During happier times with my parents
I wasn’t raised by my parents until we immigrated to Canada. I lived in both of my parent’s birth village, a 6 hours drive from the nearest airport in the city of Guangzhou, China. It was the city of technology, and both my parents had been lucky and been dispatched there for jobs. Back then, my parents were in the rare percentage of people from the village who got into university via a nationwide test called Gaokao. Unlike the SATs, it was free, and you could only take it once a year. After university, which was also entirely free, the government decided where you got a job, and you just moved there.
Although they have never mentioned this to me, I presume they were also happy to have gotten there because they were Cantonese, and Guangzhou was the only metropolis with a Cantonese-speaking majority. Even in my remote village, I was taught both mandarin and Cantonese, because school would inevitably be in mandarin, the only official language in China.
It was my paternal grandmother in the birth village who raised me. She lived in a stone house with my great-grandmother, already old and ghost-like then, and my grandfather, who had fought in the Vietnam war. They said he had survived getting shot in the head. They never said he had never gotten therapy. My aunt would often visit and fight with my grandma: she was a tomboy who didn’t want to get married. She made an impression to me even then, and I would grow up to have her spirit of self-determination.
I loved my grandmother and lived in fear of my grandfather, who would watch TV all day and hit me when I wandered into the TV room. My grandmother was fun, sweet and caring: despite her age, we would play together. I still remember her carrying me on her back on the square next to her house. Once, my curious child-self wondered how it felt like to zoom towards a tree from that vantage point, so I asked her to run with me on her back and she did. I felt her love then. In therapy, I’ll mention how I’ve cherished that memory and compared it to how my parents treated me.
My grandma died some time ago last year. It was expected. She contracted Alzheimer’s more than a decade ago, and she had lost all functionality by the time she died. Last time I visited her, when I was 18, she remembered me but not her own son, my dad. I think I was her favourite.
From time to time, my parents would visit me and take me with them. They had me at an age that feels too young to me now: 27, and for reasons that feel wrong: social. My mom would tell me that she didn’t even really want to marry my dad, but he got upset when she mentioned this to him, so she relented. I wonder if that’s how she had me. I asked her and from her strange reply, I think I know the answer. To her credit, she didn’t abort me even though I was a girl. That was an option that was presented to her, too.
I suppose things back then weren’t so bad with the family structure they had, which was very common: they would leave me at my grandma’s, and bring me to the city once in a while and spoil me. Otherwise, they could enjoy their youth and the big city life without the burden of a child, while reaping the benefit of being a “successful family unit”. The stories they like to tell are about taking me to the equivalent of SeaWorld (which they said was very expensive in China), and dressing me in cute clothes (which they also said was very expensive). The one non-money-related story my dad in particular likes to tell me was about eating fish with the bones in, and how he would positively reinforce me when I swallowed the fish, thinking I separated the fish and bone. He was proud I did that when I could barely chew. I remember it hurting a lot, actually, because I did swallow a lot of bones, but I didn’t cry because I wanted to please him. I suppose if you don’t have a kid for very long they can feel like a toy.
Besides, crying was for the weak, for the kind of kids who would feel crushed by their veteran-abusive grandfather hitting them over nothing as a toddler. I wasn’t like that. I tried my hardest not to cry, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. My grandfather was my sworn enemy and I would have revenge some day. I hated him even then. I guess I did win in the end because time did the trick and, after a too long life, he *is* dead now. I don’t feel sad at all. He created my dad, and my dad is like him.
Anyway, we were happy then, my parents and I. My mom says I didn’t smile much as a child and was very guarded. But to me they were but strangers who would buy me things and get excited around me. As a kid you know you aren’t supposed to trust people like that. But gifts and attention are still nice.
One day, we flew one-way together to Canada, sans grandma. My mom had decided she wanted to travel the world and needed a better passport than a Chinese one. After being demoted from his VP job, my dad went along. It was my first time on a plane. Seeing China become so little, I cried. I knew I was leaving everyone I loved and everything I knew. My mom, seeing me, cried too.
