Dreamweaving
Photo by Karen Lue
I was born here.
Sometimes I am forced to repeat myself, as if I’m spinning a tale that I don’t even believe.
I was born here.
In America. In California. In Sacramento, specifically.
I grew up with an older brother who was nice to me and parents that said our only job was to go to school. We were given a gift of opportunity that our ancestors were not so fortunate to have.
This is by and large the quintessential story woven by parents and peddled to children of immigrants the world over. Because of the sacrifices of our ancestors, we were afforded the privilege, security, and will to imagine something beyond what the world had given us.
We were lucky.
And lucky children get to dream.
So, that’s what I did.
Most times, my family would entertain my overactive imagination. I whipped up fantasies about owning a cafe, making bubbly drinks in the bathtub with soap and hot water. Sometimes, I dreamt about being a ballerina or famous singer. Anything I wanted to be, I could. My dreams rarely felt out of reach.
I thought my imagining was special, that my daydreaming was unique.
It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that an imagination is only as special as the people who fight for it. Imagination is not just built for children in suburbia or on playgrounds. An imagination could be used by people like my grandparents, who didn’t have safety or power, but spent every waking moment cultivating a world where they would. It wasn’t until then that I understood just how my imagination paled in comparison.
Even though I still have the occasional fantasy about writing best-selling novels, my dreams as of late have been attempts to live up to the grandeur of my ancestors’ wildest dreams. They are doorways to a past I never fully comprehended, rather than windows to an imagined future.
I remember my 人人, who after moving to the U.S. spent her days ladling out food for school children on colorful plastic trays. I try to think about how she must have felt seeing blonde-haired, blue-eyed boys for the first time. Maybe she saw them chatting with dark-eyed girls with curly brunette hair and thought about how her grandchildren would never look like them. Maybe she worried about how we might fit in. Maybe she watched the kids laughing loudly and smiled, daydreaming about the moment she could hold a newborn baby in her arms and know it was all worth it: the leaving of homes, the teary goodbyes. Maybe she would think about what it would be like if she never left in the first place.
When I am tired or worn out from a day of classes, I think about 婆婆, whose hope for a better kind of future kept her hands warm even after plunging them into icy waters, scaling shrimp by the barrels late into the night. Whose ideal future included educated children who visited often and grandkids who spoke Toisanese as clearly (and as loudly) as she had. Whose daydreams were muddled with worries about when she would see her husband again, if they could afford a bigger apartment, if her in-laws were right: that a single mother with five children would never make it in America. No one told her that the land of dreams was only made for people who could afford it.
But, these are all partially remembered stories, inching their way back into my mind when waiting for a bus or an elevator. The daydreaming starts to swallow me whole when I visit home.
There is a letter in blue ink on faded wide-ruled notebook paper. 人人 wrote about her childhood, addressed it to me, and signed it “Grandmother.” It was only one page, front and back. Her cursive looks just like what you’d see in a penmanship class. The letter was part of an assignment I had in elementary school where we were required to ask our grandparents about what their lives were like when they were our age. When I read it back years later, it becomes a reminder of how little I really knew her. I close my eyes and think about what 人人 might say to me if a hospital and her heart didn’t take her from us. I imagine the walks we’d take around the neighborhood, the tricks she’d teach me in the kitchen, the jewelry she’d hand down to me when I got old enough. I start to tear up and inhale deeply, but not even the scent of ink remains. I resume imagining. On the weekends, we’d laugh and order too much food in a restaurant off Freeport Boulevard where all the good dim sum is served. In these daydreams, I would have known what to ask before it was too late. We would have more memories than the one I have of us squeezing into an old grey rocking chair in front of an old television set. We would have so much time.
Fast forward a decade and a half, and I’m sitting in my room listening to a recording. I am searching my computer for photos and videos of 婆婆 for the funeral. There is an audio file buried in the depths of my hard drive, and against better judgement, I press “play.” I’m interviewing 婆婆 and mom is translating. I can almost hear the crinkle of the couch cushions. They are as loud to me as a velvet, floral-printed sofa can be. I close my eyes again and travel back in time. I come up with new ways to daydream. We are walking a dirt path up the mountain to the village. I don’t know where the mountain came from, but in her stories, there is always a mountain. She describes the village, explains how scary it was to walk to school, so sometimes she didn’t. We don’t have a scary mountain, so I have no excuse for when I don’t want to go to school. I ask more questions, and then I see 婆婆 grow up, raise five children, feel her heart break when she is told to leave one behind, fly over oceans, move into homes that never feel like home. I wonder what she thought about when she was on the bus with loud talkers who spoke even louder to her, even though her problem wasn’t a hearing one but a language one. She never learns to drive. I imagine that years go by, and she is still on the bus, but this time I’m with her. I watch me as a toddler, holding her hand, feet dangling above the grey floors. Time speeds up. I pretend 婆婆 and I make weekly trips to the store. We’re both holding pink plastic grocery bags. She unwraps a pink and green roll of haw flakes and hands them to me. I think about what 婆婆 would have told me on those trips to the store if language barriers didn’t build walls. I pretend we were closer than we were. I think about the things I could have told her before she left. It never feels like enough.
On the best days, my time traveling dreams don’t make me sad. I let the vague sentiment that my grandparents would be “so proud” comfort me. I bow three times in the direction of the gravestones. I allow myself to trade pride for closeness. And, on the days where the reality of my imagination being just an imagination is too much to handle, I call my parents just to hear the history in their voices. I ask them what they remember. I remind myself to leave time for recording their oral history when I visit for the holidays. I ask mom what the name of 婆婆’s village was. I get frustrated when I can’t figure out how to spell it out in English. I look up information for free Cantonese classes, download a free language lesson podcast, have mom tell me how to order food from restaurants. I ask dad if our last name is still inscribed on the house that 人人 and 爺爺 used to live in. I smile when he says it’s still there. They are still there.
For now, this is enough.
About christina ong
christina ong is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh where she studies the development of Asian American identity from the 1960s-1980s in New York City. Her research spans topics of racial identity, transnational feminisms, and migration. As a public scholar, Christina is passionate about bringing the perspectives of marginalized groups into the mainstream through alternative media platforms such as podcasting and Twitter. Her storytelling work can be found on her podcast, Seats at the Table.