英譯/陳慧雯

“A-Ma[1], do you still recognize me?” holding her gaunt hands, I asked my grandma.

“Who are you?” A-Ma grinned and asked me in return.

After being abroad for 4 years, the saddest thing for me was that grandma was no longer able to recognize me, in the same way that she could not recognize her 19 grandchildren a long, long time ago. We had been blocked from her memory by Alzheimer’s disease.

 

In the past, I used to drive her around for fun in my mini Austin . She would laugh and giggle like a little child all the way. Every time, when she saw me coming home, she would trot towards my car from my uncle’s house near the top of the alley, touch the light green roof of the cartoon car and say:

“Your car is so cute. I have been waiting and longing for you but not seeing the car coming!”

I always knew my grandma was waiting for me at the top of the alley. “Little Frog”, it was what the children of my family named my car. Little Frog was the connection which tied the happy memory between grandma and me. It took her to the Cultural Center , to the park for a walk, to the McDonald’s, etc. Those years, I took grandma to McDonald’s for ice cream cones. It was the most fashionable snack for grandma who had been a vegan. We would sit down for a cup of coffee together. That was her first time ever to enjoy this sort of trendy drink at this kind of trendy restaurant.

 

“A-Ma, how’s the coffee?”

“Not bad, it's quite nice. But it tastes a little bit bitter. Like Chinese herbs!” Grandma narrowed her kind loving eyes and said, giving me a funny expression showing her feeling of the exotic novelty. We looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. Maybe it was because of my frequent visits with Little Frog to grandma; and because I, the naughty granddaughter of hers, used to drive her for fun with Little Frog, grandma started having impressions on Little Frog. She always searched for the trace of Little Frog from the coming and going motorcade passing through the alley, waiting for her granddaughter sitting in the mini car, expecting another happy outing, just like a little child looking forward to a picnic.

 

Grandma’s memory had deteriorated for a long time. At the age of 32, she had become a widow. After these long and lonesome years, she retreated to the childlike mind to pass her golden years. In contrast, my memory of grandma had become more vivid as my age increased. Every time, whenever I saw grandma, I always loved to hug her tiny and skinny body which had shrunken through age. I liked to seek for her pampering:

“A-Ma, was it fun last time when mum took you to Shan-Lin-Shi[2]?”

“The hill was quite nice.” Actually, all mountains looked the same to grandma, they were the same mountain hills just like the one where her parents lived, the rural village on the hill in Hsin-Hua[3].

 

When I was 6 year old, I went back to her hometown for a wedding banquet. We had to take the little train of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation[4], pass a shaky and old bamboo bridge, and walk for a far distance up and down the muddy mountain trails to get there. Even though grandma had reached the venerable age of 90 years old, she still loved to walk on foot.

 

Her character commonly retained by children growing up in mountain villages still remained even now. In the eyes of my aunts, the unique skills which grandma obtained by growing up in a mountain village also included bamboo-climbing. They once saw grandma climbing up the bamboo trees. At that time, there were several clumps of bamboo trees in the village, people usually used broadswords to trim off branches. It was a shame that I had never got the chance to see grandma performing her skill.< body>