生日那天，女儿发了个微信给我，除了简单的祝贺外，还告诉我说，她寄了一张生日卡给我。结果卡片过了好几天才姗姗而至。打开卡片，那细细密密工整的字顿入眼帘, 读到第二段就开始泪奔了(里面的内容女儿不让post，故删了，大概就是，她拎着行李来到新城市，看着空荡荡的公寓，联想起母亲二十年前来美)。我的女儿，一个不会甜言蜜语，一个我常常说她不够sweet的人，却用真挚心里的话语把老妈的眼泪给煽下来了。看着我眼泪鼻涕的，LD还以为出啥事了，当我把卡片递给他，他一边读，一边不停地说，I am jealous! I am jealous! 还不忘加了一句，“她忘了，有我在这里啊。”
This birthday card from my daughter came after my birthday belatedly. Tears swelled right after I started reading the second paragraph, and they ran down my cheeks, non-stopping. My husband, unaware, looked at me caringly and suspiciously. I handed him the card.” I am jealous! I am jealous! “was what he repeated saying that night.
My girl, who is not very expressive and who I always think could be sweeter like other girls, wrote something from her heart that touched me, a card that I will cherish for good.
What mired deep in my memory, as stirred by her words, were actually the days we left for America twenty years ago. The days when I took her for visa, which got denied once but approved the second time; the days when I posted on the billboards to sell the furniture, TV, washing machine, refrigerator, computer, etc. Everything we earned hard for the new home had to go away grudgingly. Those days were hectic, sad and excited, a mixed feeling of leaving the land I had been raised for so many years and joining the husband in the far distant world overseas, for a better life.
All our belongings were whittled down into a few suitcases, and with the dreams we started anew here in America. Nothing was easy, the jobs, the green cards, and the life. It took us seven years to get the green cards, and when we finally went back to the motherland after the green cards, we were astonished at the alarming changes taking place in the hometown. The places we used to be so familiar with were no longer the same. Everywhere we went, it was full of vibrant people, young or old, talking about how to make money, more and bigger money.
Twenty years is long in our life, and we may only have another twenty years to live on, plus or minus. Looking back, we might not know for sure if we made the right decision then to immigrate here, but at least from the daughter’s perspective, she thinks the answer was positive and certain. I guess no place in this world is perfect, and neither will be our life. Wherever we go, our visions are expanded, and memory etched with the place, the people, and the culture irreversibly and irresistibly.
