My grandmother Rouluen is a very quiet and dedicated grandmother. I don’t feel very close to her, because she has always been in the shadow of my grandfather, my mother and of my rather large family. She is the woman I don’t want to be when I grow up. She is a product of the Confucian system, subjugate to her husband, loving sons more than daughters. My mother, my sisters and I are all daughters.
Despite her preference, she expresses her love and care for me and my family through her wondrous cooking; through her everyday actions. When she comes to live with us or visit us, she can be found hovering in the kitchen day and night, cleaning or preparing something, staving off my father, who also loves to cook. The kitchen is her territory, and maybe because of that, she never taught us how to cook like her. At every home cooked dinner by grandma, we play out the same elaborate ritual of thanks. Everyone takes turns remarking on how good the food is, agreeing with each other, and thanking my grandmother. She grunts or mutters something in reply.
Because of our distance from each other, I cannot name one specific skill she taught me. I wonder if she tried, and that I have only ungratefully forgotten. Rather, from her I learned the value of patience, quiet endurance and of small everyday acts that define you. There is one vivid memory I have that stands out from the others, mundane yet extraordinary.
In the house where I grew up in California, a previous owner had converted the patio, and some of the garden inside, into a double height atrium and extra living room with a guestroom on the side. As my two sets of grandparents rotated in and out of our house, they would stay in the guestroom on their extended visits. The atrium and living room was the territory of us kids. It was the location of our dreams and often our nightmares. When it rained, the atrium would flood. We would pretend to be mermaids or jungle explorers there. We were always under the watchful eye of my grandma, quietly watching us from the kitchen or subtly aware of our play from her bedroom.
In this space, there were two walls of large sliding glass doors. Often birds would collide with the glass, dead on impact. Perhaps, they were hurtling themselves towards the trees inside. Once, there was a survivor; a morning dove. It appeared, without any explanation, hobbling amongst the garden trees with bandaged leg and wing, adding wild reality to our play space. She silently nourished it back to health. One day it was gone as it had come to us, with no fanfare. When we asked about it, my grandmother merely shrugged.
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