====================CONTINUING=====================

The mysteries of my mom!

It seemed to me that she was always calm or had not been at all surprised as she seemed to entertain certain anticipation. We were so poor. So, our three meals were rice congee, lots of water and not much rice, with homemade dry salted turnip strips and homemade soy sauces. We had only had a little meat during Chinese festivals. My mom always asked our neighbors to give her a poultry stomach which she stewed with sesame sauce and other ingredient, possible Chinese herbs and it was very tasty, for me to eat it as my mom usually told our neighbors that I had asthma and needed to eat the poultry stomach to cure my asthma.  I have not had since I was 5 years old or I could remember yet I did have a seasonal-asthma once triggered by an allergic reaction in a spring high pollen season in the United States. However, my mom tastily stewing poultry stomachs to me were both asthma treatments and nutritional supplements.

There were many children in our village yet I did not have much a childhood life. If I did not go to the mountain with my third sister, then I would be sent by my father to our vegetable gardens to pull weeds in our vegetable gardens which were about 850 feet from our home. Once, I was about 5 years old, I was in vegetable gardens along to pull weeds and the sky was clear and shunning but by late afternoon, the weather was turning murky within a few minutes. I walked halfway home but the wind blew at the higher speed and became violently. It kept on blowing me back and I could not stand up. I tried to crawl home but the wind just too strong and violent. I thought that the wind would blow me away and I would die. Then, a man or a woman with a oversize coir rain cape walked in front of me, I did not know where he or she came from, I ran behind him or her and I did not know if he or she knew, he or she had never turned his or her head, that I was running behind him or her to prevent the forcible wind to hit me directly. The man or woman continually walked straight forward when I arrived home.

My father sat on the stool which was about foot high in front of open door of a hot stove which was cocking a dinner. He folded his arms on his stomach; he had had a stomachache since I had the memory. He was kind of surprise when I walked in. I could see his eyes filled with bewilderment and wonder. My third sister and second brother stood besides my mom and my grandma sat on her bed and my third and second aunts by her sides with all their eyes on me with a silent wonder yet my mom glanced at me and she reacted calmly. My grandma was 77 years old with a Parkinson disease and she could not walk or stand up and my grandpa died before I was born. Her bed was near our door entries on the right. My grandparents built row (horizontal) one storey mud brick compound houses with three doors and houses were divided for their four children. One door was in our house, center door was in the main room which shared with all my uncles and Aunts used to honor the memory of ancestors and worship of traditional Taiwanese Gods and third was in my youngest uncle house and all houses were inter-connected.

Am I or was I the person who has or had caused so much grief and pain to this family?

                 --------------------------TO BE CONTINUING----------------------

Jennie PC Chiang/江佩珍 03/15/12 美國