Memiors of a girlhood among ghosts
Steven Page quits Barenaked Ladies. What?
Anyway.
"They didn't do much good. All I have to do is think about dust sifting out of clothes or peat dirt blowing across a field or chick mash falling from a scoop, and I start coughing." She coughed deeply. "See what I mean? I have worked too much. Human beings don't work like this in China. Time goes much slower there. Here we have to hurry, feed the hungry children before we're too old to work. I feel like a mother cat hunting for its kittens. She has to find them fast because in a few hours she will forget how to count or that she had any kittens at all. I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night. Factories, canneries, restaurants--always somebody somewhere working through the night. It never gets done all at once here. Time was different in China. One year lasted as long as my total time here; one evening so long you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight. It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves. Here midnight comes and the floor's not swept, the ironing's not ready, the money's not made. I would still be young if we lived in China."
"Time is the same from place to place," I said unfeelingly. "There is only the eternal present, and biology. The reason you feel time pushing is that you had six children after you were forty-five and you worried about raising us. You shouldn't worry anymore, though, Mama. You should feel good you had so many babies around you in middle age. Not many mothers have that. Wasn't it like prolonging youth? Now wasn't it? You mustn't worry now. All of us have grown up. And you can stop working."
"I can't stop working. When I stop working, I hurt. My head, my back, my legs hurt. I get dizzy. I can't stop."
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston (105-106)
The Woman Warrior makes me wonder if my grandmother grew up being told that the flowers smelled better in Italy or if they came to America to become Americans, if her mother was upset at her for marrying and English man who's family was settled here so long it didn't matter that he was anything other than American, if she ever loved him, if she would've told me had she lived long enough to have an adult relationship with me.
For my senior paper I'm writing about silences around women's bodies, specifically puberty and menstruation. I was going to write it like a literary analysis, but my prof suggested writing about my own experiences instead or in addition to discussing others. It pretty much sucks, trying to backtrack through my memories of things my mother taught me, things that I can't call and ask her to reiterate or to laugh about the years and years I spent going through my brothers' dressers because I developed early and I was so weirded out by the changes my body was going through all at once (I've got hair where?!). I want to ask her sister, sometimes, but the two of them were always so different in all the ways that mattered that I don't think it'll be any good other than for heartache. But it would make my mom so happy if I would call her. I've just never been close to my aunt.
Their brother is gay and I don't know the whole history there, but from what I've gathered I believe that once everyone else got over themselves and stopped being so weirded out by it, the experience left him determined to keep the communication open and stay part of everyone's lives even (especially) thousands of miles away. He's still the relative I'm closest to, because he always made an effort even when I was young to ask what books I was reading and what shows I was watching so he could check them out and we'd have something to talk about. I don't know if family relationships should take as much effort, but my aunt has never really tried to get to know me like my uncle. It goes both ways--I've never tried to get to know her, but I've never been the adult in our relationship. All I know about her is that she went South for an education and found God while there, and that kept her with her husband after he got verbally abusive until she prayed that she couldn't take it anymore, won't God please give her permission to leave? That night or the next day, he hit a wall and something fell from a shelf on to her head, that was her permission. I know enough to know that I'm never going to be that kind of a woman, asking permission from anyone to leave an abusive situation.
(That's why it's such a sticking point that I learn to drive. My mom when I told her I didn't want to anymore at 16 when my dad made me cry twice over hitting the gas instead of the break said I had to before I graduated college, before I settled down [the connotation here being before I got married] so I wouldn't have to be dependent on anyone for anything, much less rides. Her mother never learned to drive. Her mother was dependent on her husband any time she wanted to leave the house, and her husband was apparently a surly bastard to anyone who wasn't his quiet little granddaughter content to sit at the chalk board drawing pictures. I have a bus pass, I have feet, I can call a cab if I need to [I should get better at keeping emergency cash on me just in case I have to], I've never let my roommates not giving me a ride somewhere keep me from doing something, but her saying I needed to learn how to drive by the time I graduated college so I wouldn't depend on anyone for rides still sticks to me. I pieced together the context of the statement later, but she instilled in me that I don't need permission from anyone to leave a bad situation.)
I could ask my dad's sister--I'm closer to her--but it won't be that same connection to my mom. Although she apparently knows where all of us were likely conceived (I have been chased out of a few rooms by conversations like this) so maybe she would have some of my mom's other stories. I should start writing my paper this weekend so I can figure out what stories I want to tell, but I feel like it's a cop out to write personal stories when the other women I know in my class are writing research papers. I'm worried the amount of work won't match up and I'll be penalized for it.
