Thoughts on waiting

I'm reading a novel that is set in Communist China (1960s-1980s) and one of the central characters is a woman from the rural Northeast who has bound feet. She is basically abandoned by her husband and is left to take care of his ailing parents (and eventually their graves), the house, their daughter, and the fields. Every year for the past 18 years, her husband comes back from the army hospital he works at to divorce her. Every year, she agrees to be divorced, but for various reasons, her husband has never been granted a divorce.

This woman reminded me of my paternal grandmother--I say "reminded" and not "reminds" because as far as I know, the only things they have in common are years of hardship and bound feet. My grandmother and I have never been close. Even though she (and my grandfather) lived with us for two years, I spent my childhood mostly with my mom's parents. Once I came to America, I rarely talked to anyone in my extended family. Also, my grandmother considered it a part of the natural order that she make all her daughter-in-laws' lives hell, and I viscerally hate anyone who hurts my mom.

And so, until about a week ago, I found it quite comfortable to file my grandmother under "bad people" and had no intentions of reexamining whether or not she deserved to be disliked by her own granddaughter. It never occurred to me that she would have a backstory. Well, this is not exactly true--it never occurred to me that I should care about her backstory. For some reason, I care now.

Until her sons got comfortable jobs in the city and transferred their parents out of the countryside, my grandmother worked in the field and around the house, from sunrise till sunset, nonstop, on her bound feet. She was beaten by her husband, abused physically and emotionally by the family she married into, and had no choice but to submit to her circumstances. I wonder what this kind of life does to a person's spirit, how endless inescapable suffering twists your soul, and I wonder, does your past justify your present?

I wish I had taken the trouble to get to know my grandmother better. She lived through a cultural revolution; she was born a peasant and now has her own condo in a resort town on the coast; her feet are bound and her grand-daughters are worried about birth-control; she is now in her mid-nineties although a decade ago the doctors said her lymphoma was so advanced she'd have at most six weeks to live. 17 years ago, she had a stroke that paralyzed the left side of her body and she has been wheelchair-bound since. My grandmother should be a fascinating woman.

Unfortunately, I will never be able to ask her the questions that I now want to. She has Alzheimer's and doesn't even know who she is most of the time, much less who I am. It took me two decades to develop an active interest in my own grandmother, and this interest has come too late. My regrets are somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that she has finally found peace. My mom went back to see her last year, and she said my grandmother's eyes are no longer filled with venom and spite and loathing. She has the innocence of a three-year-old and is happy for probably the first time in her life. God, it seems, has finally given her His mercy.

But, (characteristically) I can't help but be sad. Two years ago, my maternal grandfather passed away. I loved him, and I never got a chance to thank him for those afternoons he spent flying kites with me in the park, the red flowers full of nectar that he picked for me to suck on, for calling me "da bao" when I was the youngest person in the family, for letting me ride my tricycle around his house. He died thousands of miles away, and I couldn't even go to the funeral. I hadn't even talked with him in over a year. I know this is not unique to me, but it really never occurred to me that someone I love so much could die before I got the chance to "make things right". I guess I thought he would wait for me.

I had been operating under the assumption that there would be time to do all the things I wanted and that were important to me. If there is time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate, time for a hundred indecisions and visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea, surely there would be time for the bigger things! It never occurred to me that God would dangle a desire in front of me and snatch it away before I had been satisfied. My God is a merciful god, and I think I am just now starting to realize that my definition of "merciful" is inadequate. When you think of all the opportunities you miss, all the chances that you either rebuff or that are taken away from you, it's enough to drive a person mad.

I don't and can't understand God's mercy. I think I need to just accept it and stop asking so many damned questions. Until we find a way to tap into God's mind or develop more reliable methods of fortune telling, it's probably best to remember the Count's words as he finally sails off with Haydée--all of human wisdom can be summed up in two words: "wait" and "hope".