How do I love thee? Let me count . . . but wait I may possibly lose count because the mind loops back and around, down and up, around the world and back until Chaos! whenever you appear.
Revolve. How do you love me? Let me count . . . but no, you would never count, would you, because you’ve always loved me as only a mother would, unconditionally, which you’d undoubtedly say if you still could. Undoubtedly. Wouldn’t you?
Restart. Revise. How have I not loved you? Let you count . . . Dad made the great mistake of giving me a sizable sum as a down payment for a home, the second home I purchased. This was long after the great crash, Dad’s virtual bankruptcy, the cause of my straitened circumstances in college, and the years of never asking for money, of always earning my own way. My unforgivable mistake was to marry and make that home my second husband’s and mine. Which was when you disowned me, when you said I was no longer your daughter, when you accused me of “running away with the family’s fortune.” Melodramatic, yes, because it was hardly a fortune or the family’s only money. But it hurt.
Replay. Recall. Dad loaned me the down payment for the first home that we—Mum and I—purchased and jointly owned. It was a good flat, a post-first-marriage home, a place for me to hide in Hong Kong after that Greatest Folly of My Youth. A flat that increased in value several hundred percent by the time Mum sold it. We jointly paid the mortgage, and then when I left home to be a writer, you rented it out and gave me the rental income to live on for my one belated gap year in Greece, until I could support myself again on a graduate assistantship for the MFA.
By then Dad’s new business was making some profit, and you were earning well as a pharmacist and assumed equal stature to Dad in your own Marriage of Too Many Flaws. Those were the years of Mum and Me, when I stood up to Dad for you, verbally countered his mean remarks, said that you could divorce him if you wished, as I had divorced my husband. You complained about him, knew that without your income he could never have survived his shame and depression and years of genteel penury. You discovered the power of having your own money in marriage and other sins.
Do you remember, Mum, that time of liberation and freedom? My brother, the youngest sib, had departed for college, and the nest was completely vacated. Leave him, I told you, when dinner table arguments grew heated and hateful. When I accused him of bullying you, of belittling you, of humiliating you, of making himself the Big Man and you the little woman, of making you cry and feel unloved. The way he never made me feel, the way he never dared treat me. Was that because my tongue could be as devilish as his, my outlook on life enough like his to chafe against the boredom of the bourgeoisie, my longings and desires as expansive as his? While you, Mum, simply wanted a good husband and father to your children, the way you were the good wife and our mother, sacrificing all for family.
Do you remember, Mum, how often you came to me for support, how willingly I gave it, jeopardizing Dad’s love for me?
I never laid claim to that first home, the significantly more valuable property, because the considerable profits from its eventual sale rightfully belonged to you. A small starter home, even in upmarket Amherst, Massachusetts, cost less than fifty thousand dollars and eventually sold for less than ninety, a mere fraction of the value of a flat in an upscale neighborhood in Hong Kong’s insane property market. What profit I made selling the house was peanuts compared to the value of that flat. It never was about money, Mum, not for me, except when you made it so.
Which you did.
Replay. Recall. The first financial fiasco for Mum and Me. Even earlier, the first husband wanted land to build his kennels. That was before Dad had regained enough financial footing in the marriage and Mum completely ruled. Yes, my then-husband told Mum, there was this village land he wanted to buy that could—or so he was assured by an expat Brit “village land expert” who made promises with other people’s money—be converted from agricultural to residential and commercial. We could build a home there, establish proper kennels for his business. I was reluctant. We had moved twice into village homes for this business that was going nowhere since he drank away what little he made and was uninclined to work more than a few hours a day. Meanwhile, I held down a full-time job, paid the rent, ran the household, and after hours worked for his business as well. By then I had been carrying his weight long enough to know the mistake of that marriage. Even Mum knew. But here was her chance to be the savior, to rescue my marriage. No, I said, do not lend him the money, do not do this, it’s a pointless proposition. So naturally she gave him the money but asked that the land be in my name, to which he happily acceded. The land remains in the family’s fortune, unused for years, worthless except for agriculture. After my husband gave up trying to build on that land, I finally left him. The whole process took less than three months.
