Author: Yining Pan
When my Waipo - my maternal grandma - prepared dinner yesterday, I immediately immersed myself in the familiar aroma of vegetables boiling in the time-worn pots, a sensory experience that was too soothing and nostalgic, especially when the home was so tranquil. While my paternal grandparents have gone to pick up Ryan (my noisy brother) from his tennis session, and while my parents were still endeavoring in their respective offices, the once squeezed house became queerly empty in the dusk. I exchanged chores with Waipo and voicelessly cherished this special moment when past conflicts seemed to vanish and only love endured.
Being sixteen years old was too different from fifteen - I was no longer treated as a child but instead as an adult, who was still vexed by adolescence but was already forced to welcome the subtleness of life. Not long after the birthday party in December, my mom sat at my bedside, talked to me in a usual tone, and said that I was old enough to know more. What does knowing more and growing up mean? I once wondered with the innocence of a teenager.
The fire-baked smell of ginger and garlic spiraled in the kitchen, reminding me of childhood memories where I would stand beside my grandparents - any of them, maternal or paternal - and look up to the white steam rising up, spreading the aroma of various vegetables - cabbages, potatoes, tomatoes, everything - all over the home. That was an almost holy moment - a magical inner serenity would always take over my imagination when I stood beside the stove, closed my eyes, and felt the gentle hotness from the lively burning fire. It was the feeling of family. A steady and caring family. It was still such a wonderful childhood period that, without knowing that there had long been struggles between my grandparents for the sake of money, lifestyle, and housework distribution, my ignorant laugh was forever captured in the middle of all family portraits, before I came to the world of sixteen.
In fact, the discrepancy between the maternal and the paternal has always been a universal struggle for all cultures, while I am especially exposed to its Chinese version by living in a big family of seven. I sense the competition, no matter if it’s silent or direct. I’ve either witnessed or heard of sarcasm (Nainai, my paternal grandma, uttering “you poikilotherm” when Waipo didn’t sweat that much in summer), conflicts (quarreling on who shall clean the house, pick up Ryan, and cook all meals, etc.), and hatred accumulating as I grew. When sometimes Ryan screamed and shouted and cried in a household squeezing with 7 souls, where his voice would bounce off the walls and trigger more screams and shouts and cries like endless waves running over each other, things got even worse. Once Nainai was too furious that she accidentally abraded a portion of his scalp using a zip. Though there wasn’t any possibility for him to catch tetanus, my Waipo was immediately even more furious that she didn’t speak to Nainai for days.
And it hurts more when Waipo cautioned me not to have my clothes mixed with Yeye’s (my paternal grandpa’s) socks because his feet are “dirty”, while she has the same chronic beriberi but sleeps on my bed; when Nainai expresses her methods of curing my fever, I heard mom complaining “why’s her voice everywhere”; similarly, Yeye cooked and appraised his fried-tomato wax gourd because Waipo’s fried-soy-sauce version is simply “not the right way to make it”. Strangely, my dad never says anything about the maternal side except for commenting on my Auntie’s lifestyle.
Growing in this mess of relationships, I gradually found that they seem to hate each other for the sake of hatred, and for the sake of being different, without realizing that fundamentally, they share the same humanity - selfishness, a bit egoism, but loving their next generation - me and Ryan - in their sincere most ways - I mean, pealing an apple and a peach, preparing nice meals or washing clothes weren’t significant actions, but when one is willing to sort out your everyday trivialities for all the years you’ve earned since your birth, that’s deep love. No one has provided me with such meticulous caring but all three of them, through the fragrance of the clothes they cleaned and piled up for me, through the sweet smell of fruits they sliced into small and fresh pieces, and through the aroma of vegetables steaming in time-worn pots that didn’t change for almost a decade, as far as my earliest memories concerned. The most dedicative love and the innate selfishness of the love givers sometimes live together, just as how this family is being together – in a complex but natural way.
Grandma called me to pour the ginger, garlic, and the newly-added cabbages into bowls - she would reserve some for my mother because she would come back late. I nodded. As I lifted the pot, a familiar aroma immediately immersed me, caressing my memories of the sixteen years.