A Present for Popo : Sometimes, it takes more than ties of kinship and culture--or even a holiday tradition--to keep a family together.
When my Popo opened a Christmas gift, she would shake it, smell it, listen to it. She would size it up. She would open it nimbly, with all enthusiasm and delight, and even though the mittens were ugly or the blouse too small or the card obviously homemade, she would coo over it as if it were the baby Jesus.
Despite that, buying a gift for my grandmother was always problematic. Being in her late 80s, Popo didn’t seem to need any more sweaters or handbags. No books certainly, as she only knew six words of English. Cosmetics might be a good idea, for she was just a wee bit vain.
But ultimately, nothing worked. “No place to put anything anyway,” she used to tell me in Chinese. For in the last few years of her life, Popo had a bed in a room in a house in San Gabriel owned by one of her sons. All her belongings, her money, her very life was now co-opted and controlled by her sons and their wives. Popo’s daughters had little power in this matter. This was a traditional Chinese family.
For you see, Popo had begun to forget things. Ask her about something that happened 20 years ago, and she could recount the details in the heartbeat of a New York minute. But it was those niggling little everyday matters that became so troubling. She would forget to take her heart medicine. She would forget where she put her handbag. She would forget she talked to you just moments before. She would count the few dollars in her billfold, over and over again. She would ask me for the millionth time, “So when are you going to get married?” For her own good, the family decided she should give up her beloved one-room Chinatown flat. Popo herself recognized she might be a danger to herself, “I think your grandmother is going crazy,” she would say.
That little flat was a bothersome place, but Popo loved it. Her window had a view of several import-export shops below, not to mention the grotesque plastic hanging lanterns and that nasty loudspeaker serenading tourists with 18 hours of top-40 popular hits.
My brother Will and I used to stand under her balcony on Mei Ling Way, shouting up, “Grandmother on the Third Floor! Grandmother on the Third Floor!” Simultaneously, the wrinkled faces of a half-dozen grannies would peek cautiously out their windows. Popo would come to the balcony and proudly claim us: “These are my grandchildren coming to take me to dim sum. “ Her neighbors would cluck and sigh, “You have such good grandchildren. Not like mine.”
In that cramped room of Popo’s, I could see past Christmas presents. A full-wall collage of family photos that my mother and I made together and presented one year with lots of fanfare. Popo had attached additional snapshots by way of paper clips and Scotch tape. And there, on the window sill, a little terrarium to which Popo had tied a small red ribbon. “For good luck,” as she gleefully pointed out the sprouting buds. “See, it’s having babies.”
Also, there were the utility shelves on the wall, groaning from a wide assortment of junk, stuff and whatnot. Popo was fond of salvaging discarded things. After my brother had installed the shelving, she did a little jig, then took a whisk broom and lightly swept away any naughty spirits that might be lurking on the walls. “Shoo, shoo, shoo, away with you, Mischievous Ones!” That apartment was her independence, and her pioneer spirit was everywhere in it.
Popo was my mother’s mother, but she was also a second mother to me. Her death was a great blow. The last time I saw her was Christmas, 1990, when she looked hale and hearty. I thought she would live forever. Last October, at 91, she had her final heart attack. The next time I saw her, it was at her funeral.
An open casket, and there she was, with a shiny new penny poised between her lips, a silenced warrior woman. Her sons and daughters placed colorful pieces of cloth in her casket. They burned incense and paper money. A small marching band led a New Orleans-like procession through the streets of Chinatown. Popo’s picture, larger than life, in a flatbed truck to survey the world of her adopted country.
This little 4-foot, 9-inch woman had been the glue of our family. She wasn’t perfect; she wasn’t always even nice, but she learned from her mistakes, and, ultimately, she forgave herself for being human. It is a lesson of forgiveness that seems to have eluded her own sons and daughters.
And now she is gone. And with her--the tenuous, cohesive ties of blood and duty that bound us to family. My mother predicted that once the distribution of what was left of Popo’s estate took place, no further words would be exchanged between Popo’s children. She was right.
But this year, six of the 27 grandchildren and two of the 18 great-grandchildren came together for a holiday feast of honey-baked ham and mashed potatoes. Not a gigantic family reunion. But I think, for now, it’s the one yuletide present my grandmother might have truly enjoyed.
Merry Christmas, Popo!
