英譯/陳慧雯

By the time my mother married into the family, grandma had already retired from the farm chores, and was only in charge of looking after her grandchildren. She was only 42 or 43 years old at that time. By the time I was born, grandma had turned 50.

In the memory of my childhood living in Bitter Melon Liao[5], grandma always carried my cousin on her back, held the hands of my sister and I, walked to visit family members in the village and to chat with her sisterhood. Those aunties usually could easily distinguish who might be our parents according to our looks. Amazingly, their guesses were always correct. Grandma sometimes would sit down peeling off peanuts and chatting with them about farm chores. She was very popular among the family because of her kindness. She always let the family members pick the fruits during the harvest season of longans or mangos. She was purely an ordinary farmer who could never be good at calculating. However, she made the whole family bind tightly and affectionately together. She always kept her smile all day no matter what a life of poverty her own family was leading. Smiling seemed to be the only attitude she possessed to face the world. To her, there was no bad person on earth. Everyone was part of her family.

 

Grandma had a very, very nice and soft temperament. She always stuffed the eleven grandchildren of her three sons together on the tatami bed in the Japanese style room. We would chat, bluff, plan, argue, and even fight together, which almost blew the roof off. But grandma never got angry with any one of us. She would take a pu-kuei[6] fan and flap wind to every of her grandchildren here and there alternately. At the end, she would usually got exhausted and started dozing. One day, while we were pouring water down the holes of big crickets in the grove, my cousins saw one extra large cricket popping out of its flooded home and got scared. They screamed to urge the help of grandma. Grandma was preparing for the meal when she heard their shriek. She ran off from the kitchen immediately to help catch the big cricket. Although grandma had no literacy, never got the chance to study under the “humanistic education”, and never heard of the term “educational psychology”, she loved her grandchildren with her true and sincere heart.

 

When I was small, grandma often shared her pocket money from her sons with my sister and me. I used to have a biased thought that grandma preferred the children belonging to the eldest son. Not until many years later, when my cousin was diagnosed with leukemia, and grandma vowed to become a vegan to make petition for her, I finally realized her love for her grandchildren was so true and sincere. And due to her true and sincere love, it was needless to say that she loved every one of us equally. When she newly became a vegetarian, she occasionally told me that “Sometimes, when I see pig livers, I really feel a craving so badly, but I can’t eat them.” Grandma affirmatively believed that the vow was made between Bodhisattva and her. Though my cousin did not survive because of grandma’s loving kindness, I believed that she certainly would never forget the deep and sincere family affections of the time she spent in this world.

 

Maybe due to the coddling of grandma, the temperaments of my cousins were very nice and soft like hers, as tender as lotus leaves. The characteristic of such temperament stood out apparently when we were together with children from other families. Whenever we encountered barbarian and reckless kids, children of our family would try to avoid the encounter, not to face or deal with the fierce fighting occasions. Grandma had to look after her eleven grandchildren all by herself. Some had grown old enough for school, but there were still around five or six kids surrounding her. She usually gathered her grandchildren together in front of the buffalo cart preaching her one and only rule for the game:

“Don’t one-gei[7].” she said in her unique Ho-Lou mother tongue.

 

Grandma’s unique Ho-Lou mother tongue later became my clue for finding the genealogy of my family. At that time, I was searching for the blood of Pin-Pu tribes in our family. My family was originally situated right at the boundary between Jia-Nan Plateau and Hsin-Hua Hills. It was the rest area when Hsilaya tribes evacuated from An-Ping area in Tainan to Hsin-Hua Hills. I tried to enquire from grandma about the memory of her youth. By that time, grandma had started showing the syndrome caused by Alzheimer’s, gradually losing her memory. Her memory was scattered and shattered. I could only trace and catch the rare and precious pieces of her memory little by little.

Later, when I read books relating to Pin-Pu tribes, I felt the most significant characteristic of Pin-Pu tribes which I sensed from grandma was her peaceful personality, the way she held herself aloof from the world. May be it was due to her growing-up experience in the mountain village, or may be it was her blood heritage inherited from Pin-Pu tribes. Today, though the language and lineage of Pin-Pu tribes had long lost their roots, I could still feel the best part of the Pin-Pu culture from my grandma. It was the pure and true disposition. Grandma didn’t understand what Pin-Pu tribes meant. She would only narrow her deep and double-eyelidded big eyes and giggle, “I am too slow and stupid to understand anything.” I drew her gaunt arm near me, rearranged the rose mallow flower which she wore on her hair on the temple. I didn’t care how my aunts would view their elderly mother-in-law who picked up a red rose mallow flower in the alley and placed it on hair. I could appreciate the naive and childlike heart of my grandma. When I parked Little Frog in the alley, seeing grandma walking towards me with a smile, the red rose mallow flower on her hair, I was truly thankful to have such an innocent grandma this life. The loving kindness she gave me was the most valuable life experience in my peregrination.

