襁褓中的开文

To Have Courage

October 23th, 2015

Dear Emily,

You know that book, East of Eden by John Steinbeck? I want to share with you my favorite chapter, chapter 14, the one that focuses on Olive Hamilton. As you know, the entire book is fantastic, but this chapter particularly stands out to me. It doesn’t contribute to the plot at all, and even I don’t believe it’s very “crucial”. But I think why the chapter spoke to me so much was because Olive Hamilton reminded me of Mom.

To be sure, they’re not exactly the same. Olive could “blanch the skin off a bad child as easily as if he were a boiled almond” when she was mad. When Mom got mad, we go towards her instead of run away from her, comforting her and telling her things were going to be okay. Olive had “her scattergun method of treating pleural pneumonia”, turning to Episcopalians, Christian Scientists, Catholics, using “every incantation, magic, and herbal formula” to cure her children. Our mother wouldn’t even take us to the doctor. “Just use some saliva and sleep on it, you’ll feel better!” she’d say, her Chinese intuition serving her well.

Nevertheless, their similarities make me feel a kind of reminiscence, an “ah yes”, while a grin spreads across my face. Olive is the type of woman that would “cry bitterly because she could not go to two dances on one Saturday night”. I think Mom in her youth would also be the one to want to go to two dances. Indeed, she probably would also have suitors to ask her. Olive caused “trouble among the young men in the neighborhood” after she got engaged. I’m sure jealousy or regret was not an easy emotion to tame for these men when a woman like Olive Hamilton was taken off the market. You know Mom, she’s always very gregarious. When she would tell stories of how all the boys wanted to be with her, I would laugh because it was funny, but also wonder to myself how she was able to do it.

The wonder didn’t last long. Old photos of her betray aspects of Mom now, like how she waves “Bye!”, waving her arm and jiggling her tricep fat, earned through motherhood. She really was beautiful in her youth, and although the black hair and the thinness of stature may have left her, the radiance and beauty have not.

You see Emily, I am really starting to learn how beauty is timeless. Beauty seems to shape-shift with time, meaning smooth skin and vibrant hair at one point, and then meaning bravery and whole-heartedness at another. I don’t know what Olive Hamilton looked like, but I am sure that she was a beautiful lady in her youth, even if she didn’t exhibit all the maturity and willpower of a grown woman. But deep down, I’m sure she had those qualities, she just didn’t know how to use them. She had “a sense of fun, together with her mother’s strong and undeviating will.” Undeviating will? How does one explain young Olive’s paralyzing fear of not being able to attend two dances the same night? Although beauty might not have constant meaning, it always exists in one form or another. Olive had it in her youth in her physical stature, her “handsomeness” and “glowing” pride. But as age set it, some of the youthfulness left, but she gained something much more steadfast.

I think Olive’s ultimate crowning glory is not in her handsomeness or ability to make men jealous, but her great courage: “Olive had great courage. Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.” No matter how skillful John Steinbeck’s flick of the word “perhaps” is, it betrays what I know about our Mom: it certainly took her courage to raise us. To raise a son that lost as many things, or play as many video games, or throw as many fits as I did. Or to raise a daughter that had the drama, or the harsh tongue, or the hot-headedness as you did.

But to raise both of us without her husband physically present 75% of the time takes true courage. In a foreign land, with few friends, and a tricky language (“I” before “e” except after “c”? I mean really?!), Mom made her own way. Think about how she had no one to complain about her annoying boss at work, or even how she worked 8 hours every day and used her lunch hour to pick her kids up from two different schools, to then make us lunch! “How did you eat?” I wonder to myself. I don’t know if you’ve though about these things as much as I have, Emily, but I am sure you’ve noticed it.

She had a lot of courage to make such a hard decision to be physically distant from Dad. We can’t overlook how much courage it took her to make those small choices, day after day, year after year. Finding ways to stay strong after hard days of work or hungry days at the office, all these small decisions she made to serve her kids and family are as courageous, I would say, as the decision to live in the US while Dad lived in China.

The thing is, I don’t think Mom was entirely courageous on her own. Olive even got her “strong and undeviating will” from her mother. So where did Mom get hers? I believe she got it from her mom. For while our Dad was in China, our grandma’s husband was slowly passed away, his faculties leaving him more and more every day. Soon enough, Grandma was by his side every day, washing him, cleaning him, and feeding him. He had a hard time talking and responding, and I wonder how much that hurt Grandma. To have a front row seat as her husband descended slowly into fragility and death. But she loved him. She stayed strong and served him to the day of his death because she loved him.

That blows my mind, Emily. I’ve only been alive for a little over twenty years and my life has been pretty smooth, I’d say. So I just don’t have even the imagination to understand the courage it takes persist onwards like that, even when you know there is not going to be a pretty outcome in the end. When hard times strike our generation, we’re told to wait for the light at the end of the tunnel. “Use the light at the tunnel to motivate you to keep going.” What if there is no light at the end? How do you keep going?

Grandma is the answer to that question. Grandma knew how to keep moving forward, even when there was no hope, even when death was inevitable and soon. But she did it because it was simply the right thing to do, because she knew Grandpa would have done the same. She knew it was her duty as a human being to love and serve him, even when he couldn’t even articulate his thankfulness.

I addressed this letter to you, Emily, because I believe that if Olive can get her mother’s will, and our Mom can get Grandma’s courage, then I believe you have that courage inside of you too. You are an heiress to an incredible inheritance, an inheritance of courage. I see it in you. The fiery eyes, the electric mind, the sparkling smile that you have all speak testimony to the inheritance of courage that you have received by being Honghua’s daughter. If history has taught us anything, it’s that there are going to be incredible times ahead of us. Incredibly positive, and incredibly difficult times. Even more difficult than the times we had seven years ago in middle school, or what you felt like you were going through just two years ago at Pepperdine. Even now I’m sitting at a cafe writing this, discharged from my first job. There is so much uncertainty in life, and I’m just starting to see what that really means. That’s why I am excited for you. I’m sure the future holds moments where there is no light to be found, but you have two amazing women in your life that from whom you have received the impenetrable courage to do the right thing simply because it’s right, no matter what the future holds.

Hah, I say these things as if I have lived through them myself. I would be a fool to say that I fully understand such things. But I’ve seen it with my eyes in Grandma and in Mom. I know that there’s something there. I know I only have history and my intuition to back this up, but as you grow into your mother’s likeness, you’re going to inherit this matriarchal courage that flows through the women in this family. It was Grandma’s when she was taking care of her husband, it was Mom’s when she would pick us up and fight through every day, and now it’s yours.