Mom

Every time before I call my mom, I always think that no big deal, that I can handle it, like I have been doing it for all my 25 years of life. When the moment that the two phones connected, and a familiar voice said "wei", I know that I'm wrong again, that my continuity in the life here in U.S is interrupted, that I've traveled to my perverse past in China, that something between me and my mom will never be changed and forgiven.

I often feel that it's quite unfair for Nick because every time after I call my mom, which, of course, involve a lot of yelling (to two American ears),anger,crying (some times), he feels so sorry for me. He feels that once I pick up the phone, starting to speak Chinese, I'm turned into a different strange person. If he knows the complexity and the history that I don't know how to describe between me and mom. The way that my mom never thinks there's any distance between me and her, never thinks that her words and actions may hurt me, because I'm her inner self - how could a daughter ever be angry with her mother? How could an inner self ever fight against and contradict drastically with her?

Every time after I talk to my mom, I couldn't help but staying silent - a moment silence that I need to travel back to my normal life. What has happened? Can I ever use a simple word such as 'good', or 'I just talked to my mom' to describe what's going on in my mind and life?

Heavy memory. Unbearable. Yesterday I was still an outraged teenager who was angry with my mom all the time because her habitual ignorance of my feelings and thoughts. Overnight, I have to, no matter I really want or not, put away all those memories to generate sympathy and forgivingness for my mom. Stop thinking about yesterday, for its existence is no longer meaningful. But it's my past, why I have to give it away.

I love you, Mom. I know that our relationship is not something that belongs to an ordinary mom and daughter's, despite how much I hope it is, so that life will be so much simpler and easier, so that I won't be so splitting.

I love you, Mom. No matter what.

memory

About the same time last year, I was on the Blue bus going to class. Then I saw that girl, the girl who had the exact same eyes and bang hair style with Lijie. The eyes like the ones of Peking Opera performers - the eyeline goes upward till it touches the temple. The bang hair like a Chinese doll. I knew she was not Lijie. She was Japanese that I knew, don't ask me why. I kept looking at her until she withdrew herself from my vision. I wanted to hold her hands and tell her that she looks so much like my best friend in high school. I wanted to tell her there was a second I thought I was on the school bus with Lijie in high school - like I was always trying to get close to her through the crowd. I wanted to tell her that Lijie is now somewhere in Shanghai and we've not been talking to each other for so long. I wanted to say that Lijie is always a precious part of my memory, something nobody could take away from. Then, I saw her getting off from the bus at the education building. That tiny Japanese girl. She would probably never know that how much a stranger connected to her on that bus and would always remember her for that a few minutes.

This week I was working in the Green Street Coffee Shop. Then there he came in, a boy who made me feel that Yihong was walking towards me again. He must be some Asian American or a cross-blood. I don't care who he is. I just want to request myself what memories he brought to me. How much he made me feel displaced, temporally and spatially. I thought I was still that silly teenager girl,biking with Yihong at night in Shanghai's streets. For so many reasons that all of us have changed so much. So stupid to see that what we perhaps have in common now is only memory. Memory that I often revisit and relive. Experiences of aging, losing, gaining, remembering and forgetting. Don't tell me not interact with reality is a shameful thing. But memory, endless memory, my valuable treasure.