Dad used to say, at least when it came to family, we keep no accounts. This Chinese turn of phrase renders the ledger invisible as debts are disappeared and what fortune a family has is simply shared in times of need. He was that way with his cousins, brothers, and the two half-sisters who lived with our family back in the sixties, never mind the tsunami of his and Mum’s relatives who squatted with us. With my sibs and me. It was always that way with Dad and money. What he had he spent as lavishly as possible on himself and others, even after the money was gone.
Mum was everyone’s mother. She took care of housekeeping, stretched the budget, ensured we all were fed and warmly clothed in winter, especially those relatives from tropical Indonesia who shivered on arrival in Hong Kong’s subtropical climate. Most were grateful, called her older-sister-cousin, the almost-Chinese honorific for the wife of an older male cousin or brother.
Mum was a rich man’s daughter, unlike Dad, who came from lesser circumstances. Until Dad’s bankruptcy, she had not really known anything remotely resembling real poverty. Oh, she understood hardship, she liked to say. In stories of her postwar years in Hong Kong, this pharmacist-in-training only owned two wool skirts to wear one on top of the other, alternating each day, in order to stay warm. But isn’t that every petty bourgeoisie youth? To have “suffered” hardship while staying up all night studying for exams, eating little, working hard, sharing rooms with other equally hard-up students? Buying secondhand books or clothes? Counting pennies in every currency? All to be praiseworthy by proving your mettle in higher education, the professions, that white- and pink-collar gentility? And then, when you finally marry a rich man, don’t you deserve the money? Isn’t that what you are owed for treading the right path in life? Isn’t that simply your destiny? It never seems to occur to the privileged just how much of a difference that privilege makes to succeeding in life. Mum, unfortunately, was no exception.
Mum could be generous. I don’t remember her as stingy or mean when it came to money, not when I was a child. She taught us pity for those less fortunate and insisted we give alms to the poor. She also taught us the value of money, doling out allowances we were expected to budget. We were privileged by her good sense as a mother. Unlike Dad, who showered luxuries on us, who would slip the children extra cash behind Mum’s back for treats, especially to the two younger sibs as his business revived after the leanest years. Overcompensating with money, until Mum put a stop to it.
But something happened to Mum after Dad’s bankruptcy. The shock to Dad’s system was readily manifest—the disgrace, the inability to accept his failure, the need to hide from the world, resulting in a prolonged depression (clinical, probably, but that’s another story). With Mum, though, Dad’s betrayal—because it was a betrayal, this reckless disregard of family responsibility—resulted in a prolonged PTSD, a form of post-traumatic something or other that lasted the rest of her life, long after money wasn’t the problem. For years afterward she would repeat, gone, all gone, all his money was gone, and then she’d gaze into space, the shock visceral. That face looms in my memory, harboring all the pain and torment of her broken life. Even after Mum’s memory played tricks on recall, she still occasionally muttered about money. It was like Dad’s death, abrupt and unexpected, the vanishing of a known life that lingered far beyond the moment, something even Alzheimer’s could not completely eradicate. Daddy died so suddenly. All his money, gone, not even one cent left. The two incidents, some thirty-five years apart, signaled what was forever wrong about this marriage of hers to Dad.
And there I was, the prodigal oldest girl, the difficult one, the dark-skinned one too ugly to land the right husband, running off with the “family fortune” that Dad was foolish enough to give me, unleashing a second coming of penury and horror on the family. There I was, the oldest child who was supposed to be the responsible one, who should not be so greedy as to need money or even a man. Besides, I already had my BA, hard-earned by Mum’s humiliation at having to borrow from her sister so that we could afford an air ticket and expenses that my scholarship did not cover. Later, Mum even swallowed resentment when I left my well-paid job and dumped the banker fiancé of whom she approved, disappearing to Greece to write (surely a wasteful luxury since anyone can write) because at least I would go to grad school. She approved as long as I would get a higher degree, even if it was in English, because at least I could teach. But a second marriage! To a man she hadn’t met, and a musician to boot, well, wasn’t that simply beyond the limit? When Mum refused to talk to me number three sister intervened to explain—she was the responsible one at the time who required little money for her PhD, who hadn’t yet married and divorced, who had done well in school (even if her math was not quite up to Mum’s standards). The sibs all have their tale of “Mum and —,” including a money story. Only I had the temerity to ask Dad, not her, for money and to receive such a sizable sum without her blessing. With all the others, Mum doled out the family’s fortune as loans and gifts and remained supreme leader.
