奶奶和外婆

Dedicated to my 外婆 (maternal grandmother), whom, I pray, is now at peace. 

My father has always insisted that I take after his mother. After my dance recitals, he tells me that I resemble her, even as a child, in my physicality, my figure, my gait. Each time he settles the orthodontic bills which punctuate my awkward teens, he offers the same commentary: that, as a toddler, I was minded by my grandmother, who often snacked on peanuts — a habit that she passed on to me, alongside her iron jaw and strong teeth. I take pride in all this,

in all the ways I embody the mannerisms of my 奶奶, whom I only wish I had known better. I am glad that I carry her spirit within me, in my flesh and bones.

I have distinct memories of Grandparents Days at my primary school: teachers distributing notices, encouraging students to invite their elderly relatives along for a day of festivities. I come to dread them, and the self-consciousness they stir in me. When you are a child, it takes very little to prompt a sense of exclusion, of being a square peg in a round hole,

even just hearing classmates recount their weekends with their Grans and Pops and Nans; gifts at Christmas; big, multi-generational Sunday lunches; family holidays to celebrate special occasions. My peers describe moments that I can only imagine, then envy. I have nothing to contribute to these excited conversations, because I am a little embarrassed, and do not yet have the wherewithal, to explain that,

instead of birthday cards, what I have is the smattering of prepaid cards for international calls in our living room; 妈 passing me the receiver, because 外婆 wants to hear from me. I am a shy child, have always been of few words, and do not know what to say. I can only “mmm” and “uh-huh”: those sounds that, universally, indicate agreement and understanding and yes, I am listening. Otherwise, I muster up what little I remember from weekend Mandarin classes, often defaulting to the same poem —

床前明月光

reciting it without comprehension;
疑是地上霜

as though I am simply the answering machine, and it is a pre-recorded message;
举头望明月

my attempt at obedience, at reassurance — that I have been a good, filial Chinese girl.
低头思故乡

My father’s message comes whilst I am on holiday in Bangkok, just days into this new year: he informs us that our 外婆 has passed into her next life. I immediately call my dear mother, who answers in a voice that is wet, or padded with cotton — my 妈, who rarely cries, and has always been so reluctant to expose any kind of emotion. I ask whether I should meet her in Hong Kong, to be with my grandfather, to support her (them) through whatever cultural, personal, bureaucratic rituals that will need to follow.

She is matter-of-fact, stoic in return, after a lifetime of tucking herself away for the sake of her children. No, don’t cancel your travel plans, she insists. Don’t worry: 你还是按照你原本的计划吧. She assures me she will let me know once funeral dates are set, so that I can decide what I’d like to do — but for now, I should carry on as usual. I realise that, with this deep sense of maternal responsibility, and desire to shield others (and herself) from hurt (and from witnessing hurt), she (I suspect, like her own mother) has never learned to put herself first.

She rarely cries, my 妈妈, and in that way, she and my father are very alike. I have seen my father cry just twice in my twenty-six years of life. In 2004, the good ol’ days of landlines: we learn that my 奶奶 has taken her last breath, and have crowded into my parents’ bedroom as he wails into the receiver. He instructs, orders us to cry, too. I am just six years old, and in playing this back to school friends in the playground,

I make this sound rather perverse; a crude parental demand. In adulthood, I now understand — my father knew his mother deserved a river. He knew that he alone would not have sufficient tears to express his own grief.

Hong Kong is not my first choice, in fact. Rather, it is the city, the university, that simply works best as the destination and the host institution for my exchange semester. I resign myself to this, even though coming to a place where I have a safety net somewhat taints my intention to find myself (ha) and prove my independence — my adulthood. I settle into my dormitory. I also visit my grandparents and let them feed me, every other weekend, because I can’t find it in myself to say no,

not when my grandfather has bought me assortments of cake, and bags of oranges that will ultimately perfume my shared room at the college with a distinctive citrus scent, but go uneaten. My grandmother, too, badgers me to eat more when we are at yum cha. She watches over me with a militant vigilance, filling my bowl — and even after we finish our meal and return to their home, she always has something else ready to eat as a chaser. My stomach is close to bursting and yet I still do not say no, because letting my grandmother feed me,

sitting quietly with snacks that have been prepared just for me as she watches television, is the only form of communication we have. It is all she can do, for her strange, foreign, beloved grand-daughter — the one who can only string together a few sentences in Mandarin; nod along to Hokkien. It is the most loving gesture she can offer to her daughter, nearly 7,500 kilometres away.

I have just one single memory of my 奶奶, whom I otherwise know mostly through my father’s stories and old film photos. It is 2003, I think. We are in 福建, as an entire family , for the first time. My father’s sister, too, and her then-husband, and their daughters, have also joined us at their brother’s house — so I assume we have gathered for Chinese New Year. Yes, that’s right: my grandmother would have been preparing a dish for our traditional 年夜饭, at the dining table,

where my cousins and I have gathered to observe. They move and speak with her comfortably, calling upon their 外婆 with an easy familiarity that I do not share. When I mimic them, she corrects me, directing me to instead call her 奶奶. I can’t help but interpret this as some kind of a rejection, because I am young, and unaware that this woman held me, and helped to raise me, as a newborn. I feel shunned, because she is playing favourites with her grandchildren. What I do not understand, but do now, is that my relationship with each of my grandmothers must be treated as distinct, and sacred — incomparable.

