Paradox Blog

Sketch one: Grandchild

Taking a break from her strenuous crawl and climb, Samantha looked out the glass-door in our bedroom into the backyard. It was a cool summer morning. Sunshine had painted the backyard golden. Samantha spotted a butterfly dancing among the abundance of arugula flowers. It's a small white butterfly. Samantha fixated her eyes on the butterfly, followed its every movement, up and down, left and right, until it flew out of sight. I whispered into Samantha's ear that the butterfly was grandma visiting her. She does not yet understand me. Her grandma, my mom, did not had a chance to see her. Mom passed away last June and Samantha was born in November last year.

Sketch two: Mom and TV

Mom loved TV. Dad worked for a daily newspaper and worked at night. Mom spent her evenings watching television and I remember watching quite a few shows with her. Every night after dinner, dad's out to work, mom started her evening with the soap opera and I would lay out my homework in front of the TV. By the time the one-hour soap opera ended, I would have done my home work just in time for those American TV series that I loved. There were "Starsky and Hutch", "SWAP", "Kung-fu" and many others. Mom loved the TV version of "the Fugitive". Every week mom would wonder whether it was time for the falsely-accused one-armed doctor to finally catch his wife's real killer and end his run from the police. We both loved "Thornbird", the love story between Megan and the Catholic Priest played by Richard Chamberlain set in the wild frontier of Australia. The destructive pursuit by the headstrong Megan of her forbidden love triggered the overflow of tears from mom. Mom perhaps identified herself with Megan. Her marrying dad, a mainlander, at a time when the hostility was fresh and obvious between Taiwanese and mainlanders retreating to the island of Taiwan with Chiang Kai Shek, was an act of defiance to her Taiwanese family. She was shunned by my grandparents for many years before time eventually brought on the reconciliation. When I last visited home, Dad had passed away, TV was still mom's evening companion. The soap operas were still on but the American TV series had been replaced by locally-produced variety shows and with cable there were TV programs on twenty-four hours to help mom through some sleepless nights.

Sketch three: Mom's kitchen

The kitchen in our old apartment was considered spacious even after twenty some years. The newer apartments with the fancy interior design and layout do not give as much space to a kitchen. The kitchen was where I would be on Sunday mornings after mom had returned from the market with a basket full of vegetables, fruits, one kind of seafood, a small piece of lean pork and sometimes a whole chicken. Mom always cooked a feast on Sunday. Mom was a good cook and she loved to cook. We never had to do anything to help in the kitchen nor around the house. She never asked us to. She did all the chore. But I loved to help her in the kitchen so she would find pea pods for me to snap, or leafy greens for me to tear into bite size pieces while she devained the shrimp or cleaned the fish, shredded the pork and chopped up the chicken. While mom cooked, I would stand by her chatting and watching her skillfully work the wok, take in as much of the aroma to build up a good appetite, and volunteer to sample the dishes. Mom would start with the chicken since it took the longest to cook. Mom had so many ways to cook the chicken. Sometimes she boiled it, saved the stock for soup and used the meat for Bon Bon chicken shreds, a spicy dish where the cooked chicken meat was torn into bite size shreds by hand and topped with hot pepper and sesame butter sauce. Or she'd brown the chicken and stew it with soy sauce, some ginger and scallions. More often the chicken was stewed whole with shitake mushroom for soup. Stir-fried shredded pork with hot green chili pepper was a must in our house. It was dad's favorite and we soon acquired the same taste for this tongue-numbing dish. The white rice would not taste the same without this dish. The greens were usually stir-fried quickly with a little oil and some garlic. Finally the seafood, pan-fried shrimp with tomato paste or steamed fish with ginger and scallions would conclude the cooking. When we sold the apartment after mom died, the kitchen was a big selling point. The buyer was also impressed with the size of the kitchen. After we cleaned out the apartment for the new owner, I stood in the empty kitchen for the last time. Stripped of the refrigerator, a table and a shelf, it looked even more spacious. For a moment, I could see the smoke coming out of the stove and smell the aroma of the stir-fried shredded pork with hot green chili pepper.