My Mother's Mother

There was a story she liked to tell me that I also heard from my mom. My grandmother had to go away for a week and during that time, my uncle tried smoking cigarettes. When my grandma came home, my mom and aunt told on my uncle and my grandma beat his ass. She would still hit them when they were teenagers, but that was a different time.

My mom would also tell me another story about how stubborn my grandma was. Mom was about to get kicked out of college for failing her classes. She had already appealed to the dean, but the decision stood. But my grandma wouldn’t give up. She took a bus to the university, walked into the dean’s office, and demanded to speak with him. She begged him to give my mother another chance, and somehow convinced him. Mom ended up majoring in film. She was a film producer in Taiwan before coming to the US.

My grandmother was a seamstress, but she would never teach my mom to sew. She wanted her children to have better careers, to have better lives. Mom learned anyway and later, grandma helped mom make costumes for mom’s commercials.

婆婆 was the only grandparent I had that I formed a real relationship with. I could talk to her, hear her stories without translation, see her sense of humor. She would also scold me from time to time, but she was always sweet to her grandchildren. One time, she told me not to date around too much, to find a good girl to settle down with. After all, she met two of my girlfriends.

In 2019, I went to Taiwan with my ex and they met. Grandma called a taxi and we went to get conveyor belt sushi in the food court of a Carrefour. My grandma always liked going out for conveyor belt sushi, she would say that its cheap and good. Back then, she was already wearing a back brace but she could still walk with a cane. Those were the times I loved the most with her, when my Mom or Aunt or Uncle weren’t around and it was just me and 婆婆.

The last time I saw her was in 2024, I was in Taiwan for eleven days and I went to see her twice on my own. Once, she was sleeping, so I just waited around, held her hand, whispered to her while she slept. I didn’t really know what else to do, and I didn’t want to just leave. The other time she was awake and in a good mood. That’s when I asked her about World War II.

She said she was too young to have learned Japanese in school during the colonial period, but she had a lot of siblings, and her older brothers, my grand uncles, were old enough. Two of them went off to fight for the Japanese during the war.

After the war, and the subsequent Civil War, my grandfather came over to Taiwan with the KMT. He was placed as a teacher in 九份 which was a good job at the time. He was also a handsome man; all the girls in town wanted to marry him but somehow, he ended up with my grandmother. I think she was quite proud of that.

Several years ago, maybe in 2014 or 2015, we had a big family trip to 九份 with my mom, 舅舅, 舅媽 and cousins. That was my first time going and we stayed at a hotel owned by my relatives. While we were walking down the old street, we ran into some of 婆婆’s friends from elementary school who still lived there.

On a different trip to 九份, my mom took my dad, my brother and I to go look for mom’s old family home. That’s the house my mom was born in.

At some point, my grandfather got a promotion and became the principal of 新店國小. He was given a traditional Japanese house behind the school to live in. A few years later, he died in a motorcycle accident. My grandmother got to keep the house, and that’s where my mom grew up. I lived in that house too when I was a kid. Maybe when I was eight years old, my mom took my brother and I to Taiwan and we stayed with my grandmother there. All the rooms were connected by sliding doors. We slept on futons on the floor. She didn’t even have a shower, it was just a stone room with a drain and we washed ourselves with buckets. I remember lying on the floor and watching One Piece on TV.

When I was older, in high school, she had moved to an apartment. After all those years, a developer wanted to buy the property. Initially, she didn’t want to sell, but after some time she caved. We thought they would build highrises but they never got around to demolishing the area. The next time I was in Taiwan, my mom and I went back to check it out and the house was still there, in a dilapidated state but still standing. We snuck around the back and went inside and it was just like how I remembered it. Later, my cousin told me that the government wanted to turn it into a museum as part of the Japanese history of Taiwan, but that still hasn’t happened. Typical bureaucracy.

I also stayed at my grandma’s apartment a good deal. Free housing I guess. It was a studio apartment, with a shower that was filled with buckets, I guess some habits never die. My mom would sleep with my grandma in her bed and I would sleep on the floor. Those were hot summer nights in Taipei. I still sleep with the AC off whenever I’m in Taiwan. I find it comforting to be smothered in the humid heat, with just my stomach covered by the blanket. My grandma’s bed had a wood slat topper. I asked her about it and she said it was to keep cool. It just didn’t look very comfortable.

She would make me 牛肉麵. That actually happened a few times. In the summer of 2017, my brother and I both went to study Chinese at 師大. She made us that beef noodle soup. It’s a lighter broth, not the salty, heavy kind. She also always had these vanilla ice cream sandwiches that had a cracker instead of a cookie.

During that summer, I also got a mouth infection. From where? I have no idea. I called my mom and my mom arranged for my grandma to take me to see a doctor. The doctor we went to was the same doctor my mom saw from when she was younger. So my grandma took me to get checked up and I got prescribed medicine that we picked up next door. It all came out to less than $40, I remember because I filed an insurance claim.

She was a hard ass woman to my mom and her siblings, but she was very sweet to her grandchildren. She got by all those years through her faith in God. I’ve been to her church before. It’s a lot like the Church I grew up in. She used to get rides from the brothers and sisters that would help her out. Later, when it was harder for her to walk, she’d go to a smaller church a block away from her apartment.

The last time I saw her, she even gave me a Chinese Bible that had 注音符號 on it so that I could actually read it. Initially, I didn’t really want to take it since it would take up luggage space but I took it anyway. I don’t know if I’ll ever read it but I’ll always have it. It’s a physical reminder of my grandmother’s unwavering faith in God.

Before every meal, she would always pray. She’d even scold us if we forgot to pray. She would pray about everything, she had so much faith in God, and rightly so. That’s how she got by as a widow with three children for fifty years.

I’m sad I won’t see her anymore, whenever people used to ask why I was going to Taiwan I would say “Oh, I’m visiting my grandma”. But now there’s no grandma to visit, instead she’ll always be with me. She had Parkinson’s disease for years. I’m glad her pain has ended, and she can rest now with God.