we have been warned to never call her "grandma" but only "Amie" but then later, "Ming," her real name, her birth name, reclaimed, but I still call her "Amie" cause my mom named my childhood cat "Ming," so it's awkward. [awkward] She and her mother have a strained relationship, we only ever knew Amie from letters, her ALL CAPS handwriting and little cartoon drawings, perfectly clean and charming lines, she is an illustrator, a fine artist too. Sometimes we'd talk on the phone and her voice sounds just like one of those elegant lead role woman's voice from a 1960s film, but more knowing. I selfishly loved her packages, always bags full of beaded jewelry and teeny tiny rings she'd twisted from wire for me, she'd say we have to make our own jewelry because American stuff won't ever fit us. This will fit your wrist, your pinky perfectly. One for each sister. She was the mysterious dragon lady cold cutthroat but intriguing so distant . She visited once but before I was born. My mother says every time she got pregnant [6 times] her mother would yell into the phone "WHY? ANOTHER BABY? WHY ARE YOU THROWING YOUR LIFE AWAY?" There is much misunderstanding between their two natures. My mother's mother still believes her daughter is brainwashed by suburban sheep America, how could she just marry like that and become religious and move to California to have a house and a driveway and raise 6 kids? My mother was never allowed to call her mother "mother" let alone "mom" "mommy" "mama," noooooo, just "Amie." They were pals, girlfriends at best. They would go to the coffee shop to gossip and Amie would pick out clothes for her and photograph her and they never embraced, let alone spoke of love, nothing sappy. "I raised your mother to be intelligent and mature, ohhhh you should've seen her. She'd always be sitting with us adults having adult conversations, we never treated her like a child. She got to travel, she got to see art. She was so smart, she skipped a grade." My mother is a cancer. My mother longed for make-believe play, for child friends and a big, fun, affectionate family. My mother longed to be a mother much different. She escaped into books. My mother's mother is Chinese. She survived the trauma of her hometown burned and bombed to smithereens. Her father was in the USA at the time, gettin a degree in education. She was also much closer to him than to her mother, she has always seen him a saint. It hadn't been their plan, but she and her mother, my great grandma, made the journey to the USA to escape the violence and to be with him. They would end up never returning home. My mother's mother was raped when she was in high school. In Texas where there were no other asians, where there were no abortion clinics. The family name was shamed. Already seen as dirty immigrants, this didn't help, my great grandma sent her away to have the baby but not to keep it, this tore them further apart, mother and daughter, trying both to assimilate yet pressuring traditional Chinese ideology to still apply in this new life. My mother's mother perhaps never wanted to be mother. The narrative was always that she abandoned my mom, after she finished high school, she moved out said "my job here is done" she has always hurt my mother. Yet her cancer heart still longs. She would call just to be disappointed. Open gift packages only to see that nothing thoughtful nor personal was chosen for her. I have heard from the women in my family that mental illness runs in the family. I wonder if and how i have evaded "it." Women are not contradictions, they are just straggling between their nature and their nurture, it will be sloppy; it might be mean. My mother is mean. She doesn't hurt me anymore, because i see what she has survived. She sees what her mother has survived. My mother gave me a beautiful childhood full of play, imagination, dirt, craft, and exploration. My mother, though, like she learned from her mother, maintains distance. She can only come so close to you, she can only let it one or two dimensions of her children, into her knowledge of them. She is afraid of her children. Perhaps that they'll hurt her, or see her, or leave her? My mother has never had friends. My mother is violent. She is terrifying. She is a hurricane, she will tear you to shreds and leave the room herself in tears and you'll hate her yet you'll pity her . She is a child. She is a rock, she is a champion, but she is a child who may never feel loved , who may never be able to look you in your eyes , and you cannot blame her. My mother's mother gives no fucks what anyone thinks of her. She teaches me. She is truly out in the world as an individual, always true to her conviction, yet still wondrous and curious about th little things . She is an artist, but really, she is just herself. I pray that if I have a daughter I am not mean to her. Maybe it is inevitable. Maybe we have to be mean to each other because we will have to be tough to survive , we will have to learn to recognize and have gratitude for the incredible qualities of women, and not blame them for what has been pressed upon them. No matter what lifestyle we choose,someone will see us as too conventional, too repressed, weak or subservient . Or we'll be a villain, a sharp tongued miserable witch lady recluse , selfish and untame.
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
