Chapter 1 - part 1

"How's your room-mate?" With three words, my mother, Barbara Ching Wan Sze managed to contort herself into a moebius strip and simultaneously acknowledged yet disavowed my relationship to my lover. My mother should've joined the Cirque du Soleil of words.

*****

Though I take after my father's side in looks, in temperament, I am my mother's daughter. And it is because of the similarity that I can look at my mother and truly appreciate the injustice of her birth being 30-40 years too early. Don't get me wrong, I don't pity my mother. A tremendous amount of her circumstances came as a result of her own doing; nonetheless, I recognize that had she been born when I had been born or even later, that perhaps she wouldn't have made the choices she had.

Barbara Ching was born in Shanghai, China in the early 30's. Exactly when is unknown, if you are referring to the Western Calendar aka the Gregorian Calendar aka the Solar Calendar. According to the Lunar Calendar that most Asians referred to, she was born 5 days before the New Year. Because there are sometimes 13 months in a year according to the Lunar Calendar (just like sometimes a woman will bleed 13 times in a year), it was best to count backwards from Chinese New Year.

Sometimes, she'd joke that that her birthday fell on the Chinese Christmas and she never minded that December has 31 days. It were these lapses of logic that defined my mother to some of us. Okay, okay, it defined her to me, one who prided herself on being fairly logical.

The 30's in Shanghai was an odd mix in time for the Chinese. Since Shanghai was one of the if not the largest port in China, it was bombarded with Western influences. To illustrate just how successful this bombardment was, my family on my mother's side is very proud that my generation is the fourth or fifth generation Christian. My grandfather was born in 1902 and he was a 2nd or 3rd generation Christian. He was also a freemason.

My family was apparently very proud of their ties to the Western influxes. Barbara Ching's uncle was the president of one of the largest banks with ties to Sun Yat Sen; her father was the principal of the largest English schools for girls. Barbara Ching happily spent the mid 40's breezing through school and running to the movies on Saturday.

"Ngu patchok hough. Yi nieyk tee koo yi kuew sze tsok!" That's Shanghainese for "I planned it out. One day can see 4 movies!" She'd apparently go to the morning show on Saturday, dash out as soon as it ended and stop at an uncle's stall to get some food. She'd then see three other movies and end up home by bedtime. "Mom," I'd ask puzzled, "Didn't Booboo (grandma) and Kungkung (grandpa) mind?" She'd laugh and say they were too busy and by the time they had her, it was hands off parenting.

These movies weren't Chinese movies. Well most of them weren't. I'm sure my mother watched some Chinese movies, but apparently, they didn't compare to the ones that came from the United States. She grew up watching any and every movie she could, from the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy teamups, to Cary Grant's elegant comedies, to Joan Crawford melodramas, to Bing Crosby's croonings. You name a movie star, she could probably tell you what movies they'd been in.

My fondness for movie trivia grew as direct result of listening to my mother speak of those days with such fondness. We'd watch old movies together, her turning up the volume to cover up my wheezing. She'd name this star and that, (a habit I acquired) and then would remember to show me the movies she particularly liked. I cannot tell you how many times I watched Imitation of Life with Sandra Dee. In some ways, I may have had to do her one better, as offsprings are wont to do; I got into behind the scenes trivia. I often know who directed and/or wrote a movie.

The other thing I know about this period is that my mother was always at the top of her class. Barbara Ching was apparently the class clown, but also the top of the class. Though the two titles aren't mutually exclusive, it's hard to embody both and yet my mother seemed to have, according to her own words.

The image of being the popular and smartest girl in class is an image both my sister and I have had to contend with. Though neither of us talk about it, we both know we fell short and that forever, mother'd find us lacking. My sister and I reacted differently. She chose to be the one with the most education, thereby nullifying any concept that she might be stupid (a word my mother used often on us. I just knew it wasn't true, but my sister doubted herself enough to be influenced by the word). I chose to be the weird one.

[To be continued] [849 words]