You would never have known what I am about to say, even if you were still alive. Speaking our feelings aloud was never really our way.
I have been thinking about you lately. It has been decades since I last saw you.
I remember vividly the first trip Mother took me to see you. I must have been around five or six years old. It was a long and arduous journey. We took a train and a bus and stayed overnight somewhere along the way. The next morning we boarded another bus that took us to a harbor. From there, we got onto a small engine boat.
Off it went, winding through a serpentine river. The exciting—and scary—part came when the little boat stumbled into the vast sea. That was when Mother told me that you had come from far away.
I looked as far as I could imagine, wondering where you might have come from. All I saw was the line where the ocean met the sky.
“No, not that far,” Mother said when I asked if you had come from there.
How I wanted to go all the way to the place where you came from! How I wished I could reach the horizon!
Eventually the boat entered another river. Once in a while, small rowboats slowly passed by, heading toward the ocean that our boat had just crossed.
Aren’t they scared? Would they be all right? I wondered.
When the boat passed a charcoal factory, Mother whispered to me as she gathered our things.
“We are almost there.”
From the harbor we had to walk a few kilometers until we came to a humongous tree.
“It takes four grown-ups to embrace that tree,” Mother told me.
I tried stretching my arms to measure it, but I could never remember the point where I started.
Your house was not far from that tree.
My earliest memories of you were of “Don’ts.” Everything that seemed fun to me was met with a firm don’t.
“Don’t slide down the stair rail!”
“Don’t climb on the paddy storage!”
“Don’t lean over the ditch!”
“Don’t play in the street!”
This is ridiculous, I thought. There was only one old rusty jeep in the entire village.
After the don’ts, you would add another phrase:
“How ugly!”
The first time I heard it, I was shaken. I ran to the mirror to check myself.
Do I have a scar on my face? Horns growing out of my head? Am I really ugly?
I still looked like the same old me.
After hearing the same scolding words a few more times, I stopped worrying. Surely you didn’t mean my appearance. It couldn’t be that. Mother had always told me that when I was born you beamed with joy, admiring me endlessly.
From Grandpa, I learned about Great-Grandpa. He had come from China, working almost like a slave to pay his way through Java, Singapore, and Penang. Eventually he established a pepper and rubber plantation where you later lived. Business prospered. He could send money home to his family and even finance two trips back to China.
The village where you lived boasted its prosperity. The large concrete columns of the central market stood proudly as proof of those good times.
Grandpa loved to talk about the past—about adventures and his journeys to China. On his second trip he had gone to study, but famine and political turmoil interrupted his plans. He returned with you.
It was the first time you had ever left your home village. The voyage took months. You were constantly seasick and even gave birth to your first child on board the ship.
That was all I knew about you then.
In fact, you rarely left your new home unless you absolutely had to. You suffered from motion sickness—car sick, train sick, even bicycle sick.
“How did you and Grandpa meet?” I once asked you, around the time I had started becoming interested in boys.
“It was arranged by a matchmaker,” you said.
Grandpa had hidden behind a bush near the well to catch a glimpse of you as you came to draw water.
“So he fell in love with you and married you and brought you here and lived happily ever after?” I said.
How romantic, I thought.
When I first visited you, I loved watching you comb your long hair and twist it into a bun in a single swift motion. Afterwards you would gently pat beige powder onto your delicate face.
I visited you several times over the years. The last time was during my college years, when I traveled there by myself.
By then the journey took only a few hours. The bus carried me the whole way on a paved asphalt road.
But the huge tree was gone.
It had been cut down, the authorities said. It blocked traffic.
You treated me like a princess during that visit. You prepared delicious meals and insisted that I take afternoon naps. When I woke up, I always found snacks and coffee waiting.
You hovered nearby to serve me but never joined me at the table.
You spoiled me terribly, and I felt a little embarrassed. Yet I knew that nothing pleased you more than seeing that I was healthy and well cared for.
“How ugly!” I still heard you scolding—but this time it was directed at my energetic little cousin.
I went up to your room. You were combing your long hair, now slightly streaked with gray. In one swift movement, you twisted it into a bun. The way you did it never failed to amaze me.
“Please teach me how,” I begged. By then I had grown my hair long and cared a lot about how I looked.
“No,” you said firmly. “Cut it short and get a perm—like your mother.”
“What kind of man should I marry?” I asked you once.
“Choose someone who neither drinks nor smokes and who has a salary—like your father.”
You went on pointing out some young men who passed the house as examples of what not to choose.
Your second language was limited, and you still spoke with a strong accent. You had never learned to read or write, even in your own language.
But by then I understood exactly what you meant.
You meant reliability, responsibility, and good sense. When you said “salary,” you meant more than income. You meant a man with education—in the truest sense, both academic and moral.
It amazed me how you could turn such a complex idea into such a simple example.
We all knew how devoted you and Grandpa were to each other.
Whenever Grandpa visited us alone in another town for a few days, he could hardly wait to return home.
“Grandpa misses you,” we would tease.
“Or maybe Grandma misses Grandpa,” someone would say.
Once Grandpa was hit by a car. The accident affected you more than anyone else. You grew very quiet and distant, as if you had lost the will to go on.
We worried about you even more than about him. We knew he was receiving good medical care, but we did not know how to comfort you.
Fortunately, after weeks confined to a hospital bed, Grandpa recovered and returned home.
You never returned to your homeland. For a time, Grandpa had kept in touch with your family, but the political divisions between the two countries eventually cut off communication.
You heard nothing from home for decades.
The news on both sides was filled with propaganda. Yet Grandpa never missed the nightly broadcast from Radio China. He pressed his ear close to the radio, straining to hear through the static.
It was a time of great suspicion. People could be arrested simply for listening to those broadcasts.
Still, we knew he did it for you.
I often wanted to ask about your hometown and your family. But the more I asked, the quieter you became.
One day I finally asked, “Do you not like talking about it?”
“No. No more questions,” you said.
Your voice sounded irritated, but I knew you were not angry with me. Something else troubled you.
“But why, Grandma?” I insisted.
You were silent for a long time.
Then you said softly, “My heart aches…”
Your eyes stared far away.
The sadness in them haunted me.
After that, I never asked again.
It has been many years now. I have learned many things in life.
I learned how to make a bun the way you did. I cut my hair short once—but never permed it.
And I have learned that I will never reach the horizon I once dreamed about.
I have my own family now. I married a man who neither smokes nor drinks and who has a salary. I have children.
Once, without thinking, I scolded them using the same words you used.
“How ugly!”
The moment the words left my mouth, memories of you flooded back.
Like you, Grandma, I now live far from home. I am more fortunate than you were. I can write, call, and visit my family.
Louise Nevelson, the Russian immigrant sculptor, once said: “Life is never a straight line. It has to be transplanted before it prospers.”
Grandma, I sometimes wonder: would you have chosen to be transplanted?
A silly question, perhaps.
Women of your generation, peasant women of old China, rarely had choices.
Still, I ask myself: if you could live your life again, would you choose to leave home and spend the rest of your life with Grandpa?
Life may need to be transplanted in order to prosper.
But if it is transplanted too many times, it may slow its growth.
That is what I think sometimes.
That is how I sometimes feel about my own life.
And if you were the one asking me the question?
My answer would be:
“Yes, Grandma. Yes. I would start all over again. I would stay within fifty kilometers of my hometown and my family. My life would be predictable—so predictable that I would even know where I would be cremated.”
Why would I want that?
Because, Grandma,
sometimes my heart aches.
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