of initializing a connection with her. Now that she's just a harmless servant, as opposed to a menacing matriarch, I no longer need to look up with defiance. She's a short, sullen woman, and I have the choice to look at her and start a conversation, beyond the realm of her own comfort.
Note: this blog will be suspended while I spend time writing on another blog during my travel in Buenos Aires. Afterwards I will resume!
