Tiger Babies Strike Back (25 page)

This wall is the weight-bearing infrastructure of a lonely house of cards. If we are not vigilant about monitoring this wall's proliferation, it gets bulkier every day until the space between us is so massive that it divides the rooms we inhabit, and eventually every room. The wall multiplies into many partitions until it's a honeycomb in which every family member is in his or her own cubicle. The structure becomes tighter and more constricting, and the honey that oozes from it tastes slightly rancid. Who wants to be a lonely queen bee, anyway?

So to avoid this honeycomb of loneliness, my spouse and I are constantly attempting to disassemble this invisible, quiet, insidious wall.

Sometimes it can feel like bailing water out of a rowboat with a Dixie cup.

Achievement, shmeevment. If we don't even see each other, or like each other anymore, what's the point? It's easy to hide behind a things-to-do list to avoid everyone you live with, including yourself.

And I don't want that to happen to us. But it already has, several times. Sometimes a few days, weeks, or even months can go by without getting to the Abstract Wall Dismantling Project. It's an ongoing process, and the wall can get built up again seemingly overnight, like a wasps' nest under the eaves.

But we keep chipping away at it, little by little. It takes conscious concentration to make sure airholes are effectively poked through the wall cells to keep us from getting crushed by our own bulky behemoth of busy schedules and heaps of benign mess.

I keep one eye on the state of the wall at all times to make sure it's not getting out of control. Meanwhile, not every success can be measured on a perforated test sheet or typed-out report card. At the beginning, middle, and end of each day, I always want to see my daughter's funny little smile.

31

Just recently I came to the realization that my grandma Lucy was much kinder to me than she ever was to my mother. I never recognized that when I was younger. It is only in watching the interaction between my own daughter and mother that I've even stopped to consider what my mother's relationship with her own mom was. I see a pattern here. Just as Grandma Lucy was hard on my mom but sweet to me, likewise, my mother has never been warm and fuzzy in my experience, but to my daughter she's as cuddly as a kitten.

When Chinese babies are born, it is a tradition to dress them in animal-motif hats and booties, usually representing pigs or tigers. The idea is to trick evil spirits into thinking that the precious baby is actually just a common piglet or other such lowly creature, hardly worth stealing away. It makes me wonder if Chinese parents' constant putting down of their children is related to this custom. Thus, no matter how good-looking or smart your children are, it's always best not to call attention to them. Maybe that's why, even if you are highly accomplished, your parent will always treat you like a humble worm.

My mother has always been a beauty, but my grandma Lucy's way of handing out selective compliments distorted my mom's self-image. My mom says, “Jeannette was the pretty one. I was always so ugly!” Even when my mother and I flip through her wedding album, she refers to herself as “ugly.” And when I hear her say that, I can't believe it. In every photo she looks absolutely gorgeous. It makes me sad to think my mother has gone through life not knowing how pretty she is.

However, with Chinese parents, no compliment seems to go unpunished. Grandma Lucy often praised my aunt as the pretty one, but often also commented that she had no common sense. So she was good-looking but dumb. And in this same style of distorted logic, my grandmother calling my mom “ugly” was perhaps meant as a backhanded way of calling her smart. It was obviously not an actual compliment of any kind, but rather some type of cultural one-two punch that continued the long tradition of parental withholding. And we all know it's only the bad stuff that sticks. So my mom only heard “ugly” and that was that.

As a young teen my mother had a job in a Chinatown shop, and she describes her boss as having been a very kind woman who never got mad at her. She recounted a story about an incident in which she dropped a very expensive tea set, and it smashed into a hundred pieces. The boss reassured her it was an accident and didn't even make her pay for the broken porcelain. My mother has said of the woman, “I wished that she was my mother.”

When my mom told me this story, I almost fell out of my chair. I thought,
Whaaat? Grandma Lucy was such a loving, doting grandmother to me, so how is Mom saying she wished someone else was her mom?

My mother went on. “If I had dropped something like that at home and it broke like that, Pau Pau would have pulled my ears and screamed at me.”

Hmmm. As I mulled over this story in my mind and compared it to the grandmother I knew, I couldn't imagine my pau pau ever pulling my ears or hurting me in any way. She doted on me always; she prepared all my favorite foods, bathed me, and even made mundane trips to the grocery store seem fun. She always made me feel loved. So what did this mean that she didn't bestow this same affection on my own mother?

Are grandmothers nicer to grandkids because they know they weren't necessarily stellar parents and are trying to make up for it? Are they taking full advantage of getting a second chance at child rearing?

Or are they guilt-ridden and trying to cover up for past deeds by pretending that they've always been sweet as pie? Maybe if they pamper the babies of the previously scorned child, might decades-old sins be forgiven?

Instead of the direct route of just saying sorry, which would require losing face, maybe if the grandmother wins over the heart of the grandchild, she can maintain the position that she is right, and always has been. By doting on the next generation, a grandmother demonstrates, “Look how nice I am, and have always been! If you recall anything different, that's your problem.” This strategy possesses a built-in mechanism: the adult child will be made to feel like she's crazy if she claims to remember anything bad about her own childhood. This shell game switcheroo is considered no biggie unless, of course, you are the one being made to feel crazy.

Did any of this unconscious motivation factor into Grandma Lucy's behavior? Maybe she hoped my mother would forgive and forget that she'd had her ears pulled and was made to feel ugly.

