Red Envelopes

I used to think my grandmother, my Yen Yen, spoke to me with money in red envelopes. We called it happy money; it came in red envelopes imprinted with Chinese characters, smiling monks, golden dragons, and often the name of a bank. Distributed on new years (the western version) to all of her grandchildren, this money--I thought--was my grandmother's way of saying, "I love you." Between my grandmother's English and my Cantonese we have very few words in common; so I'd accept these words spelled out in tens and twenties with an embarrassed "thank you," and wish that they had more value than money ever could.

We are virtual strangers my grandmother and I. A seemingly insurmountable chasm separates us; the bond between us eroded by more than just differences in generation and culture. Our stories are not just different; we tell them in different languages, making them almost impossible to share.

I often wonder about these stories...

"Your grandmother once had to eat the leaves and bark off of trees to survive." This piece of a story untold, meant to shame me for not appreciating the food on my plate, does more than shame; it makes me aware of an emptiness where memories of my grandmother should be. The story has never been fleshed out, so I only know the bare bones of my grandmother's experience.

How can you truly know someone whom you've never had a conversation with? How can you understand them when the only stories you know about their lives are second hand? How can you love a stranger?

Are we strangers?

We've never shared our stories, but we share stories. We are part of each other's lives. Like home movies with the sound turned off, we inhabit each other's memories without saying anything.

Maybe we are a divided whole rather than two separate parts, like my memories of a split-level home in Flushing. My grandparents live upstairs and my aunt, uncle, and cousins live downstairs: a home made of two different worlds connected by a staircase and descent. Upstairs my grandmother cooks dumplings and baos while my grandfather watches a Chinese soap opera on TV. Downstairs some of my cousins play video games or watch MTV while waiting for a pizza to be delivered. They seem worlds apart, but they aren't strangers; their differences don't prevent them from being family.

Like my cousins I have many memories of my grandmother: eating dumplings at an old formica table while she shuffles around the kitchen preparing more food and encouraging me to eat everything; helping her move a potted plant, too heavy for her to carry alone, to a sunnier window; playing mah jong with her; being lectured by her. The only difference between my cousins' memories and my own is that some- times I need a translator; a bilingual aunt, uncle, cousin, or my father.

My father is another connection to my grandmother. How can I not know her through him? He is her son just as I am his, and as much as I hate to admit it I have bits of my father in me. More than just dark hair I have a few ticks, habits, and quirks that I'm sure I got from him; and surely he got some of those from my grandmother.

Last New Years though, I realized that not everything my grandmother has given me has been translated through my father. As my family gathered for our traditional holiday celebration at the same restaurant we go to every year, I began to think about how old everyone had gotten. Some of my cousins are in their thirties and most have moved away from home. Some have even married and had kids, and it was when two of my cousins brought in their newborn sons that I could almost feel the weight of the years stretching out behind me. More than that I began to feel the weight of regret. Could Haves, Would Haves, and Should Haves too abundant and too big for someone my age began to manifest themselves. I thought of how it would have been nice had I learned Cantonese; that I should have tried harder to learn; that I could be speaking to my grandmother at that moment if I had.

While I sipped my tea and mulled over my regrets, my new second cousins were making the rounds from table to table. They were passed, cooing, gurgling, and sometimes fussing, from one doting aunt to the next and then to a few of my cousins and uncles. Eventually my grandmother had one of the babies in her arms. He wasn't fussing but he fidgeted nervously, looking like he was about start; probably wondering whom the person who was holding him was. Then just as it seemed he was about to start crying, my grandmother, my Yen Yen, smiled down at him...

and he smiled back.

No translation necessary.

by Andre Yee

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