Up to the Mountain
I don’t remember a lot about the early years of my life. Though I was born in the States, I spent my toddler years in Keelung, a port city situated about an hour outside Taipei. Though I was primarily cared for by my dad’s parents and siblings, the most concrete memories I’ve retained are of my mom’s mother, who I called “ma-ban” — meaning the grandmother who goes to work.
It was a pretty apt nickname. Though my grandmother was born into poverty, she was able to work her way out by sheer force of will. The woman had seven children, one of whom died in a freak bike accident in his teenage years. She raised them all while running an enormous multinational semiconductor business with my grandfather over the course of forty years. When I was growing up, she would tell a story about being the champion mountain climber in her grade school class though she was short and a girl. She explained that so much of a person’s success or failure depends on whether they can grit their teeth and find the courage to keep climbing when others have given up.
For reasons I will never know, I was her favorite. Apparently, I would always ask her to come and sleep next to me, only for her to find that I would sneak into the next room to watch TV once I thought she’d fallen asleep. We’d then watch TV together until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. About a month ago, my mom called to say that ma-ban had been hospitalized. Her liver cancer had relapsed and metastasized to her kidneys. The doctors gave her three months.
Visiting ma-ban and my parents in January
