like children in a playground
reminiscing about my ama
A bead of sweat slips down the nape of my neck. The humidity is suffocating. I feel my digestive muscles contracting, the enzymes inside swirling, crying for sustenance.
阿嬤 我餓了！要吃什麼？
Ā mā wǒ èle! Yào chī shénme?
Ama, I’m hungry! What are we eating?
不知道。來呀 一起煮飯。
A-chai. Lái ya, khìchú hoān.1
Bù zhīdào. Lái ya, yīqǐ zhǔ fàn.
No idea. Come on, let’s go cook.
In all honesty, I never quite got the profundity of cuisine of fine dining or even that one dreamlike scene in Ratatouille where Remy sees colors melding with one another. But when I’m in the kitchen with my Ama, I think I understand. We have no hiccups in our communication. We’re tasting, assisting, experimenting with new combinations together. We feel like extensions of one another. We feel like children in a playground. We understand each other’s palates, and we know how to fine-tune the seasoning for a dish. Our meals are simple, whole, nourishing. There’s no need to overcomplicate things.
When it’s just my Ama and me, we don’t say much to each other. I struggle to understand what she’s telling me in Taiwanese, and I spit out Mandarin words, stringing them together haphazardly, and praying she understands what I want to say, despite my poor grammar. She comments on my appearance—my height, my muscular thighs and arms. I grimace at the comments on my body. I mustered up courage to speak out against my parents’ comments in the past, but I didn’t have the strength to tell her it wasn’t okay. She doesn’t know what to say as an 80 year old who came of age in a much different world than me.
I hold back tears as I remember the stories my mother told me about how she was treated as “the fat one” of the family, despite looking quite lean in her childhood photos. The environment and pain she must have endured weigh down my shoulders. I hold back tears thinking about how difficult it’s been to explain to my parents the psychological damage of their words and how we’ve struggled to have healthy discussions about our bodies. I know how hard it’s been for them to relearn what a healthy body looks like. With every comment my Ama makes, the generational ties tighten and loosen.
I cry on the phone with my mother that night. I am just really upset that you had to live with this kind of mindset when you grew up. My grandma climbs the stairs and hears me sniffling. My aunt comforts me after I end the call.
她不是故意的。她一直在哭。
Tā bùshì gùyì de. Tā yīzhí zài kū.
She didn’t mean what she said. She keeps crying.
I call Ama on Lunar New Year.
阿嬤 恭喜發財 新年快樂！
Āmā, gōngxǐ fācái, xīnnián kuàilè!
Ama, congratulations and prosperity, happy Lunar New Year!
謝謝 下次你回來再送你紅包喔～
Siâ-siâ2, xià cì nǐ huílái zàisòng nǐ hóngbāo ō
Thank you, I’ll give you a red envelope next time you come back.
Ama only knows me in summers. The time before last was Summer of 2016 when I was 13. The time before that was Summer of 2012. And before that, Summer of 2008. Ama only knows me drenched in sweat, wearing light and summery clothing, in vacation mode. Ama only knows me as a shy person, speaking broken Mandarin and sporadic Taiwanese phrases. She doesn’t know me as outgoing person I perceive my English-speaking self to be. She thinks of me as a hardworking student with some idea of medicine and biology, asking me questions about when she should take the vitamins my mother packs in our luggage from America and what they’re for. She doesn’t know me when I am who I am for 10 months out of the year and only once every four summers3.
I show Ama the 蔥油餅 (green onion pancake) I made from scratch.
你怎麼那麼厲害！
Lí nāi chiah gâu!
Nǐ zěnme nàme lìhài!
You’re so talented!
沒有啦 好簡單！
Méiyǒu la, hǎo jiǎndān!
Nah, it was so easy!
Our conversation comes to a halt. I try to think up things to talk about, but it’s been a while since I thought in Mandarin rather than English. I struggle and blurt out what I can.
你今天吃什麼？
Nǐ jīntiān chī shénme?
What did you eat today?
Thankfully, my uncle is there as well. He translates Ama’s Taiwanese into Mandarin. I get the same question in return. I answer.
我吃了我昨天煮的高麗菜，雞肉，飯。
Wǒ chīle wǒ zuótiān zhǔ de gāolí cài, jīròu, fàn.
I ate the cabbage, chicken, and rice I cooked yesterday.
好健康 好乖。
Hǎo jiànkāng hǎo guāi.
Healthy. So good.
I beam with pride. 乖 is a hard word to translate. It kind of means a mixture of obedient and good—but not in a strange authoritative way. It’s pretty much the best compliment a child can get from an elder.
I smile from the awkwardness as our conversation lulls once again. When we’ve talked through food and pleasantries, there’s not much left to say. Maybe we really are like children in a playground, our communication existing primarily in our play—our lives intersecting and invigorating temporarily, once every 4 summers.
I mourn the bond we could have had if communicating our thoughts to one another weren’t so difficult, if we didn’t live on opposite sides of the world for my entire life. I wonder what we’d talk about once we talked enough about food and my appearance, what I could learn about her life and our family and the lives that came before me—what made her who she is. I wonder how much better I would understand my mom and aunts and uncle, knowing how each one of them carries a piece of her in their personalities and how they care for others. I wonder who I would be with her at my side and closer to my heart.
This is Pe̍h-ōe-jī, the romanization for Taiwanese Hokkien, which is the language my Ama primarily speaks. Adding the Taiwanese for this was way harder than I expected. Also, I wrote about Taiwanese Hokkien here.
Tai-lô for xièxie because my Ama tends to speak a combination of Taiwanese and Mandarin.
Plane tickets from Southeast America to Taiwan are exorbitant. We were supposed to visit every 4 summers: 2016, 2020, 2024. One of those fell through, I’ll let you guess which one.