Anyway.
"They didn't do much good. All I have to do is think about dust sifting out of clothes or peat dirt blowing across a field or chick mash falling from a scoop, and I start coughing." She coughed deeply. "See what I mean? I have worked too much. Human beings don't work like this in China. Time goes much slower there. Here we have to hurry, feed the hungry children before we're too old to work. I feel like a mother cat hunting for its kittens. She has to find them fast because in a few hours she will forget how to count or that she had any kittens at all. I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night. Factories, canneries, restaurants--always somebody somewhere working through the night. It never gets done all at once here. Time was different in China. One year lasted as long as my total time here; one evening so long you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight. It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves. Here midnight comes and the floor's not swept, the ironing's not ready, the money's not made. I would still be young if we lived in China."
"Time is the same from place to place," I said unfeelingly. "There is only the eternal present, and biology. The reason you feel time pushing is that you had six children after you were forty-five and you worried about raising us. You shouldn't worry anymore, though, Mama. You should feel good you had so many babies around you in middle age. Not many mothers have that. Wasn't it like prolonging youth? Now wasn't it? You mustn't worry now. All of us have grown up. And you can stop working."
"I can't stop working. When I stop working, I hurt. My head, my back, my legs hurt. I get dizzy. I can't stop."
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston (105-106)
The Woman Warrior makes me wonder if my grandmother grew up being told that the flowers smelled better in Italy or if they came to America to become Americans, if her mother was upset at her for marrying and English man who's family was settled here so long it didn't matter that he was anything other than American, if she ever loved him, if she would've told me had she lived long enough to have an adult relationship with me.
For my senior paper I'm writing about silences around women's bodies, specifically puberty and menstruation. I was going to write it like a literary analysis, but my prof suggested writing about my own experiences instead or in addition to discussing others. It pretty much sucks, trying to backtrack through my memories of things my mother taught me, things that I can't call and ask her to reiterate or to laugh about the years and years I spent going through my brothers' dressers because I developed early and I was so weirded out by the changes my body was going through all at once (I've got hair where?!). I want to ask her sister, sometimes, but the two of them were always so different in all the ways that mattered that I don't think it'll be any good other than for heartache. But it would make my mom so happy if I would call her. I've just never been close to my aunt.
Their brother is gay and I don't know the whole history there, but from what I've gathered I believe that once everyone else got over themselves and stopped being so weirded out by it, the experience left him determined to keep the communication open and stay part of everyone's lives even (especially) thousands of miles away. He's still the relative I'm closest to, because he always made an effort even when I was young to ask what books I was reading and what shows I was watching so he could check them out and we'd have something to talk about. I don't know if family relationships should take as much effort, but my aunt has never really tried to get to know me like my uncle. It goes both ways--I've never tried to get to know her, but I've never been the adult in our relationship. All I know about her is that she went South for an education and found God while there, and that kept her with her husband after he got verbally abusive until she prayed that she couldn't take it anymore, won't God please give her permission to leave? That night or the next day, he hit a wall and something fell from a shelf on to her head, that was her permission. I know enough to know that I'm never going to be that kind of a woman, asking permission from anyone to leave an abusive situation.
(That's why it's such a sticking point that I learn to drive. My mom when I told her I didn't want to anymore at 16 when my dad made me cry twice over hitting the gas instead of the break said I had to before I graduated college, before I settled down [the connotation here being before I got married] so I wouldn't have to be dependent on anyone for anything, much less rides. Her mother never learned to drive. Her mother was dependent on her husband any time she wanted to leave the house, and her husband was apparently a surly bastard to anyone who wasn't his quiet little granddaughter content to sit at the chalk board drawing pictures. I have a bus pass, I have feet, I can call a cab if I need to [I should get better at keeping emergency cash on me just in case I have to], I've never let my roommates not giving me a ride somewhere keep me from doing something, but her saying I needed to learn how to drive by the time I graduated college so I wouldn't depend on anyone for rides still sticks to me. I pieced together the context of the statement later, but she instilled in me that I don't need permission from anyone to leave a bad situation.)
I could ask my dad's sister--I'm closer to her--but it won't be that same connection to my mom. Although she apparently knows where all of us were likely conceived (I have been chased out of a few rooms by conversations like this) so maybe she would have some of my mom's other stories. I should start writing my paper this weekend so I can figure out what stories I want to tell, but I feel like it's a cop out to write personal stories when the other women I know in my class are writing research papers. I'm worried the amount of work won't match up and I'll be penalized for it.