妈’s side of the family is now almost entirely based in Hong Kong, even though she has never lived there herself. At the time when her parents and siblings are relocating there, joining other relatives, she, with my 老爸, is already in the gruelling process of migrating to Australia. Like mother, like daughter: they work (alongside, or perhaps following their husbands) to establish new roots in new lands, in the hopes of a better life.

More than three decades on, we are now two separate branches of the same family tree, casting shadows that extend across multiple cultures and states and ways of being. More than three decades on, 妈 and 外婆 have reunited just a few times — I can keep count on my hands. I suppose it’s a combination of a few different factors: 妈’s fear of heights, and flying; the inconvenience of leaving behind three school-aged children with just one, working parent to make lunches and get themselves to class; financial constraints, perhaps. I do not know how 妈 would narrate this herself,

but I certainly think about this far more than she will never know: how, in order to raise three children, in order to have me, she and her own mother chose to endure years of separation. To be my 妈妈, she gave up time with her own 妈妈; time loosely strung along by occasional telephone and later video calls, but otherwise washed away by distance.

The second time I witness my father cry, it is 2011, and we are celebrating Chinese New Year in 福建 once again. One of his aunts, his mother’s sisters, is hosting; surrounded by throngs of people, feasting merrily, I am learning that my grandmother was one of eight children. 老爸 is admittedly drunk when it comes,

a flood that, it is very clear, has been stirring away for years. He recalls his mother’s disapproval, her opposition, to his starry-eyed desire to pack his bags and craft something greater for himself, in a new country,

一直记得，一直记得。As my father, he is and has always been stubborn, so I can only imagine that he was even more dogged, unrelenting, in this youth,

following through on this vision, despite the anguish it must have caused my 奶奶. And now, this hurt outlives her, a spectre of regret that my father knows he now must carry. He made a choice to accept being apart from his mother; to accept a distance that he later would not be able to close in time. 最后，

来不及

I visit my uncle with my brother in 2018, and we — at the bidding of my father — visit the columbarium where 奶奶 now rests. It is not the first time I am paying my respects to her, visiting her final resting place; it has always been important to 爸爸 that we remember her. It is, however, the first time it dawns on me,

as my uncle tenderly cleans webs and dust off stone; as I read the inscription and the years that mark the start and end of her earthly presence; as he reminisces, wistfully, about her, and the last stint in Melbourne, right after my younger brother was born,

that she would have already been diagnosed by then; the cancer would have already started to weaken her. I am caught thoroughly off-guard by this realisation — that the hazy not-quite-recollections, impressions, that I have long carried with me, are of a grandmother who likely was already unwell. I re-arrange and re-interpret photos that I have become so familiar with, of 奶奶 tenderly holding us as babies, cradling us at the beginning of our lives. This is when it smacks me,

this belated, unexpected wave of grief. I truly mourn, not just for the sake of my father, but simply for myself — years too late.

The final time I see my 外婆 is in 2023. If I am honest, I knew it would perhaps be the last I would see her. My 妈 would be scandalised to read this, to see me articulating this morbid thought, but this is how things are when you are an immigrant, with family strewn across continents: you understand that you are at the whim of good timing, flight prices, border controls, and even pandemics. You are never quite sure when there will be a next time.

I don’t remember how we bid each other farewell in 2023, but I do have a far sharper memory of our goodbye in 2017. It is a day or so before my departure, the end of my semester abroad. In my recollections from this period of time, she remains spry, despite having one dodgy leg. Her black, salt-and-peppered hair is not yet the startling, bright white that it will become six years later,

and she also retains a quietly cheerful disposition — alongside the signature, constant thrum of worry and what-ifs that my 妈妈 has inherited. This is how I remember her. This is how we eat a final meal together, dinner at a 大排档, including squid ink noodles that stain our lips a purplish-black: a meal, and indeed, an experience that is wildly outside of my elderly grandparents’ comfort zone, but one that my uncle figured they may as well try.

Afterwards, they walk me to the MTR station, insisting on escorting me to the platform. As the train pulls up and then away, I am surprised to realise, as I turn to wave, that my grandmother is weeping. Through the glass doors, and in the seconds before they are no longer in view, I glimpse 外公, my ever-serious grandfather, lightly place his arm upon her shoulders to comfort her. Before I know it, I too am crying — silently, tightly gripping a handle to keep my balance, surrounded by passengers tapping away on phones. I find myself pre-emptively grieving that I have never been able to know my grandmother as well as I would have yearned to,

that I have always had to wonder if, when, there will be another chance to meet, and whether I will have loved her enough.