Memes

Meat

I was a child growing up in Taiwan. I was indoctrinated with and steeped in the Chinese culture of "The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars".

These exemplars were glorified by their filial piety. I can't remember any of these exemplars' names. Because names weren't important, their virtuous actions were.

These actions of filial piety were immortalized through stories told by parents and lessons taught by teachers in school to very young children. These stories taught very young children the correct way to respect their parents.

I grew up believing that filial piety as the only way to prove that I was a good child, that I was worthy of being born.

I was awed by these twenty-four filial exemplars. These were cultural idols for young children and adult children alike. These ancient exemplars could easily achieve modern-day reality TV idol status with what they'd done.

Like the exemplar whose family was too poor to afford a mosquito net. So the exemplar lay bare-chested on his mother's bed every night to let mosquitoes feed on his blood. Then his mother could have a good night's sleep.

Or the exemplar whose mother craved bamboo shoots. Because it was winter, everything was buried in snow, including bamboo shoots. So the exemplar took off his clothes and lay down on the snowy ground. He used his body heat to melt the snow and harvest bamboo shoots.

Or the exemplar whose mother was sick and developed a craving for meat. But they were too poor to afford meat. So the exemplar cut off a piece of flesh from his thigh and cooked it in soup to feed his mother.

I am not sure if this last story was really part of the official Twenty-Four Exemplars. I can't find it in modern English translations of the Exemplar stories.

But I remembered this story vividly because I was scared of the thought of cutting off a body part to prove that I was pious and worthy.

My parents didn't have a mosquito problem and could afford to buy bamboo shoots and meat from the market.

I had to look for other ways to show my parents that I was worthy of living.

So I gave my parents my Free Will.

I behaved how they told me to behave.

I wanted what they told me to want.

I thought what they told me to think.

Obedience

When I was a child, whenever my parents hit me I'd never run.

I stood there meeting the long, slender reed my parents used to hit me. I heard the "whoosh!" of the flexible stick cutting through air and onto my thighs. Welts appeared immediately. I came to fear the reed more than the stiff feather duster my parents used to use.

I didn't even know that I had an option to flee. But if I did, I believed that showing defiance or sending my parents on a chase after me will ensure that what punishment I'd receive would be much, much worse.

When I was 6 years old, I stood there; predictably scared and only daring to cry softly when my mother took a pair of pliers to my hand. She put each of my 10 fingers between the pliers before clamping it down.

I stole money from my mother and I got caught. My mother warned me that if I acted like a thief and bring the utmost shame to the family, she will teach my filthy fingers a lesson. I stole money again and I got caught.

So my mother made good on her threat.

But it was after the pliers, when she dragged me into the bedroom, when she threw my clothes into a duffle bag, when she dragged me out of the door of the apartment and down two flights of stairs, when she told me I was no longer wanted, when she locked me outside the gate then I sobbed uncontrollably.

These were methods my mother used to "toughen" me up; methods that involved shame, pain, or fear — usually in combination.

One night I was getting ready for a bath.

When I went into the bathroom, I saw a pile of small and black round "pebbles" deposited on the tile floor against the edge of the tub. I asked my mother what those were. She told me those were cockroach eggs. I jumped away in fright.

My mother said I was a coward. Then, she ordered me to step on the eggs.

"Put your foot on it!" my mother said.

I was shaking inside but obeyed. I gingerly placed one foot on the mound of eggs.

I treaded lightly in case the eggs broke and baby cockroaches would ooze all over my foot.

No cockroaches came out and my mother walked away.

Aura

A friend who is a pastor told me that when he first began ministering to the mentally ill as a chaplain, the old minister in charge called him into his office one day. The old minister took both of my friend's hands in his, looked into my friend's eyes, and said that my friend was perhaps too empathetic. The old minister said that the profoundly psychotic patients may emanate an aura of confusion that could awaken the echo pathologies in even the healthiest psyche. The old minister told my friend that he should not be afraid, but needed to be aware of the echoes within his psyche when he worked.

He needed to know where the echoes came from, and not grasp onto them or panic upon experiencing them, and that the echoes would pass.

