Lost and Found

The concepts of family and companionship have changed. Have we lost the essential elements of our tradition, or are they just being realized in a different way?

BY: JINGSHU YAO

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

1.

Gramma Yifen got upset whenever she finished the call with her granddaughter Yaya. The child who grew up under her watch had become distant, both physically and emotionally. 

“I’m fine Gramma,” the girl would say from the other side of the screen, her eyes unfocused, drifting around. “I need to hang up.”

“Why did you do this,” Yifen would go on to blame her daughter Xia, Yaya’s mother, “sending her so far away?”

Xia shrugged as if she had nothing to do with the fact that Yaya was thousand miles away from home, as if she woke up one day and her little girl was no longer napping in the next room but an ocean away. If it had been 40 years ago, Yifen would have slapped Xia for neglecting the question, but Xia was no longer the girl who would obey any order without question. Nor did Yifen have the strength to act fast and accurately. Physical punishment was no longer a thing. Yifen’s grandchildren were seldom beaten or scolded, and their discipline was loose.

“That’s why they all left,” Yifen told Xia. “You let them do whatever they want without any consequences.”

Xia shook her head and ignored the accusation. Yifen was treated like this very often recently, as if she wasn’t worth talking to.

“It’s all your fault,” Yifen yelled at Xia. “You let the family break apart so they left you here to die alone!”

Xia left the room and slammed the door.

Yifen thought of her family home as a child, the house once crowded with four generations of people, the close, complicated relationship of a big family. As the oldest of all her siblings, she held the responsibility of taking care of the younger ones when the adults were not around. This gave her authorities and power, which he used well. Though her younger brothers always rebelled against her discipline, they always defended her whenever she was in one of the “showdowns” with her troublemaking cousins. This relationship was established as children and carried on into adulthood. A big family was a society on its own and its members learned to love hate and live among each other. But now the only way for Yifen to revisit everything was in her dreams.

Photo courtesy of Needpix

2.

Xia got the divorce 20 years later than she wanted. She had learned to live in peace with her distant husband over time. She pitied him more now than she used to hate him. But a promise was a promise and once their daughter Yaya became independent, they separated. 

Though surprised, Yaya didn’t appear to be upset. 

“I thought you guys would have done it much earlier,” Yaya said and shrugged. “What’s the point now? You are already in climacterium.”

Ungrateful, disrespectful, and arrogant. Xia thought of her daughter’s comments. Every sacrifice she made in this marriage was to give Yaya both parents’ company through childhood and the teenage years. Yet all she got in return was humiliation.

“This is a sin,” Xia’s mother said furiously when she heard this news. “Disgraceful.”

“Not anymore, Ma,” Xia argued. “It’s not like your time.”

Xia’s own parents were such different people back in the day. Her father was a sweet little man who just wanted a simple life. As long as they had food on the table, he was content. However, Yifen was ambitious and competitive. She would work unrestfully for 14 hours a day doing multiple part-time jobs and earn twice as much as her husband. Fights broke out now and then, for they sought very different things in life but were squeezed together by an arranged marriage. 

Xia always felt more connected with her father, even though she spent most of her life living like her mother. His humility and kindness always put her at ease. Life was a fight when she was with her mother, but it was only life when she was with her father. Despite the tenderness she had when she thought of her father, Xia modeled herself after Yifen, but more educated and younger. She knew she would be the one who led the family out of poverty. 

With that dream she married a man running a small business selling imported shoes, an entrepreneur, in a fancier term they used today. She had high expectations for the business and the role she would play in making it thrive and succeed. However, she soon realized her husband to be a man with all words but no skills who hated to take suggestions from his wife. Not only did her vision of the future never come true, but Xia was also slowly reduced to a mother, housewife, bystander, someone who watches the world falling apart without blinking her eyes.

Growing up, the conflict between Yifen and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law always terrified Xia. For her, in-laws seemed to be natural enemies; even though she could hardly find any fault in her husband’s family, a distrust that rooted deeply in her mind never allowed her to truly bond with them. She insisted to live separately from the extended family members so there would be no chance for difference, disagreement nor darma. 

At the moment Xia finally broke free, the joy didn’t come as she expected. Instead, it felt like a spoiled meal, one that a hungry person would devour regardless. 

Photo courtesy of Flickr

3.

Yaya thought of the family dinners she used to have as a child. Four cousins from her parents’ siblings, ten more distant ones who were the children of her parents’ cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles. There was no way that she could have known every one of them personally. The adults wore fake smiles and chatted in an insincere way. Yaya knew enough of how they thought of each other from her parents’ conversation in the car.

“My second cousin was such a whore… did you see that thing she’s wearing?”

“My parents always favoured my brother. He will definitely inherit more when they die.”

“Your aunts are so annoying.”

“Really, how about your mother? I’d rather listen to a pig snoring when she talks to me.”

She had to go to those gatherings and pretend to enjoy the company of the cousins she rarely met. Even though they’d all rather hang out with friends from school. 

“It’s tradition,” the grandparents and their siblings insisted. “We are a family and our future generations should get to know each other.”

Among those vague memories, Yaya recalled the bitter sweet moment when her cousin swore to marry her when they grew up, before they understood the moral and legal barriers between close relatives. She remembered ranging through the street with all the girls from her family, pissing off every adult around. These moments seemed like a secret bury under the dull, boring gathering where everyone sat around the table and chewed mindlessly.

Every cousin must have hated those gatherings, because they all tried their best to escape their hometown, even the home country. The grandparents suddenly lost all control over the future where the future generations continue the tradition of sticking together despite the hate and drama. They were frustrated, accusing the grandchildren of being selfish and disloyal to their family. They lacked the knowledge of reaching their grandchildren using a phone or internet so they could only complain to each other. 

“Kids these days,” they murmured, “They broke every rule, destroyed everything.”

Yaya knew that they could no longer go back to the family gathering from her childhood. The only place she could revisit it was her dreams.