 

On the afternoon of Mother’s Day that year, I was helping grandma bathe herself. It was the first time for me to do so. Looking at her shortly tonsured white hair all over her head, I knew it had been ages since the last time the family members shampooed her hair. They usually took her to the salon to be shampooed. It was a sunny noon in a Spring day, while the sun shined into the interior and warmed up the whole space, I untrussed and bathed her at the confined bathroom. Starting from her hair, I bathed her very gently, like the way she cooled me with the pu-kui fan when I was a little girl, softly and gently. I then softly and gently cleansed her body, arms, and legs. I laved her very slowly, because her skin seemed so limp and creasy, I worried if I had washed too hard and hurt it. Her skin was like the over-ripen fruit which might fall off from the top of the tree at any minute.

 

After bathing, I sat on the sofa helping grandma to wipe down the crud adhered to her ear rings. Then I hugged her and smelt the aroma of bath milk released from her body, leaned my head lightly on her shoulder. I guessed it had been a long while since last time her grandchildren hugged her like this and asked for her pampering.

Looking after Alzheimer’s patients indeed requires tremendous patience. Grandma forgot things which she had just mentioned a minute ago. However, I felt thankful that grandma had been sound and healthy with no ailment, only needing assistance for laving. Besides, she did not trouble anyone, only walked around here and there quietly. She stayed with her three sons alternately. One thing which I regretted the most was that all my brothers and sisters were living in Taipei, but she could only live in the south. She was too old and it was not suitable for her to travel so far. I had no longer got the fortune to drive her around for fun with my mini Austin to appreciate the blossom of azalea in Yang-Ming Mountain. Little Frog was sold during my time abroad. This was my most regretful thing concerning grandma. How could I sell out the most joyful memory between her and me?

 

I had no idea if grandma still remembered grandpa. It had been the past for about 50 to 60 years ago. That year, I went back to my parents’ home due to my unfortunate marriage. Grandma was there then. She saw Little Frog, opened her eyes wide, looking forward to another outing. So I gave her a ride to the lakeshore inside the university campus for a walk.

“Why didn’t he come with you? He’s a nice guy.” My eyes turned red immediately while hearing grandma asking about my husband. I couldn’t bear the idea of informing grandma the misfortune in my marriage.

“A-Ma, do you still remember A-Gong[8]? Did he treat you well?”

“He was very fierce, very short-tempered. But…” grandma laughed and said, “He was always like this, being fierce at me. But after a short while, he would come and call for me.” I looked at the delicate and pretty outline of her face, imagining that A-Gong should understand and appreciate her naïf innocence.

“It was all my fault, I shouldn’t have brought cold water for him to drink. It made his liver turn from hot to cold.” Grandma held such sorrow and guilt for grandpa, which became an imprinting in her whole life.

 

Both grandma and I had the accursed destiny in marriage. Grandma had to bid the final farewell to her husband at her most glamorous age; while my six years marriage ended up broken. Both were full of sobbing and sighing. I couldn’t really tell if this was the reason which made me cherish grandma even more.

Thinking back, in my childhood, that was a playful and blatant midday, when I was kicking the shuttlecock made by a bundle of ramson rinds. A strange young woman suddenly appeared in the courtyard, carrying a little baby on her back, and holding the other child with her hand. Grandma took her hands in pleasant amazement, asked me to call the woman “auntie”. Although I was very young, I felt no doubt that she was my auntie for sure. Because she looked exactly the same as my big auntie. It seemed that they were imprinted by the same mold. However, grandma kept reminding me to keep this as a secret. Not until I was fully grown up and mentally mature enough to realize and understand, that the auntie was my youngest auntie who was put up to another family for adoption. There was a sad and bitter story behind it. After being separated for more than thirty years, if grandma was able to meet her youngest daughter again, would she ask her, “Who are you?”, as well? May be it was better off for grandma to choose to forget. There was nothing to be blamed for in this earthly world, really. Let flowers blossom and fall the way they naturally do.

 

In Spring, walking with grandma under the new yellowish Golden shower trees in the homeland, I seemed to return to that year, when I saw grandma with the bright red China rose flower pinned on her hair, stirring her stumps towards me joyfully and jubilantly; I walked forward to meet up with her, arranged the flower on her hair. I remembered one day, when I attended an English Writing Class in the States, I wrote some daily anecdotes about grandma. The American teacher read and was very touched by my story. She asked me of grandma’s name, I said, “Lai-Chun. Spring Coming!” The teacher with grey hair and blue eyes replied me, “Very beautiful! Very beautiful!”, several times. It was truly beautiful, which I didn’t notice before either, that grandma’s name could be so pretty in English translation. Thinking of the past, I couldn’t help but hold grandma’s gaunt hand closer and tighter. Walking slowly under the trees, those memories full of grandma’s joyful and jubilant laughter all flashed back in a splint second. Everything seemed so vivid again.

Standing on the Chinese style bridge, watching the carps swimming freely underneath, grandma suddenly asked me a blunt question: “The fish look so pretty! I don’t see them sold at the food market. Are they edible?”

The young yellowish leis of the Golden shower trees fell on the top of grandma. I swept them off her head slightly, and gently hugged her gaunt body. The feeling was like holding the Spring sunshine into your arms. I felt the whole of me abounding with the sense of childlike happiness.

 

[1] Grandma in Ho-Lou dialect

[2] 杉林溪

[3] 新化

[4] 糖廠

[5] 苦瓜寮

[6] 蒲葵，Chinese fan palm

[7] 冤家，argue and quarrel in Ho-Lou dialect

[8] Grandpa in Ho-Lou dialect