Farewell

i hate riding planes. now i remember why. beyond the fear of going down in some fiery wreckage, getting to the airport still sucks. i left the house 2 hours in advance riding the A train all the way to the far rockaways but i was still running late. i had to be a rude ass in the security lines. my grandmother was sick, and i had to see her, plus I was going to check out the schindler and eames house, and salk institute in my spare time while I was there. pushing and cutting women and small children left and right i valiantly tried to avoid missing my flight. but the more i tried to change fate, the more doomed i became...i have the uncanny ability of always choosing the shortest line that ends up being composed of various assortments of dumbasses who can't follow directions thereby resulting in the longest wait.  in the back of my mind i rationalized my bad behavior by thinking at least i would never see these retards again. i ran all the way to ticket counter with belt dangling in hand preparing what to say to the staff to let me board late, only to find out boarding was delayed. all that cutting and running for nothing. It was uncomfortable to face all the people i had just cut and brushed aside. They gave me incredulous stares as they arrived at the gate area and sat around me as we waited for the plane to take off.

we boarded. i started reading On The Road. it was hot. the recirculated air smelled like engine fuel. we were on the damn tarmac so long, i had already traced keruoac's route from nyc to cali and back to nyc! when we finally lifted off, i noticed the plane was nice, there were these cool touch screens on the back of the chairs. since i had rushed so fast, i didn't eat any dinner. so i ordered a sandwich on the touchscreen, and proceeded to wait. it took them 2 hours to deliver a foccacia sweet bread sandwich. wrapped in saran wrap tightly. it was a disgusting sandwich. but i ate it all, even though it tasted bad cause i spent money on it. it wasn't free airplane disposable food. the cute touchscreens weren't so cute anymore. an annoying obese woman in back of me was playing some sort of game. it felt as if she put her whole body into touching that damn screen. for the next 5 hours, i was the human bobblehead. it was probably a word unscrabble game. anyways anytime i thought i was about to sleep, the whole back of my chair would shake back and forth as she excitedly unscrambled a word. 'boggle'. turbulence over wyoming. great ride. i burped. then a little something would come out. this happened a few times... then i couldn't hold it any longer. i grabbed the red barf bag and heaved 4 times, till the last heave was dry. wiped my mouth neatly with a dirty napkin, and held my bag, trapped against the window by a sleeping father and son duo. i nursed my bag of vomit, it was nearly full, my seat was still being mauled by the person behind me. thinking back on it. i should've turned around and barfed on her. "unscramble this!" and puked a foccacia sandwich on her face. i asked the attendant to take it away. he said "what is that?" i said "what do you think it is? it's vomit in a barf bag." he came back with a plastic bag and ran away so fast i couldn't discard it. so i held the barf bag in a plastic bag, warm in my hand, listened to crazy music. and waited for the miserable landing. i tried to sleep. but would panic wake up to see if i had spilled the barf all over myself. I got off the plane and my uncle said he could spot me from 50 yards away. haggard, exhausted, pale.

The last time i was here, my grandfather (nicknamed ‘du shu agong’ or book reading grandfather because he spent every waking moment reading) was buried on the side of a yellow grass hill in a large cemetery in the suburbs east of Los Angeles. My oldest uncle jokes, his grave is easily found because it lies next to the electrical utility transformer box by the side of the main cemetery road. He will probably remain there alone forever as my grandmother chose to be buried several hundred miles southwest by the coast  in San Diego next to my aunt and uncle’s grave. My grandmother didn’t choose to marry my grandfather... it was arranged and I think she hated every moment of it— the smoking... and the general servitude she endured while married to him. Unlike life, she was able to choose independence in the afterworld. 

Despite not being allowed to go to high school, my grandmother (“I don’t know why my parents named me Yue Liang or moonlight” she confided) was very smart.... much smarter than my grandfather, (my father told me she could do algebra in her head) which probably further agitated her even more about her situation. She never complained while he was alive. Taiwan was controlled by japan when my grandparents were born. As a result, they spoke Japanese and taiwanese first, only learning mandarin later on in life. The strong chauvinist Japanese patriarchal family structure was also in place. Like a dutiful japanese wife, she cooked, cleaned, waited for everybody to come home to eat herself (even if it meant eating at 11 pm) etc... 4 out of 5 of her kids went on to score in the top 10 out of all Taiwanese high school students, and obtain phds in sciences. My father acknowledged my grandmother’s hard life. Before washing machines, she would wash her kids’ clothes by washboard everyday, scrub the floors by hand, tutor the kids after school, cook, and run the house while my grandfather did ‘business’. It was hard work and stressful chasing after mischievous boys. My dad and his 2nd brother would feud a lot. One of my grandmother’s biggest regrets she joked with me was that she once spanked my dad, but not my uncle after one of their fights since she was interrupted with chest pains. She wanted to treat both bad boys equally and felt sorry she punished my dad more than his brother.

My grandfather came from a family that held a lot of land. He went to the best school in Taiwan to study business. Every time, he did ‘business’, he would sell a piece of land to fund his latest venture. Book smart but not street smart, he eventually lost all his land in trying one failed  business venture after another...  like making aluminum pots, bricks, etc... and trusting shady business partners. My uncle jokes the pots he made were so thick, (showing a gap of an inch between his fingers), the cost margin on material made it impossible to turn a profit. The remaining brothers of my grandfather who just held their land, sold it for millions when it was acquired for taipei international airport. It was my grandfather’s fate to try to start businesses and lose more money imaginable than had he just sat on the farm doing nothing. My grandmother had such disdain for such a fool... he never listened to her keen business advice, never considered lifting the toilet seat before peeing, nor cooking a bite to eat in his whole life. 

To me, my grandfather was a wonder. A mysterious man who chose my name out of a telephone book, nailed my childhood drawings to relative’s walls in Taiwan, who could blow smoke rings, hit a backhand and forehand with the same tennis grip, and walk 5 miles every day. When he visited Boston, I used to go ‘san bu’ (walking) with him when I could. We would walk hours and hours together trying different routes all the time. Looking back, I think I got my tolerance for walking long distances by myself through our san bu sessions.

When he visited my eldest uncle in LA, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was around 75 years old... smoking packs of cigarettes had caught up to him despite his extensive walking and tennis routine. He never knew he had cancer. It was our ‘farewell’ lie. Better for him not to fret about the diagnoses. He lived out his last days in LA surrounded by family. After his departure, my grandmother was finally set free from her lie. Before she passed away, all her descendants came to visit her, to tell stories by her side, and recognize her sacrifice for the family. She never favored anyone, but all those who knew her thought she loved them the most.