How our past generations’ marriages, have an, enormous impact on how we view love and marriage ourselves, because we watched how they interacted with each other in the marriage, and we don’t want the same thing to happen away, so we stay the hell away from love! Translated…
In my childhood year, to differentiate between my maternal and paternal grandmothers, I’d called them Grandma in Taipei and Grandma in Kaohsiung. And as I’d went through school, I’d started referring to my grandmother in Taipei as “paternal grandma”, and the grandmother in Kaohsiung as “maternal grandmother”. But I’d only, differentiated, unwillingly, when I’m holding conversations with others, because the one I was closer to was my maternal grandmother who lives in Kaohsiung, and if it didn’t matter to her, I’d not wanted her to feel, that there’s a difference that I carried between her and my dad’s mother.
I’d wanted to talk of my maternal grandfather though, he was born in a fishing family in Penghu, and as he married my grandmother who was from Pingdong, all his family owned was a, rundown fishing boat, he couldn’t sail too far away to make the catches, can only, stay afloat in the raging waves close by to the island. “Fishing in the seas” became synonymous with my maternal grandfather, with that pair of weathered hands, that expected to, hold on to, something. My mother told me, the stories of “her father gone fishing”, it wasn’t from what she’d learned in the Chinese texts, but how the wind never stopped howling on the islet, and the echoes of the wind didn’t mind the school children’s worries for their father out on the seas, some of her classmates’, and friends’ fathers, they never came back, neither did my grandfather.
Grandpa used his nets, to trap the living things in the waters, but his whole life, was it not, held hostage by the same nets he was, using? Back in the forties and fifties, when there’s no knowledge of birth control yet, he had seven children with his wife. Day after day, he’d opened his eyes, found that there are, so many, fragile lives that relied on him to live. It’d become, etched into the inner cores of people from his era, supported him to not break, but, he started, breaking down, with the debts that skyrocketed too high, as they weren’t able to, afford the most basic living need with what he’d made from fishing. And that was when grandpa started resisting going out to seas, like his children and wife weren’t worth his risking his life, for, he’d sold his will to the booze, when he got drunk, he’d become, abusive physically.
illustration from UDN.com
My grandma was first on the beating fields, second was my mother, who is the eldest daughter, all the misbehaviors of my younger uncles and aunts, all hers to, pay. At age thirteen, my mother, to take care of the livelihood of her younger siblings, my aunts and uncles, she’d arrived by boat to Kaohsiung all by herself, became a tiny screw, in the export mills, she’d sent the money she’d traded with her blood and sweat by the months back home, and of the amounts, partially it’d gone to my maternal grandfather’s vices, his getting lost in the bottles.
In my diminished memories, grandpa is that slim shadow, in the corners of the, living room of the house, I can’t recall that he’d ever, spoken a, single, word. It was when I was six or seven, that he’d, died, it was told, that he’d fell asleep in the living room, and never woke back, up again, after grandma made the supper, and called to him, no response, and when she checked, he’d, passed, in that, relaxed, position on the, couch. The death of this man didn’t leave a deep mark in my, life, perhaps, because my mother had, intentionally, consciously, distanced herself from, him.
In my high school, one day, I’d received a literary journal’s letter, said that they wanted to print a submission of mine. I’d used my mother’s last name, and the name I’d thought for a long time to use, as my, pseudonym, to show my thoughtfulness. But there was no joy radiating from my mother, instead, she’d said to me, with that seriousness about her, that she wanted me to use my name to live out the rest of my life. after all, the man whose last name I took, loved, me, and she’s not as blessed as I’d, been. I’d come to understand, little by little, that although my mother became someone I look to for answers when I have them, she still carried the wounds of being someone’s child deep inside of her.
celebrating her husband’s death, and you still can’t blame her! Photo from online
After grandfather passed, there’s that ritualistic that our family followed, every New Year’s on the second, the daughters who married would come back home together, and my mother’s side would drive as a whole unit to the place where my grandfather’s ashes were kept, at the temple. Grandma told, “Grandpa is now, with Buddha.”, there’s that lack of emotion, that she’d sounded, very flat as she’d told us, like she was talking about someone whom she’d, slowly, drifted apart from. One day at sunset, I saw her prepare the fresh fruits she was taking to the shrine the following day, she’d made sure that the exterior was without any blemishes, that the fruits were plump enough and looked juicy. I’d misread it as how she’s still connected with my grandfather in her heart, and asked, “do you miss him?”. As she’d checked the fruits, without raising her head, “no, thank heaven’s he’s dead already, otherwise, we would’ve never had our better days like, these.” And despite how I’d read in the literature of how the wives cussed their husbands out of hatred, it paled by comparison to what I’d encountered on that, day. So, the words of “sometimes, a person’s death is another’s parole” of the writer, Lee in “The Book of Geese”, has some truth to it. On the verge of my grandmother turning sixty, her husband had died, and she’s, finally, free! More than two decades later, the book by the Japanese writer, Miki Kobayashi’s “Why Doesn’t My Husband Just Die” became a hit here, but to my grandmother, all had already, passed.
Not holding any expectations of love of marriage, is why I was classified as pessimistic in my nature, but, I don’t believe that I that is a, bad, thing.
And so, this is, how the former generations’ marriages had, impacted ours, because we’re all, watching how our adult counterparts are relating, interacting with one another, and that’s shaped our own views of love, marriage, etc., etc., etc., and there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s just how we got, socialized by the families we were, born, into.
Mirroring the World 