刚到美国的时候，也有过去餐馆打工的体验。华宴(Chinese Gourmet restranrant)是我做过 weitress 的中国餐馆之一。我曾深深的被餐馆的室内装饰, 设计而吸引。餐馆的女主人是当地大学教授的夫人。他们一家人的品味比起我去过的任何餐馆都高大上。后来才知道老板和她的儿子都喜欢艺术。当时餐馆墙上挂的多是出于他们自己之手，以及他们的收藏。老板娘是个精明能干的商人。她老公在八十年代就过世了。她一个人经营着餐厅，陶瓷玉器制作工艺室，养育了一对成功的儿女。给自己的父母送终。参加瑜伽训练几十年。如今七十多岁的女人看上去还和三十年前我认识的她没什么区别。
最近，再一次去她家做客的时候，看到了更精彩的她。也了解到她活到老学到老的人生轨迹。她不仅亲手制作出一件件别具独特风格的陶瓷作品，又开始了画家的创作。她天南海北的飞奔在全国各地，走亲戚，看画展，学书画，活的精彩而有意义。真的是我认识的个性十足的女强人。
丁太太的名字叫 Susan, 她是那种小巧玲珑的南方姑娘，虽然个子不高，但全身都焕发出勃勃生机的燃烧力，似乎在她身上有使不完的劲，这么多年下来，她一直走着她喜欢的艺术人生道路。 她祖籍是中国大陆人，后来他们定居去了香港，五十年代从香港来到美国。谁也不会想得到刚来美国时，一个连饭都煮不熟的小女孩，后来居然成就了中国餐馆。她不是那种由于生活所迫而开餐馆的。刚到美国的时候，她也和无数移民一样学语言，进学堂，她甚至在八十年代就在大学数学专业拿到了文凭。但是，她却喜欢上了烹调，喜欢上了有食品的场合。她曾多次开课传授中国饭菜的制作，也曾从香港，大陆，马来西亚额请专业厨师经营她的餐馆。
通常，中国妈妈都会告诫儿女，好好学习学校的功课，将来考个好大学，然而，她幸运的孩子们却有着跟别人不一样的妈妈，丁太太一直支持孩子们爱好，儿子喜欢艺术，画画，拍照，音乐和影视。妈妈就和儿子一起玩音乐学艺术。女儿喜欢游泳，妈妈不管多忙都接送女儿参加各种训练和比赛。最终，儿子成为了纽约大剧院歌剧的大导演，女儿在成为当地，当时的游泳健将之后，成为了一名了不起的医生。现如今，她的孩子们都长大了，结婚生子，她当了grandma，她也给自己的父母养老送终了。她还是一个人风风火火的做着自己喜欢的事，她还是快快乐乐健健康康的做着让人羡慕的她自己。我欣赏她，我喜欢她。她是我身边最赋正能量的朋友。是让我觉得跟她相处很容易，很受益的好知己，我自豪有这样的好朋友。她是我最佩服的不老女神。
尾声出自她的孩子们：
As a thick snow fell on an unusually bright night, Susan Tong Ting passed peacefully from this world, wrapped in the love of her family.
She was born in Leshan, Sichuan, China, on January 3, 1944, delivered into this world by her father, her mother telling him what to do every step of the way.
In 1950, her family made their way to Hong Kong. She never quite escaped the long shadows of her two brothers’ brilliance in school, but she worked hard, she cared for the family, she loved to dance. Some years later her mother had a brief encounter with the Mormon church, and that’s how a mink farmer sponsored the family’s travel to America. She was 15.
At Penn State, she studied to be a math teacher and met her future husband who (on their first date—a walk through the woods) dazzled her with his botanical knowledge, introducing her to some berries that she promptly had an allergic reaction to. He rushed her to the hospital, and watched over her the rest of the day as she slept.
They married in Philadelphia, honeymooned in the Poconos, and moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he taught geology at the local university. For much of her youth, her hair was long, luxurious, and black. Then she had her first child—a son—who tugged relentlessly at it. She cut it short and never went back.
