Have you ever dreamt of an old lunch box? I used to have a stainless steel lunch box at my juvenile, and it has been coming over my dreams over and over again for decades. However the image of this box when appeared in my dreams was not quite clear-cut but fragmental, dim and hazy, for it was shaded by a pair of hands, hands with worn-nails at fingers and a little bigger round ulna joints at wrists. They were my mother’s hands. She got up early before sunrise, prepared the lunch boxes for us children and breakfast for our whole family. She handed the box to me when I finished eating breakfast and got ready to leave for school.

During my secondary school years, I was concentrating merely on the Joint College Entrance Examination, which was the most important task for each Taiwanese high school student. I used to go to bed at around 8:00 pm and wake up to grind at 4:00 am or earlier. My mother, owning a beauty parlor trying to make more money to afford the education of my brother, two sisters and me, always went to bed very late and got up at around 4:30 am. In the morning far before dawn, I would leave my bed and sit at the desk behind a window. Through the window and another window nearly 5 meters away I could peer into our kitchen. In the kitchen, no longer than an hour after I started reading I’d see the twilight yellow bulb beam scattered out through the window; mother was drudging quickly and silently to light up fire on dried rice hulls for cooking and preparing food materials for our lunch boxes and breakfast. The lamp light flickered behind her moving shadow, and all foods were done by the time I finished reading; that would be around 6:00. The breakfast included hot steamed rice and dishes such as pan-fried tofu, cucumber, cabbage, soy-sauce-stewed pork, sunny side egg, her private home deep fried meat ball, which I enjoyed the most and would never be able to exactly copy from her hand, etc. I never disliked what she had prepared though I never said I liked them. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t realized how I enjoyed and missed her dishes until I left home and resided at the university dormitory. Such yearning for what she had prepared for me has kept growing ever since she passed away, but I was too young to be considerate at that age. I didn’t say a word to thank her, nor even indicated my concerns about her worn nails which rose before my eyes when she handed me the lunch box. These worn nails later became an unforgettable image that profoundly imprinted in my memory. Mother’s nails were worn by chemicals such as hair dyes, perming agents, shampoos, and so on, which she had to touch when dressing hair for costumers. These chemicals distorted them, put gray bands on them, and dissolved the cuticles around them. However, what tortured mother even much more was these chemicals brought her the malignant disease, multiple tumors.

When I graduated from the university and worked in an ecological lab located at Taipei which was 350 km away from my home town, mother was diagnosed as having a breast tumor. Father took her to Taipei and had a surgery operation to remove the deadly tissue. After the operation, she had to come back the hospital for tracing and medication every one month, and I would accompany her when she came. In one rainy morning near noon after medication, I drove her to the station where she took a long-distance bus home. The traffic in Taipei had always been heavily busy, especially around the station. I had driven for a circle about the station yet could not find a parking site. When I stopped in front of a crossroads to wait for the green light, I looked around; hundreds of automobile lined on four lanes and surrounded us, and the station was on the left. Between the station and us, in addition to the jammed cars at our direction, lay a row of railings and another four lanes evacuated for the vehicles opposite to our direction. I began to murmur “what a terrible traffic”. Self-disciplined, thoughtful and merciful as mother had always been she said “You don’t have to find the parking site. I can go to the station myself”; then she opened the door, got out of our car, and walked toward the station. I turned my head, watched her debilitated thin body worming hesitantly and carefully the crevices among the stuck vehicles; all at a sudden all the scenes of her worn nails, her inherent big ulna joint, her graceful smile, her beautiful merciful face, her energetic shadow, her elegant movement… rushed into my chest; I was choked; tears overflew my eyes. Jumped out the car I hurried to her, arms around her shoulders saying: “Mom, don’t worry, no rush. We can catch the bus”, and took her back to our car. The green light was on timely, and I found a parking site across the road finally.

The sight of mother’s back while she was stumbling in the congested traffic was one of the very scenes I ever remembered, and I would never forget. When mother passed on with concerns worrying about my school work of PhD and her grandson, I wasn’t able to stay beside her. I awfully regret not escorting her on the way to heaven though I doubt myself capable of burdening any one more of her image engraved on my memory.