My Mother Was Beautiful When She Was Young

2.

The apartment we rent is in the second row of buildings by the sea. Every morning, standing at the kitchen balcony's glass door, my gaze passes through the gap between two buildings in the front row, taking in the vast expanse of azure sea. The vast expanse. Sometimes, an illusion makes it seem as if the entire sea has risen vertically, hanging suspended in the air like a tsunami. This morning, the sea looked somewhat pale, lending it an almost ethereal unreality.

This morning, those two pigeons came again, perching side by side on the air conditioning condenser unit outside our bedroom window. Fish Lu said they looked like wild pigeons, not the domesticated kind. They were here yesterday morning too, pecking at each other with their sharp beaks. Are they a pair of lovers?

4.

I cling to loyalty and love like an ancient being.

The sun, king of all kings, coats everything with hope. It brings us happiness.

6.

Before lunch, we took a walk downstairs. After a while, we sat on a long wooden bench facing the silvery sea. In the depths of Regent's Park in London, and in many places throughout London, there were benches like this one, inscribed with different sentences. For instance: 'Nadia, for the times we sat here together watching the clouds—Yours, forever Thomas, xx date xx month xx year.' I cherish living in a world filled with love and trust. Today, from afar, the sea appeared pale, but up close, it sparkled with silver light. The warm winter sun bathed us in golden hues, making everyone under it languid. The city is full of cats and dogs, both domestic and wild. On every sunny day, we see various cats and dogs lying in the sun as we walk along—big and small, some dogs with their eyes tightly closed on the green belts along the roadside or the seaside squares, undisturbed by passersby. Fish Lu joked that one was 'sleeping like a dead dog.' A plump cat carefully approached us from the opposite fence, peering out as if judging whether we were trustworthy. Later, as we chatted, it suddenly climbed onto the bench from behind me, rubbing against my chest and hands in various poses, its little black nose cold. We played with it until well past two in the afternoon before remembering we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Fish Lu took some warm photos of me with the cat. I waved at it, saying, 'See you next time!' I could definitely recognize it next time; I noticed a small notch on the tip of its left ear.

Before this cat appeared, I had been inexplicably a bit down and distracted. A cat had brightened our noon.

7.

A few days ago, I read a psychology article about a young woman pseudonymously named 'Gu.' At 25, she is a depressive binge eater.

During a session, Gu tearfully told her therapist that she could eat anything available at home when the urge struck, even raw radishes and lettuce leaves. After eating, she felt guilty and induced vomiting. This cycle repeated, causing her body to swell. Gu felt she should see a doctor, but her mother, who had raised her single-handedly, dismissed her eating issues as mere gluttony rather than an illness, and discouraged her from seeking medical help. Gu always listened to her mother. When she was young, her father was often away for work. Once, he brought home a female colleague, slim and beautiful. Later, Gu learned from her mother that this woman was her father's mistress. After that, her father seldom came home. Gu and her mother depended solely on each other, and her mother often vented her bitterness and frustrations on Gu. Gu felt deeply for her mother but was also terrified of gaining weight (her mother was heavy, and she feared being 'abandoned' like her). She tried to control her diet, but the more she feared, the more it happened.

'...I just don't want to go back to face her (mother). Every time I go back, she criticizes me for not doing well enough, calls me heartless like my dad, and vents her resentment towards my father, saying that now it is only me left for her to depend on. Every visit leaves me feeling terrible, unsure of what to do, caught between a rock and a hard place, and then I binge eat intensely, later finding a secluded place to vomit,' said Gu.

'...It seems I'm always worried about her (mother), but now I can't even take care of myself, let alone her. I think moving out and living on my own would be easier. I want to take better care of myself,' Gu added.

As the sessions progressed, the therapist realized that Gu's way of expressing 'love' for her mother was hard to articulate with words; her loyalty to her mother often manifested itself physically. Her binge eating was a distorted expression of approval of her mother. However, once she became aware of the root causes behind her symptoms, 'it became possible to sever the link between the cause and the symptoms, leading to different responses,' improving and gradually eliminating the binge eating behavior.

15.

In a movie, it was said: when we judge others, it implies that we agree 'humans can judge humans,' thus agreeing to be judged by others as well. But the only one with the right to judge is God.

