How it all started

Mom used to tell this story with amazement.  She would tell it as if it happened just yesterday:

One fine day, not long after marrying dad, mom accompanied a colleague to visit a fortune teller.  As soon as they stepped into the room, he asked if they were both nurses.  He told mom that her career wouldn’t last long.  He said that she wouldn’t have her first child for a few years yet and it would be a girl.

A registered nurse and licensed midwife, mom was sure that, with her training and skills, she would be successful professionally.  Already in her early 30s, she wanted to start a family as soon as possible.  Traditionally, only sons could carry on family names and roots.  Having a first-born girl wasn’t exactly good news.  Not to mention that there was a 25-year difference between my parents.

Four years later, mom gave birth to me following a difficult pregnancy.  During the last trimester, she was put on bed rest and eventually hospitalized.  That was the end of her professional life.  From that point on, mom became a convert.  Occasionally she would seek guidance from deities and fortune tellers.

According to mom, I was demanding from the very beginning.  She craved for guava during pregnancy.  In the late 1950s even in subtropical Taiwan, guava wasn’t readily available in winter months. Dad had to run around town to search for them.  One day she heard the call of a strolling vendor and sent dad out to chase him for fried tofu (油豆腐)—just to be clear, deep-fried foods were never her thing.  Dad came home empty handed yet had enjoyed a snack of sweet soft bean curd (豆花).  Not being able to keep any food down later in her pregnancy, she took American-made vitamins to maintain her energy level.

Mom didn’t have sufficient milk to breastfeed me.  I rejected the formula on the first taste.  For months, mom worried that I would become malnourished.  As soon as it was possible to give me “real foods,” mom found some creative way to boost my diet.  泥鰍 (mudfish) was an economical choice of protein. Mom would steam these tiny fish and separate the flesh from the fine bones; she would mix them in porridge for my daily meals.  I grew to be a chubby kid and enjoyed ANYTHING edible.  For years, mom would praise the wonders of American vitamins and mudfish.

Twenty-seven months after my birth, my brother came along.  He was a happy-go-lucky child, everything that I was not.