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1st scene
The earliest, clearest memory I have of my mother was when I was around six years old. It was late in the year, sometime during the transition between autumn to winter, and I had a terrible fever that actually caused me to miss school. I remember being ensconced in a comforter and a very worn quilt that smelled vaguely of mothballs, a damp cloth draped across my forehead as I tried to fall asleep and forget about the pounding ache in my head. My mother sat next to me on the bed, stroking back my sweat-drenched hair and periodically changing the cloth, murmuring soothing wordless sounds like a lullaby. Her voice was low and soft, each lilting syllable a soft caress, gentle like her fingers brushing against my heated skin. Eventually, I was able to drift off into a dreamless sleep, surrounded by the warmth of the blankets and my mother's song.
She wanted to be a singer. It was her dream as a young girl, she told me. Music was a constant in her life, where she grew up in a family of eight living in a shoebox of a house, tucked in a corner of a small island off the coast of Hong Kong. I have been to that house and stood in the same kitchen that my grandmother did every single day; singing folk songs while she made breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They followed my mother from her house to the pier where she waited for the morning ferry to carry her to Hong Kong, to the bus stop in front of the docks, all the way across the tunnels to Kowloon, where she attended school. And they followed her all the way back, through tunnels and over seas, back to the warm scent of stir-fry and steamed fish and rice congee.
My mother wanted to be a singer, but instead she became a part-time restaurant hostess, part-time night student; then a lover; then a secondary English teacher; then a mother; then a manager of a family-owned Asian grocery store; and finally a breast cancer survivor. Yet, she still sang every evening in the kitchen as she tossed meats and vegetables and seasonings together, humming over the drone of the overhead vent.
She sang until the recurrence, until the disease spread to her lungs and it hurt too much to sing.
She wanted me to sing for her, I wanted to write. She wanted the world to hear her voice, I wanted my thoughts to be acknowledged.
It is human nature, she said: we all want what we can't have.
She wanted to be a singer. It was her dream as a young girl, she told me. Music was a constant in her life, where she grew up in a family of eight living in a shoebox of a house, tucked in a corner of a small island off the coast of Hong Kong. I have been to that house and stood in the same kitchen that my grandmother did every single day; singing folk songs while she made breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They followed my mother from her house to the pier where she waited for the morning ferry to carry her to Hong Kong, to the bus stop in front of the docks, all the way across the tunnels to Kowloon, where she attended school. And they followed her all the way back, through tunnels and over seas, back to the warm scent of stir-fry and steamed fish and rice congee.
My mother wanted to be a singer, but instead she became a part-time restaurant hostess, part-time night student; then a lover; then a secondary English teacher; then a mother; then a manager of a family-owned Asian grocery store; and finally a breast cancer survivor. Yet, she still sang every evening in the kitchen as she tossed meats and vegetables and seasonings together, humming over the drone of the overhead vent.
She sang until the recurrence, until the disease spread to her lungs and it hurt too much to sing.
She wanted me to sing for her, I wanted to write. She wanted the world to hear her voice, I wanted my thoughts to be acknowledged.
It is human nature, she said: we all want what we can't have.