by Jasmine Khor, LMFT

BETWEEN THE QUIETNESS DOES THE SILENCE COME ALIVE

I look out my window onto the streets of Chinatown with the same pair of eyes my grandmother would look out onto her TV screen — playing seasons and seasons of old, pirated TV shows of a dated Hong Kong.

I would think to myself, as a little girl who belonged to nowhere near American soil, why did she cast herself off just to find a thin thread, half splintering as the satellite disc fails at certain seconds, sending ripples over the screen, and eventually reviving itself with my Aunt’s big smack on the side of the TV, returning pictures of drama from home that never ended. This was the screen my grandmother dozed off to, a voice that perhaps carried her into a dream of sweetness. Into a place more forgiving than a flat that the government signed off for, as she waited in silence for age to pass.

She sat on the same chair every time I visited. The same direction, facing the TV. With the same stoic expression except, by year, a heavier veil of grief would pull her even further away from the same screen she directed us to see. Her gaze and the breath of her longing for the somewhere we just flew 16 hours from, with clothes that still stank of airplane food and baby screams.

“She made a choice to not burden me with her age,” my mother would tell me as a child. My mind would go blank because I couldn’t understand the paradox hidden in the words, especially as a kid so young. A mother who moved on to a new country, to disentangle the filial responsibilities a daughter owed to her Chinese mother.

As I looked on to my grandmother’s expressionless weight, I would smell Tiger Balm, I would hear the click of her medicine box opening, two diabetes pills falling out onto her hands, and a stab of blood her hired help would take to monitor her sugar levels. Then lunch time would come. She stood up slowly, and moved with a pace of what the strength of foreign soil could only offer, guided by a walker with two tennis balls broken and pierced at the back of its two feet. She took each step with caution, and drew each breath that ended with a shivering cough. I traced her steps: a young child, right behind her, who knew nothing of the United States but Tiger balm, diabetes, and sleepless nights. I hated the nights. It reminded me of how far away home was.

15 hours apart for the first half of the year, then 16 hours apart. My mother’s deep pining grew so long it found no end. It was only the direction of her gaze that stood a chance of me finding her. Though no stories were passed on, and silence was its tradition, I learned the steps from heart as I traced my grandmother’s path when lunch time came. Though affection was communicated in absence, I learned of my grandmother’s nest as she permeated her home with Cantonese, even though it was strangers who spoke them behind a screen and sparkles that threatened their existence any remote control could not revive.

That day I was watching a documentary, with my friend sharing her screen. It was about Ted Hughes, two love stories gone awry. My friend and I, over zoom on the side bars, I looked at her then myself and I caught the shadow of someone in my features. An uncanny portrait of a longing that seeped up onto my cheek bones I tried so hard to hide.

My mother wakes up at 5am Hong Kong time to learn English. That’s exactly 2pm PST. Sometimes, I haven’t even risen from the dreams I was apparently clinging so hard to, and wake up to my mother’s daily good morning text. And so at these sometimes, I would think to myself, how nice would it be, to walk over and knock on her door, return the gaze that was lost for so many years, trace her aging features with a kiss, and say, it’s been a long time, mom. Good morning.