Yet my friend's most profound experience with the "aura of confusion" came not from a mental hospital. Instead, it came from within his parish, where he'd least expected it, with a member of his church.

I told my friend that his story reminded me of a past relationship. I was 24 years old. My parents had left the U.S. and returned to Taiwan in search of their own survival. My brother was thousands of miles away on the opposite coast. I felt abandoned and alone and desperate for validation.

I was desperate for love and approval.

The person told me that I was "full of life". I was scared enough of loneliness that I traded this life force within me with any sort of "love" I believed he was giving me.

One night, I was feeling emotionally depleted and defeated. I'd been crying in the bedroom. We had an argument. He was exiled to the living room. I drifted off to sleep.

I was semi-delirious from exhaustion and left on the lights. I closed my eyes. I didn't dream. I wasn't dreaming. My eyes were still closed when I heard a deep, guttural cry.

The cry was loud enough to jolt me awake and force my eyes open. That was when I saw him standing next to the bed, his face hovering above mine.

He had tiptoed into the bedroom soon after I drifted off to sleep. He came in to check on me and to make sure I was OK, he said. At least, that was what I thought I'd heard when he ran out.

My sudden shout and the way my eyes suddenly opened startled him. He stayed outside, not daring to reenter.

That deep, guttural cry came from me. But I was not conscious when I cried out.

It was as if each pore of my skin had become a tiny eye, protecting me and guarding me with its watchful aura.

My vessel had no more life to give away.

Useless

I used to draw stories from my imagination the way a young spring produced streams of water.

I loved Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven mystery books for children.

One day I decided that I would write a short adventure story too. I started the story of Ben and Steve, two friends who would find an adventure in their neighborhood. I even planned for Ben and Steve to find treasure.

I started the story on the weekend and wrote diligently. As soon as I'd completed a page, I shared it with my brother. He was excited to read about the adventure of Ben and Steve, waiting nearby and periodically asking if I'd finished writing the page.

I fed off his enthusiasm and quickly filled 6 single- spaced, handwritten pages.

I showed it to the person whose opinion mattered most to me. My father nodded his head and I felt that I had earned the right to take a break from writing.

Later that day my father took my brother and me to visit an acquaintance, a Korean man named Jimmy who had married an American woman named Dolly. My parents told me that Dolly taught piano to the children of one of my father's coworkers.

Dolly was very tall. She was very fair, had blue eyes and curly red hair swept up in a bun.

My father gave me several signals to speak to Dolly. My father stared at me then averted his eyes toward Dolly. He made slight gestures with his finger, telling me to approach her.

The visit was brief, but my father looked at me several more times, making clear his desire for me to show Dolly my English. English that my parents had paid expensive private tuition for, so I could go to school at the British Section of Saudi Arabia International Schools (S.A.L.S.) in Riyadh.

I couldn't bring myself to approach Dolly.

Her American English sounded different from the British English I heard at school. I could only barely converse in British English then: I was enrolled in ESL (English as a Second Language) class because my native tongue spoke Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese.

I stayed mute.

My father was visibly upset with me. He took us back to the car, walking in stony silence in front of my brother and me. My father opened the car door for me and said,

Then he drove us home.

The adventure of Ben and Steven ended that day, before they could ever find their treasure.

The stream of stories dried up from the spring of my imagination, too.

Fall

During a brief period of reconciliation with my parents, my mother helped me move to Buffalo, New York. I was starting graduate school at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute through University of Buffalo.

As part of new student enrollment, I needed a health check- up and receive necessary immunizations.

My mother waited for me in the lobby of the main hospital.

After my health check-up, I made my way back to the lobby, where my mother was standing and waiting for me. It was mid-morning. The hospital lobby was noisy with people and activity.

An old man was crossing the lobby toward the glass hospital doors. His wife walked a few steps behind. The old man was frail. Then again, this was a cancer hospital. Many who came through these glass doors were frail.

I saw it play out like a movie scene, in slow motion: the old man's legs buckled. The old man began collapsing toward the floor. If he should land on the hard floor, it would surely shatter his bones.

At that moment, the ceaseless parade of people around the old man anyone who could have reached out and stopped his fall-mysteriously cleared away.