The family survived. Mum gave money to the two younger sibs, willingly supported their lives. Partly because by then she could, and partly because sister number two and I were already managing and needed little. As for myself, I keep no accounts, will never do so with family money among us, the sibs and our families. I owe Dad at least that much.
But, Mum, let us go further back to the origin of our species. Did I not love you enough because my love for Dad was greater? Was that really why you disowned me? Why you said you no longer had this daughter? Because Dad wanted to make things up to me with the monetary gift, an apology for not taking care of me as he would have wished when I was younger? To Dad I was never too dark-skinned or ugly. When I danced with my father, I was always his beautiful girl.
Many years later, after the quarrel over money was forgiven if not forgotten by Mum, she still could not call me beautiful. By then I had left the second husband, the one who presented Dad the gift he liked, a Bose boombox that broadcast opera and classical music from Europe. The husband Mum was always a little afraid of during our twelve-year marriage. She had reason for alarm because she exerted no control over him. He never tried to please her, only Dad, and the two men are a lot alike. If not for him, I might not be a writer today, but that too is another story.
With Mum though, it happened like this. I had come home to live and work (and eventually divorce) and also published my first book. More books followed. In Hong Kong I became a little bit famous. Mum’s church friends saw my picture in the papers, as she announced one day over lunch with some of the family. This was shortly after my third book was released, a year before Dad died. My friends asked about my daughter the writer, she began. They said she looked beautiful in the newspaper photo. So, I told them, that can’t be my daughter, because my daughter isn’t pretty. Dad’s shock was palpable, and he immediately changed the subject, speaking loudly over my mother’s words. I don’t know if anyone else heard or fully absorbed what she said. But I heard, and so had Dad. Our eyes met and I knew right then that nothing had changed, that the mother he had asked me to be patient with when I was a teenager, that woman would never truly love me no matter how hard she tried.
That moment might have been one of the early signs of Mum’s Alzheimer’s. She did get angry at me often, but she was never really mean, not as mean as Dad could be to her and others. When I picture her in that moment, making that unkind remark, I am not sure if it was her or her muddled mind. Even as a young teen, when I knew local boys didn’t consider me pretty because of my dark skin and less than perfectly Chinese features, Mum would assure me that one day, some boy would like me. Some boy of a lesser god, it was clear, because unlike her I simply wasn’t attractive enough. But she meant well, despite her warped idea of beauty and love. Mum simply isn’t good with language and often couldn’t really hear the meaning of what she said. Her mangled verbal utterances were the cause of much hilarity, and pain, among us sibs. I came to understand more than she ever would about the meaning of beauty and love. It was my good fortune to be born when I was, to be educated and offered myriad opportunities and alternatives to marrying a rich man. To not have suffered the gap years of war, to have had a mother who looked after me as responsibly as a mother should, even if I did not rise to her satisfaction, even if I could not vindicate her with Dad, even if I would not become the woman or the doctor she herself wanted to be.
And one thing I do know about Mum and Me is that I’ll never completely know which Mum was real and which Mum was victim to the twisted creep of Alzheimer’s. The two intertwined as time stuttered away from both of us until all that was left was a Mum and Me, genesis uncertain, and not the one we both had hoped would be.
Replay. Recall. Dad forgave that loan and gave you the gift of a second, valuable property in that flat (the family flat was the first, which he put entirely in your name). Dad never had to ask me to hand over ownership of that flat to you because he knew I would. A long time ago he taught me not to be greedy, and by helping me buy the home in Amherst, he reckoned that would be enough for me. And it was. Dad best knew how to show love with money. His fatal flaw.
And Mum, what was yours? Your fatal flaw, I mean.
Restart. Revise. How have you not loved me? Let me count . . . did I really ever believe you did not love me, that you seriously could abandon me forever? That you hated me because Daddy loved me more than you wanted him to? Was I vain enough to think he would choose me over you? Or was that just the ego of youth? This daughter you found too ugly to be princess, her birth became an insult to you, the queen, queen, beauty queen? Mirror, mirror . . . cannot, does not lie. You were always more beautiful than me, more athletic than me, so much cleverer than me (than all the sibs) in math and science, and maybe even the better student who always tried her best in every subject, even in music, which was not your talent, and you memorized “The Blue Danube,” a feat to demonstrate diligence. And most of all, you were the good wife to your man, even when he didn’t deserve it. So why couldn’t you recognize my talents, in literature, music, the arts, why couldn’t you understand my willingness to forgo marriage to the “right” (read: rich and predictable) man for my life?