In another movie, Forrest Gump, people were impressed by Forrest’s perseverance in running for a very long time and asked him what he was running for. Forrest's answer was: 'I just felt like running.'

19.

I tried to recall the moments of true love between my parents and me. (True love, not the so-called warmth that is often filled with hypocrisy in traditional Chinese culture.) At this moment, what comes to mind is a hazy blur, like a cloud of gas tinted with soft blue and pink hues, within which I can vaguely see my young mother. My mother was very beautiful when she was young. As I write this, I recall a photo of her from when she was just over 30 years old, taken in a small nine-square-meter room we had moved into when we had just arrived in Guangzhou (it was actually the women's changing room at her workplace; every time the workers came to change, my father would step outside for a cigarette). In the photo, she is sitting on the side of a single bed (the largest piece of furniture in the room), with a slight smile on her face. Her dark hair is neatly tied up at the back of her head, revealing a high, bright forehead. Her eyes are also shining, looking confident and happy, undeterred by the cramped living space. At that time, she must have been full of hope for herself and our small family’s future. It must be so... And in this blue and pink haze that I see now, my young and beautiful mother is standing by a busy street next to a department store, bending down gently and patiently (just as I imagine a mother would be), with a slim waist, saying something to the young me beside her... Now, another photo comes to my mind, taken around my third year in junior high, when I went to Shenzhen's 'Window of the World' with my two cousins. One cousin, skinny and lively, waved a long bamboo stick, pretending to be the Monkey King. Both cousins smiled so purely and happily that even just being next to them, I felt their happiness and satisfaction were contagious. These two cousins are both a year younger than me, born in the Year of the Tiger—one is my mother’s brother's (my uncle's) child, and the other is my father’s sister's (my aunt's) child. When we were young, we didn’t distinguish between whose family we belonged to or how close we should be; we were simply cousins by blood. Many years later, around the summer of 2014, my eldest aunt from my father's side reportedly committed suicide by hanging, supposedly due to severe depression (the accounts vary, and I learned about it indirectly). I can't confirm the truth of these reports, as I had already been studying abroad for years and was unaware of many family matters. My relatives didn't share much about the so-called 'family scandals,' always being evasive. Lying is one of the essential skills modern Chinese people excel at, and it’s no different among relatives. They always find moral excuses like 'for your own good' or 'because we love you,' which are actually more insidious, aggressive, and harmful lies. In the second photo, did my other cousins appear? Possibly. In any case, I once saw a photo from our youth that captured the clean, happy smiles of all my cousins, whose happiness and satisfaction were contagious. While writing this chapter, I don't see my father in these memories, but I sense that the second photo was one that pleased him—one that could make him happy (I used to always try to please him). Although looking back now, I find myself quite unattractive in that photo, wearing a dark, unflattering synthetic cardigan and sporting a blunt haircut reminiscent of the Communist Liu Hulan, with hair so black it reminds me of feudal times. I look like an undeveloped middle school overachiever in this photo. But as I said, my father liked that version of me in the photo, so whether I liked it or not didn't matter to him... If I were to date this blue and pink haze, it would likely be the mid to late 1990s, though its ever-existence is beyond verification.

27.

Yesterday, while handling some things at the bank, a local middle-aged male employee told us, 'To be honest, I really like Chinese people. They are smart, hardworking, and have good character. They don’t equate themselves with "peace-loving Americans," but instead, they think globally.'

I thought for a moment, didn’t directly respond to his comment. Instead, I said, here is one of the most beautiful cities we've ever been to. We love the sea here and the cats and dogs running around the streets. You can sense the kindness in people’s hearts from the happy animals living on the streets.

The man looked satisfied after hearing my words, smiled, and softly said, 'Thank you.' He handed us a business card that indicated he was a customer relationship manager at the bank.

Excerpted from Like the Ocean, a work of creative nonfiction by Xi Nan. Available from Amazon US, Amazon UK, and other Amazon marketplaces.

Author: Xi Nan (西楠) is a writer and translator working in English, Spanish and Chinese. Her own work explores memory, time, displacement and the complexities of human relationships, often drawing on everyday life and personal experience. She currently lives in England with her husband Fish Lu.

More by Xi Nan →