I had always been close with Grandma. Both of my parents were working and so they didn’t have time to take care of their children. My brother and I were born just one and half years apart. My father’s mom helped to take care of my brother. She couldn’t look after two babies at the same time. So once I was one year old until I was three years old, I was sent to my Grandma’s house to stay during the work week and I was taken back home on weekends. At first, I thought Grandma’s house was my home. My mom joked with me many years later that I had cried all the way home when she took me back every weekend. Then she said with a little bit of a sad voice, “You always look for Grandma,” She turned her eyes to the other way. After I grew up, I would be lost in thought when I recalled that moment. I might have thought my Grandma was my mom before I was three. I wonder, did that make my mom sad? This made me decide that I must raise my child by myself when I become a mom.
Grandma was an independent woman. Women usually lost their own names after marriage in the 1930s. They only kept the husband's family name plus their maiden name. For example, a Wang’s girl married Lee’s boy, the girl would be called LeeWang’s. Yet, Grandma kept her name, Xiuhua, which means beautiful flowers. I never saw Grandpa. He died before I was born. Grandma had lived alone since then. I guess my presence gave her more comfort than bother, even though she knew it was not easy to look after a baby, especially because she didn’t have any child raising experience at all. She was Grandpa’s second wife, she did not have her own children. Instead, Grandma adopted my mother when my mother was five years old. Becoming an adoptive mom at forty-two, Grandma might not have known how to be a mother. My mom always said she was very strict. But for me, she was just a kind grandma, always smiling to me. She was sixty-three when I went to her house. Life changed her and made her soft.
I was so surprised and sad that I didn’t have any of her pictures after she passed away. But I have her picture in my mind, her big eyes and her smiling face, just like in my dream. I still remember the scent of tobacco coming from her body. Yes, she smoked as long as I remember. She only smoked one brand, Lihua, a very cheap one. Women rarely smoked in the 1970s in China. I suppose that after her husband died and her daughter had her own family, the little cigarette might have comforted her in a long lonely life.
She always said with reverie, “ I wish I could live to the day that you would buy me a cigarette with your own money.”
“ You definitely can, Grandma!” I always replied loudly to her and she did.
I graduated from college in June, 1992 becoming a teacher two months later. I used my first paycheck to buy her a carton of cigarettes, Lihua, which was the brand name she liked best. I wanted to buy the more expensive one but she insisted on Lihua. I know why now, not because Lihua was cheap, just because Lihua and Xiuhua had similar meaning, beautiful flowers.
很可惜我没有留下一张外婆的照片，这兰花就当送给她老人家的吧……