Let us start from the real beginning before once upon a time. How do I love thee? Till the end of time I’ll be counting the ways. Yes, Mum, you bested me in math, which as everyone knows is a far, far superior subject to English, in which I excelled. Yes, Mum, you memorized “The Blue Danube” on piano (did you really? I never once heard you play it), proving that my musical talent was nothing much and was perhaps why you never bothered to hear me perform on piano. Yes, Mum, you lost everything because of me, this first child who imprisoned you in motherhood but couldn’t even be a boy and who perhaps also was your shameful secret, the reason for marrying in haste.
So now we’re finally at once upon a time, when Mum and I was all about me. How do I recall thee, let me count . . . but I was too young! I cannot possibly recall! Mum and Me lasted exactly sixty-eight days before my first sibling was conceived, and the rambunctious womb activity that followed confirmed it must be a boy. That birth, unlike mine (I slid out, obediently, as soon as I could), was longer, more arduous, as the fetus kicked and turned, insisted (disobediently) on emerging feet first, almost, but alas not a boy, my tomboy sister number two. It did not take long for her to shoot up taller than me, fairer than me, more athletic than me, the gorgeous one of whom Mum could be proud and with whom she enacted yet another version of “Mum and —.”
But mine are mundane longings blown up out of all proportion, transfixed in memory. Remember, remember, the fifth of November . . . there were fewer bombings and explosions as age took over, Alzheimer’s appeared, and the persistence of all memory became unreliable. Now I no longer shout at you, argue with you, defend those longings. You’ve simply forgotten, not just me (or my sibs), but all of you. As far as you know, there never was a Mum and Me, a you and I. All I am is the woman who shows up before you, sometimes kind, sometimes grumpy, this person who seems familiar somehow but who is otherwise irrelevant. Even Daddy is gone, and there no longer is any need for me to defend you against his mean tongue, his mean spirit, his mean heart. His mockery. You’re mocking me! my baby brother used to cry when, frustrated by all his “big sisters,” he would run to you to claim his version of Mum and —.
There will come a time when none of this will signify because no matter how mean-spirited Mum might have been over money, she showed me a longer time ago that her spirit was not essentially ungenerous. She couldn’t help being the spoiled little rich girl or the beautiful young woman with too many desirable Chinese suitors or the woman who fell in love (perhaps eventually out of desperation) and married the man who was both so wrong and right for her. I wasn’t so unlucky as to live in her time and place, to harbor prefeminist longings coupled with postfeminist ambitions. She couldn’t help the state of her world, where a woman like her didn’t know how to be king but craved it. And for all her harping on about playing Strauss’s waltz, she could not hear the irrelevance of such a boast for a tone-deaf, unmusical person. She was superwoman, or thought she had to be, the one who was a princess but never quite the queen. #MeToo has nothing to say to her: Mum’s womanhood was all about doing, doing, doing, with little time for saying her heart. Doing is seldom about absolute rights and wrongs; in the end, she did not disown me. Saying, on the other hand, demands words that parse the difference between wrongs and rights, even when she didn’t know what she was saying, because she never did say she could not really love me, even if that truth was close to her heart.
But I need not be mean about money, the way she was with me, because it’s meant less to me than to her. If I can earn myself a reasonable life and fulfill enough ambitions, then I need not lust after money the way I lust after Mum’s love or empathy. Mum felt sorry for me—sympathy, not empathy—because she did not understand me. But she did her best to mother me, the way she strove to be best in all she undertook. I was not, I was never a motherless child.
Begin again. Once upon that time there was just Mum and Me, the first and only girl child to love and adore. Now it’s me and Mum, where I am—or whoever next appears before her is—always the first and only girl who loves and cares for her, the one she will love for a moment until she forgets her existence. Isn’t that enough, isn’t that the best I can hope for? To live in this present tense of love and appreciation? To surrender all resentment and anger and desire, even without a bodhi tree? To simply be the daughter who will care for her mother until the end of time, the way her mother once cared for her? Unconditionally?
Maybe, just maybe, that’s all there really is to say about Mum and Me.