I heard a hush and a collective gasp from people who saw what I saw. They, like me, stood stunned from what was unfolding before our eyes.

Then my mother sprinted right up to the old man. She reached out her arms. She caught him by the torso. She stopped his fall.

My mother ran up to the old so fast, she got to him even before his wife who was also old and walked a few steps behind her husband - could.

The wife came to help. Another person stepped in.

Suddenly the hospital lobby came alive as people began stepping forward, asking if the old man was all right, asking what they could do to help.

One of the hospital staff arrived with a wheelchair. They put the old man in the wheelchair. By this time, my mother had stepped away to make way for others.

I joined my mother and we exited the hospital doors.

We got into my car and drove away. We never talked about what had happened.

Shaken

Life had a dramatic way of telling me that I was taking it for granted, that I was not honoring it. At least, this would make an interesting explanation for why I got into 3 car accidents within a 1-year period when I lived in upstate New York.

One evening in a late winter month of 1994 I was driving back to my apartment from school in Buffalo, New York. I was turning right onto a main road when a woman drove her minivan into the rear-left passenger-side of my car.

The force of the collision and the pervasive Buffalo winter snow pushed my car into the left lane, toward oncoming traffic.

The traffic light that controlled the street had held the oncoming traffic at a red light at the preceding intersection.

I was spared from what could have been a serious head-on collision.

The woman was apologetic and distressed. She said that she had made that turn countless times but for some reason that evening she didn't see me. But she had an argument with her daughter earlier and perhaps she was distracted.

I was shaken but unstirred. Her insurance company paid for car repairs. I kept driving.

The second accident happened a few months later, soon after I moved to Syracuse, New York. I was beginning my PhD research at a pharmaceutical company.

One morning I was driving home from lab. I went going the green light at an intersection near my apartment. A driver from opposing traffic was turning left. The driver turned right into the rear-left passenger-side of my car.

I never saw the driver. He or she had pulled the car over to the curb of the street I'd crossed and fled on foot. The intersection had not yet become busy and there were no cars in front of me or behind me when the accident occurred.

I was spared from what could have been a multi-car collision.

When the policeman came, he found that the car's vehicle identification number did not match the registered license plate of the car.

The policeman asked for my car's registration and insurance information. He said that my insurance should repair the damages even if I wasn't at fault. He didn't know that my car insurance had lapsed for non-payment.

I took out the expired proof of insurance from the glove compartment of the car and gave it to the policeman.

He saw that the insurance had expired but didn't press me to produce a current proof. He assumed that I had forgotten to replace the proof, and after all, I was the victim.

I was shaken but unstirred. I paid for car repairs with a credit card. I kept driving.

The third accident happened a few weeks later, one weekend night when I was driving to New York City. My car was eastbound on Interstate 80 (1-80). The traffic was sparse and my car was on the left lane.

A large male deer suddenly appeared from the center median of the highway. It was sprint across the highway to get back to the woods on the other side of the road.

I slammed on the brakes but it was too late. I heard a loud crash. I saw the deer fly off my car in one direction. I thought I saw another part of the deer fly off my car in another direction.

The deer never flew through the windshield of my car.

I saw from the car's rear-view mirror that other cars had seen what just happened; they slowed their vehicles to a crawl before passing me then speeding quickly by.

I couldn't see where the deer parts landed. I was too frightened to get out of my car and look.

No policeman showed up. These were pre-mobile phone days. No one else called the police or highway patrol.

I was shaken and stirred.

But the engine of my car was still running.

So I kept driving.

Feet

In 1985 we moved to a Finger Lakes regional town called Skaneateles (sounds like "skinny atlas") in upstate New York. My parents' first attempt at the American Dream floundered and they sold their struggling Chinese restaurant business in Endicott, New York. Their next try at the American Dream was to buy a motel along U.S. Route 20, midway between downtown Skaneateles and the town of Auburn.

Skaneateles has gorgeous summers. These summers fueled the region's motel businesses, which depended on a few months' worth of income to survive through winters.

During winter, verdant fields became barren and roads even less-traveled. Winter intensified the isolation I'd felt as one of few Asians in a predominantly Caucasian town. I was more self-conscious when walking along the road as part of my daily one-and-a-half mile trip to school.

