Dear July,
It is now 2022. Happy New Year, my friend.
I'm happy that I am starting the year by writing a letter to a friend. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.
Thank you also for sharing your mom's stories with me, not just in your last letter but in all the earlier ones too. Even though your mom's story about her sister Lucia is filled with mixed emotions, I feel that you are lucky to get to hear it. I have never lost a sibling so I cannot understand her grief, but I can feel happiness in her memories with her sister. When I read about them playing dress up together as children and your mother carrying her sister on her back, I could tell that they were close. I feel these are precious memories she holds dear to her heart. I often wonder how we, as children, should comfort our parents in times of sadness. I honestly have no idea. But I think, from your letter, I learned that just listening can sometimes be enough.
Rather than remembering your mom's sadness at having lost a sister, let's remember her happiness of having had one.
Talking and hearing memories is such a strange experience, isn't it? Do you remember I mentioned wanting to do something special for my final letter? My plan initially was to have an interview with my mom. I was going to come up with questions, then sit down with her to ask them formally. But that was too weird. I couldn't do it. It felt like a news report. So, after weeks of procrastinating and wondering how to go about doing it, I decided to just go for it and ask her the first three questions that popped into my head.
Here goes.
PB: Mom, do you remember I told you I am writing letters to a friend? About mothers?
Mom: Yes.
PB: Can I ask you some questions?
Mom: Now? Are they hard?
PB: I don't think so
Mom: Okay.
PB: First question - what is your favorite food?
Mom: ... (Thinking)
Food?
... (Thinking for 42 seconds)
At different times, I like different foods.
PB: What about right now?
Mom: Right now? I like roast duck.
PB: Why?
Mom: Actually, roast pork. I've always liked roast pork.
PB: Why?
Mom: I don't know. I just like it.
PB: Okay
Question two- what did you want to be when you were young?
Mom: I wanted to be a teacher.
PB: Why?
Mom: I wanted to be like my teachers. They seemed so amazing. My parents worked at home*, so when I saw my teachers, it was, like "WHOA!"
*My grandparents were tailors. My mom could sew when she was five years old.
PB: Okay. Last question?
Mom: mmh.
PB: Do you think you and I are alike?
Mom: Do you like roast pork?
PB: Not really.
Mom: Do you want to be a teacher?
PB: Yes.
Mom: I don't think we are.
PB: Why?
Mom: This is a very hard question. I think in terms of our intelligence, probably yes, and ...做东西*, probably yes.
*做东西 (pronounced zuò dōng xī, means 'doing things')
PB: 做什么*?
*做东西 (pronounced zuò shén me, means 'doing what')
Mom: Just being methodical?
PB: Right.
Mom: But a sense of humor, no.
PB: What's your sense of humor?
Mom: I think I find humor in everything. I don't think you do.
PB: Right.
Mom: I think I'm very serious but I also take everything lightly.
PB: Right.
Mom: I choose to see the positive but I think you see things as deeper than they are. So you may not see the positive.
PB: Right
Mom: Sometimes, you are... grumpy.
PB: I do tend to see the negative.
Mom: (silence)
PB: (silence)
Mom: Okay? Good Interview?
PB: Yes. Thank you for your time, mom.
Mom: (Laughing)
My feelings about roast pork are paradoxical. I like it very much but I can't have it all the time. Life is like that.
PB: It is. You're right.
*
As I am transcribing my conversation with my mom, I am reminding myself not to psychoanalyze her answers. I am reminding myself to listen to what she has said and not to dig for hidden meanings or change her mind about things. To just hear her opinions and be happy that she is willing to share them with me. Maybe in ten years, I will ask her these questions again. Who knows if she will still like roast pork then — or if I will be more like her than she imagined.
I am grateful to you for writing to me about your mom, Anna, and for listening to me talk about my mom, Joyce, and my grandma 美秋*. Between us, as daughters, I think we understand the complex relationships we each have with our mothers, even if we ourselves don't quite know how to negotiate the strange mix of intimacy and distance we feel towards them.
*美秋 (my grandma's name, pronounced měi qiū, literal translation 'beautiful autumn.’)
Friend to friend, daughter to daughter, thank you.
Happy new year, July.
Be Happy.
Your Friend,
Phoebe
Jan 2022.
