Moms

When my mom was about 6 or 7 years old, a woman came to her school, took her out of class and took her to a new home. Over the next few days, weeks, months--I don’t know how long-- my mother learned that the mother and father that she had known all her life were not her biological parents. Rather, they were her aunt and uncle. The woman who had taken her from the life she had known was her biological mother and the sister of her “Ma.” My mom’s biological mother, “Mama,” had been able to get pregnant easily and quickly after getting married, while Ma tried (and failed) to get pregnant for many years. Mama decided to give her first born to her sister to raise. According to my mom, she was born after 3 days of hard labor. Two years later, Mama gave birth to a son, again after struggling through days of labor. Mama got pregnant one more time, again, after 3 days of labor, again, to another son. With this third pregnancy, Mama had hoped for a girl because she longed to have a daughter, but didn’t think she could endure another birth. I don’t know all the details, but I think maybe Mama didn’t believe she could survive another birth. After all, this was 1940’s China, not a technologically advanced period of time or place. Sometime after the birth of her second son, Mama talked to Ma about wanting her daughter back. In my imaginings, there were hurtful words exchanged and many tears on both sides. Ultimately, Ma refused to give my mom “back” to Mama. This led to Mama taking the drastic action of taking a 6 year old girl and whisking her away to a strange home.

I learned the story of my mom’s two mothers in snippets throughout my life. I remember the day when I was 4 years old when I heard my mom call two women in loving yet distinct tones, Ma and Mama. I remember my mom telling me she didn’t know as she was growing up if she had a mom who loved her, because how could two women have given her up like that? I remember when Ma died and my mom cried and cried and cried inconsolably because she was thousands of miles away and didn’t get to say goodbye.

Mama was the only grandmother I knew. I love her dearly and have fond memories of being with her when she took care of me while my parents worked. I remember the smells of her kitchen. I remember catching a dragonfly in that kitchen and putting it in a jar and staring at its glistening wings. I remember wanting to keep it forever. But, my grandmother gently told me I had to let the dragonfly go because it wouldn’t live if we kept it in the jar. I’m sure I didn’t understand what death was. All I wanted was to keep that dragonfly forever. But, my grandmother just gently explained to me again how it would die, how we couldn’t do that to a living creature and we had to let it go. She had me open the lid. The dragonfly flew around the kitchen a couple of times then out the door. This memory and Mama’s love for me was something I held onto in my teenage years when it felt like no one in the world cared about me.

It wasn’t until these last couple of years, that I have thought about Ma as more than my great-aunt who took care of my mom for awhile (Ma later adopted a son and a daughter after Mama took my mom back. ) As I have struggled with my infertility, I have thought about Ma more and more and of her struggles and of her pain. I think about how lucky she must have felt to receive the gift of a child from her own sister and how devastating the loss to have the same sister take that gift away. I think about how IVF would likely have helped her to get pregnant (her infertility was due to blocked tubes), if only it had been something available to her in her lifetime.

I don’t know how Ma and Mama worked out the pain of loving and wanting the same child. Maybe it was never worked out, though I know both Ma and Mama and their two other sisters were all very close to each other later in life. I just know that it was a lucky thing for me that things turned out the way they did. If Mama had not come to get my mom, my mom would have grown up in a different place, probably never met my dad which means I would never have been born. So, I feel a need to have a place in my heart for Ma even though I didn’t really know her. Because the pain she suffered and endured allowed me to be.