I stopped riding the school bus because my brother rode that bus. I saw my brother as part of my parents' family. I no longer saw myself as part of my parents' family. I stopped speaking to my brother when I stopped speaking to my parents.

I walked the 3-mile round-trip along Route 20 on school days. I walked rain, shine, or snow. One winter afternoon I was walking home. I wore a pair of slip-on loafers meant for indoors, not for trekking along dirt shoulders of rural highways.

Snow was light but the wind was merciless. As I walked, the wind slashed the exposed part of my face. The wind pushed against me when I walked up the hills. I slowed my pace when I walked down the hills, in case the wind pushed me forward and made me fall.

I crossed the county line road. The familiar relief of the motel came into view. The motel main entrance doubled as the entrance to our "home", since we lived in the quarters behind the motel office.

I took my time approaching. I hoped my parents would make themselves scarce. I hoped they would avoid me the way I avoided them. I hoped I wouldn't have to see them at all.

My skin was blown brittle by the cold. I could no longer feel my toes. I marched my legs forward methodically, these fleshy frozen stilts.

My parents were watching me. They had been watching from the moment I came into the motel entrance off Route 20.

I opened the door of the motel office. My mother sat me down on one of the round swivel chairs in the motel office. She ordered my father to get a pail of hot water. She draped a blanket over me. My mother's eyes were red. She started muttering about how cold it was outside and how cold my legs and feet were, her voice thick with emotion. She was looking down. I couldn't tell if she was talking to me or muttering to herself. I stayed silent.

My father came back with hot water. He also handed me a cup of hot chocolate he had made. I took it from him and didn't thank him. I stayed silent.

My parents took off my shoes, peeled off my socks, and dipped my feet in hot water. My dad took one foot, my mom the other, and they rubbed my feet.

I huddled in the blanket and sipped on the hot chocolate. I stayed silent and started to cry.

The office of the motel was a fish bowl; its walls were made of glass. We could see a stretch of Route 20 from where we were and that stretch of Route 20 could see us.

It saw a girl who couldn't stop crying, who was lost but couldn't find her way back. The girl no longer heard her parents' call. She didn't want anyone to reach her at all.

Ankle

My mother had told me that regardless of how American families acted, we were a Chinese family. We would abide by Chinese family rules. We do not hug. We especially the parents do not say "I love you" because this broke rank in authority. We do not let Chinese children talk back to parents the way American children talk back to theirs.

I played by the rules until I turned thirteen. Then hell broke loose within me, in the form of raging hormones and cumulative, uncontainable adolescent anger.

I compared how my parents treated me with how I saw other parents treated their children. My anger grew.

I imagined that parents from other Chinese families I knew did not hit or humiliate their children the way I was hit and humiliated. My resentment grew.

My father rarely raised his hand to hit me when I was a child and when he did it hurt more than when my mother hit me. This changed during my adolescent "stormy years" when I hated my father and mother equally.

One day I had an argument with my father. I talked back and he picked up a wooden stick nearby and struck my ankle. In retrospect, he made a stupid move; if he had broken my ankle, he could get into legal trouble. He should have chosen a "safer" target like my leg or thigh. Then again, my father rarely raised his hand to hit me.

I took the hit. I felt my ankle burn. My father grabbed my arm in a bruising grip. I yanked my arm free from him. I gave him a cold, hard stare that said, "If you hit me again, I might just hit you back."

Then I turned my back to him and walked into the room I shared with my brother.

My mother came into the room. She brought liniment for my ankle. She said that my father shouldn't have gotten so angry. I stared at the tears in her eyes.

I felt unmoved.

In my mind, my mother was responsible for this. In my mind, my mother had made my father choose: to stand with her or to stand with me. In my mind, my father had chosen to appease her and not protect me.

Hand

My husband and I spent the winter holiday of 2004 in Asia. We first visited relatives in Singapore. Then we visited my parents in Taiwan to welcome the 2005 New Year there.

As part of our visit, we made a trip to the city of Nantou in Southern Taiwan. My father's younger brother my uncle lives there. Plaques from my father's ancestors resided in the top floor of my uncle's house. We made this trip so I could pay respect to the ancestors.

