Growing up in the 1920s in a Taiwanese farming village, Grandma was destined to work in the rice fields for life.

When I was four and started to learn Chinese phonetic symbols, Grandma asked me to tutor her.

I taught her everything I knew. After a hard day’s work, she slouched over her antique Singer treadle sewing machine and scrawled Chinese characters across rows of squares she’d drawn on the back of old wall calendar pages. Year after year, I watched her struggle to remember correct strokes of the Chinese characters I’d taught her before. But she kept trying.

My parents divorced when I was 14. A restraining order separated Grandma and me. The last time I went to Grandma’s house, she was still slouching over her sewing machine, battling a mountain of homework. Sitting next to her was my four-year-old cousin, singing and playing with an action figure and tutoring Grandma the very same thing I’d taught her a decade prior.

By the end of the day when I was leaving, Grandma repeated begged, “Don’t forget about me. Don’t forget about me.”

I see now that for her entire life Grandma tried to tell her story. She tried to become literate, hoping to live beyond death through written words.

I have the same wish for myself.

I write, because written words have that magical power of immortalizing people. They freeze time and space, so I can still hear and smile at Ah-Po’s stories today, long after our last good-bye.

 

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