North Dakota was cold. So they eventually settled in Morgantown, West Virginia, first in faculty housing where lasting friendships were made; and—with a daughter on the way—they built a house on a hill with two orange doors and a porch with a view of the sunset. By any account, it was a home (and a life) to be envied.
But she was restless just raising kids at home. So in 1981, they bought the old East Garden Restaurant on University Avenue and renamed it the Chinese Gourmet. Through the restaurant, they were able to sponsor family from Taiwan and China to come to the States, many of whom stayed and made families of their own. After a lifetime as a daughter, a wife, a mother, it was something just for her; and she poured everything she was into it. In a way, she was like the food she served—dependable, light, a bit salty, a bit sweet, with no MSG. Open, funny, opinionated, she was what you saw, with arms as wide as the extraordinary table she set for you.
She was 45 when her husband passed.
In this moment, if not before, she came into her true power. She held her children close, refusing to let them give in to the Great Unmooring. Guiding them along the sudden pivot from childhood to adulthood, she taught them resilience and grace and perseverance and the deep sort of love that they would carry with them always. She held them close, but not so close that she couldn’t let them go when their own stories called—one to art, the other to healing.
Something was liberated in her as well. And the call of the potter’s wheel felt finally in reach. Still, for all the doors she opened throughout her life, she never forgot to hold them open for friends and strangers too. One wheel became eight. Her community joined her to build tables and shelves which filled the room that was once a laundromat—a brick kiln rose in the parking lot. She wanted the name to be something of the earth, but also of the heart: ZENCLAY was born. And through it, her passion for the ceramic arts inspired countless others old and young to fill that room and those shelves with things of their own making. In that way, the things she made were lasting, like the porcelain ginkgo leaves she carved, the family she made, and the family she chose.
It was in the fashion of children becoming parents that—when her parents could no longer care for themselves—she took them in, cared for them as she did when she was a girl, much as her mother cared for her grandmother. Her children eventually married and had children of their own, and she wore the garment of grandmother with joy and a wry sense of service. When her parents passed, she began to travel. Oh did she travel! All across Europe to all corners of China. Morocco to Abu Dhabi, Cuba to the Caribbean, Sri Lanka to Singapore to Alaska, and across the seas. She rarely traveled alone, accompanied by her brother, her daughter, her son, or her friends; and no matter where she went, she always sought out the comfort of a Chinese restaurant. All those years inviting strangers to her table made her a beacon for good company, striking up conversations with complete strangers, once starting a sing-along of Take Me Home, Country Roads in an airport on the way home from Iceland.
As she got older, nothing fazed her. She practiced yoga, line-danced, and focused on her grandchildren, charting enough miles between Morgantown, her daughter’s home in Cincinnati, and her son’s home in Berkeley to circle the earth. When her eyes and hands began to fail her, undaunted, she started painting, and telling her daughters how to cook. Her last trip was to visit her 103-year-old uncle in Wuhan, China, Christmas of last year.
She was humble. But she had an opinion about everything.
She’d ask you what you thought. And then make the opposite choice.
She liked to micromanage her staff and sometimes her family.
She never met a spice she didn’t like, and nothing was too hot.
She survived three serious car accidents, each one in a Subaru.
She never learned to swim and maybe the water scared her a bit, which perhaps explains the almost militant commitment to making her children attend practices and swim meets.
She cut our hair.
The final chapter of a life spent caring for others was not uneventful. Pandemic, social revolution, and a valiant battle with cancer meant it was her turn to be cared for. The circumstances of the day afforded her family and friends the opportunity to rally around her, lifting her up as she’d lifted them, through the radiation and the chemo and the physical therapy. And amidst all the turmoil, her house was filled with birthdays and cardboard forts, with the laughter of children and delicious food, and quiet moments of respite on her porch listening to cicadas and the sway of trees.