I'd seen my uncle twice since I was 7 years old, after I'd left Taiwan.

The first time was in Skaneateles, when he made a trip from Taiwan to see my parents and me waging war with each other. He tried to reconcile us. He tried to understand my point of view. He tried explaining to me my parents' point of view.

My uncle did not succeed and he returned to Taiwan, disappointed. Shortly thereafter, I left home.

The second time was 10 years later, when I was in graduate school. We were in Taiwan, celebrating my brother's wedding, my parents and I enjoying a fragile reconciliation. We were in a restaurant for the reception when my uncle signaled me aside.

My uncle had been a school teacher. He had a strict demeanor that made me nervous. I was an adult now, but I was still anxious about why he wanted to speak with me.

My uncle said, "Did you know that I named you?"

I had known that my parents consulted with him about my Chinese name when I was born. I nodded.

My uncle said, "The last character of your name, Jin' is the same character for a silk ceremonial banner. I'd picked this character for your name because I had dreams of you accomplishing great things.

"Then we can be proud of what you had done in the world. When you would return home, we would welcome you the way heroes carrying silk ceremonial banners are welcomed home by the village."

Tears came to my uncle's eyes. I couldn't tell if he was already proud of me, or if he was still waiting for me to become a hero worthy of homecoming. We were called back to the party and I did not find out.

Now I was 32 years old and sitting in the living room of his home. I'd gotten married, a PhD degree, and a career. My uncle had more white hair and his smile was as I'd remembered. This was the first time my uncle had met my husband.

As my aunt poured tea for us, my uncle asked about my husband's occupation. My husband said that he was an aerospace engineer. Then my uncle asked if my husband could write his Chinese name. My husband obliged and picked up a pen.

"You're left-handed," my uncle said to my husband.

"Yes," my husband said.

"Left-handed people are creative and smart," my uncle said. "I agree with you, of course," my husband said. They both laughed.

"You were left-handed too, but I corrected you," my mother said to me.

"What? I don't remember being left-handed," I said.

"You were a little girl, too young to remember," my mother said.

My mother told me that every time I picked up a pencil or a pair of chopsticks with my left hand, she would hit my hand until I started using my right hand exclusively.

Then my mother joined back easily in the conversation that my uncle and father were having.

I was left stewing with questions.

So I was born left-handed? Was my right-handedness a product of punitive conditioning?

I felt like I had become a stranger to myself. I felt that the person whom I thought I was may not be who I was supposed to be. This right-handed person I thought I'd always been, the handedness that made me belong to the majority of right- handed people in the world, was in fact, a left-handed person.

This left-handedness would have remained a secret from me had I not made this trip to pay respect to the ancestors.

Maybe not knowing would have made no difference in my life. Maybe my mother's actions were even justifiable as what a responsible mother would do to protect her daughter. I was born in a country during a time when being left-handed meant being different and defective. I would have been ostracized, laughed at, picked on, and punished in school and by my peers.

Still, some mysteries unraveled.

Such as the way I held a pen with my left hand as easily as I held a pen with my right hand. I didn't have as good of a control over my left-handed penmanship as I had right- handed, but the letters were legible.

Such as the way my impulsiveness frequently felt "at odds" with my analytical mind. Sometimes I couldn't tell if my head was in the clouds or if my feet were on the ground. I was a dreamer and 1 was a pragmatic.

Such as the perplexing results from the grip-strength test, when I received physical therapy for a neck injury in 2003. The therapist measured the grip strength of my hands. He was puzzled that my left grip was stronger than my right, even if by a small margin. I told him I was right-handed, because that was how I'd known myself. The therapist said that the dominant hand was usually the stronger hand. He took the measurement several times, with the same result.

I wondered about this person that I have become.

Have I have become the person I was born to be? Or have I become a person whose self-identity had been shaped by many invisible hands?

From the name I was given to be known by the world, to the hand with which I learned to write to express to the world, how many invisible hands have shaped me and molded me, hands that I otherwise would not have known, or would never come to know?

What about my own invisible hands?

Have I, in turn, shaped and molded the lives of others in ways that I cannot begin to imagine?