Or perhaps my grandmother simply mellowed with age. I feel guilty and slightly ashamed to even be speculating that anything other than affection compelled her actions. I know Grandma Lucy's love for me was real. Nonetheless, apparently, this certainty does not squelch my compulsive need to fish through my memories in search of clues.

Now that Grandma Lucy has passed away, and many years separate me from my childhood, I will never know the many subtleties of my mom's relationship with her own mother. I don't have too many sharp memories of them together; if we were all in the same room it was because we were at big parties with lots of people around. When I did see my mother and grandmother talking, it was always of practical matters, and half the time in Chinese. Mostly, though, it hadn't occurred to me then to pay any attention to the way
they
interacted.

I liked being alone with my grandmother best, just the two of us. We often found ourselves solely in each other's company because my grandfather, parents, and older brothers were always busy doing other things. I was too young to be stirring up trouble with my own friends just yet, and she seemed to enjoy quiet evenings when she wasn't playing mah-jongg.

However, I do recall that my grandma Lucy used to say insidious, disparaging things to me about my mom. While Grandma Lucy and I ate Chinese dishes that she had prepared fresh and piping hot, she would make comments such as “Your ma never cook Chinese food,” and “She only give you cold thing like sandwich.” My grandmother would speak with obvious disdain and disapproval. I knew not to disagree with her, even though I knew there was nothing wrong with how we ate at home.

In retrospect, I wonder if this was Grandma Lucy's way of bonding with me. Once again using a distorted logic, maybe my grandmother bad-mouthed my mom to me so that we could feel separate from her and thereby somehow closer to each other as grandmother and granddaughter. Perhaps these statements were a way of saying, “Stick with me because I know how to love you best,” or “Whatever happens, don't forget me.” Maybe with age, a grandmother feels closer to her own mortality. Hence, she does what she can to ensure that she is cherished, and remembered.

I recognize this dynamic because now a similar pattern plays out with my own mom and daughter. While I know full well that my mother used to comb my hair with ferocious, painful zeal, she is gentle with Lucy. When my daughter was younger, my mom was always careful in helping her with her socks and shoes, and I've witnessed none of the rough tugging on of clothes and heard none of the sharp tones of voice that had been the norm for me.

My mother and Lucy don't see each other on a daily basis, and of course, it is in rushing to school, doing difficult homework, and when everyone's tired that frustration and bickering are most likely to erupt. So maybe it's the schedule of their mostly weekend and vacation time together that contributes to their more easygoing interactions.

But that can't be everything. Granted, my mother is retired now and her life is about ten times less hectic than it ever was when she was working full-time and taking care of three kids. For whatever combination of reasons, she is more patient and kind than she was with me when I was Lucy's age. I am not jealous, just simply damn glad.

However. (There is always a however, right?)

There are signs of the same kind of conspiratorial conversation between my mom and Lucy that occurred between Grandma Lucy and me. My mom, to my knowledge, doesn't bag on my cooking, but there are other things.

For instance, a few years ago, my parents took Lucy on an overnight trip to the coast. A few days after they returned, Lucy and I were sitting on the couch playing with her favorite bear, Pinky, and as she clutched the soft toy to her chest, she placed her head on my lap and said, “Why does Pau Pau think you're lazy?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Lucy sat up and stared at Pinky, who was faded, well loved, and so worn and soft that the plush, fake fur was looking as if it might rip at any time. One tumble in the washing machine could be the end of her.

“Well, Pau Pau was looking at Pinky. She asked me why she was so dirty. When I said I didn't know, she said it was because you're lazy and you don't wash her.”

“Really, she said that?”

“I don't want you to wash her! Don't wash Pinky, okay? Pau Pau says you're lazy, but you're not lazy. You're doing stuff all the time. Why does she say things like that?”

“I don't know.”

A little while later, I phoned my mom and called her on the mat.

“Hello?”

“Did you tell Lucy that I'm lazy because I didn't wash her stuffed animal?”

“No, I never said that.”

“Well, Lucy wouldn't lie about that. And she doesn't want it washed. Why would you tell her I'm lazy? Now she just thinks you're a liar.”

That part about my mom being a liar was kind of harsh, I know, but I was mad. Why would she criticize me to my own kid? We went back and forth a few times, but my mom continued to deny that she had told my daughter that I was lazy. We hung up the phone without resolution.

Maybe a grandmother feels like she has to vie for the attention of the grandchild. Maybe these little digs are the only way to express simmering envy that daughters have more opportunities for jobs or love, or are younger and have numerous other advantages. Maybe a fine line exists between all the conflicting emotions that arise: you want your kid to succeed, but not too much, or you want her to have a life full of love, but if it seems that she has it all too easy, that burns you.

Perhaps, as an individual, the grandmother feels underappreciated. Or maybe she is secretly afraid that her value is slipping in the eyes of the next generation, and she must bolster up her own reputation. As if I didn't already know it, Grandma Lucy would often exclaim to me, “My soup is the best!” These pronouncements would even sometimes be made in the third person, as if someone else were affirming these truths. “Pau Pau's
tong mien
is the best!” she would say. She needed me to physically nod and agree although, as previously noted, my own mother never cooked Chinese food, so the comparison was already a victory by default. Nonetheless, when it came to declaring superiority, just like a Chinese person, with Grandma Lucy there was no such thing as gilding the lily.