Chapter 2

Do you remember when you first became self aware? I do. I was standing on a pile of sand. I had picked up a flower and was staring at it intently. After that, a world of color came to me. I looked out to the landscape and found that I was in a rural town with little city sounds. It was a farm country. Right after this moment of lucid cognition, I heard my paternal grandparents call out to me. I joined them shortly after. Consciousness came and went after that until it eventually stayed. 

At this time, I was around 4 years old and living with my paternal grandparents. It was a house in a very rural area. All the families near me were farmers. They had vegetables in their garden but usually only enough to support their own family. The main “farming” aspect of this town was in the animals they kept. Our family had pigs and chickens as our main livestock. I would sometimes help out by digging holes where my grandparents told me to. They needed that done for fencing things off or something of the like. The most fun part would be that after I dug the holes, I would collect worms in the dirt piles I created and feed the chickens. 

Aside from farming chores, I would go play with the dogs. We had two dogs. They had been my best friends since the day I became conscious. Sometimes, it felt like they were my only friends to be honest. I got really close to the dogs. I was even there the night one of them gave birth. It was really late that night but my grandparents told me to stay up and stay up I did. I then proceeded to watch as a large litter came out of one of my best friends. I held every new little puppy in my small hands and felt their warmth. This was definitely worth it. To this day, this remains one of my happiest memories. 

Aside from helping my paternal grandparents. I had 4 consistent events during the week in my life. First, I would be visited by the local doctor who would inject a needle into my butt cheek every time he came. I think they would later say it’s an antibiotic of some sort but I still can’t trace back to what that may have been. I think I got a hint to something about my preauricular sinus swelling but I really can’t be sure. Anyhow, I kept all the needles he jabbed me with and became good friends with them too. No really. That’s what I did. I never had any toys to play with so you get your hands on whatever you can. I used to think they were cool, small-volume, water cannons. How innocent I was. Anyhow, the only other outstanding thing from the doctor’s visit was he would bring along with him some antibiotics for me to take. A few pills a day. That was it. His visits didn’t really stand out aside from that. 

The second consistent thing I did during the week was school. I didn’t go everyday. To the best of my collection I was only there maybe once or twice a week. I don’t remember any friends there and don’t recall anyone who was memorable to me. The only thing I do recall were some of the games the other kids used to play. Something involving chips and flipping them using other chips. I don’t recall much else. The most memorable part of school was the journey to and from it. That was because I had a scooter. Something no one else even knew about. It allowed me to roam around freely after school all the way home and was my prized possession. Not only because it was super cool and made me stand out but also because my mom bought that for me. Anything from mom that was in my possession was a cherished item. I think a part of me just really wanted to get something from a parent. I just wanted to be cared for and feel like I mattered. 

If any item from mom was like unobtainium, a call from her was even more valuable. As you probably figured, she wasn’t living with me. I got a call maybe once or twice a week from mom, the third consistently weekly thing. I really wanted to hear her speak to me. We had nothing to talk about. She didn’t know anything about what I was really doing and she was technically a long distance call which meant she couldn’t really stay too long on the line. Sadly or probably not so sadly, I don’t recall our conversations. It was when I was too young. I do recall her visits though. She visited me very rarely in this period of my life. She would spend some time with me and ask me about all the things I was up to. I would show her all the small cool rocks I collected and, to her horror, my large collection of biohazardous used needles. Nearing the end of her meeting though, she would push me on a swing. I would stay on the swing and ask her to keep pushing me and to never stop. After pushing for a while, I would swing with my own legs and keep it going for hours, knowing at some point she let go and went into a taxi to leave me. I just liked to think my mom stayed longer than she did. 

My mom was doing her PhD in Chinese literature at the time and she didn’t have time to care for a kid. Where was dad to help out? Good question. Anyhow, turns out my dad cared even less about me. He never called me once and later in life when I finally confronted him about it he claimed he was too busy trying to earn money for us. This is funny because to my knowledge he never paid child support. He would go on to say he did a lot of labor jobs that took up his entire schedule. Sometimes he would work for 20 hours a day. He would then talk about how difficult some of his jobs were and how tiresome he would be at the end of it. The problem with this story was that I would hear this excuse from him when I turned 29 years old. When I was younger I may have felt honored that he did all that for me but having found out when I was 29 years old made me think he was full of shit. Saving money for who? For what? Was he and mom really so self absorbed about themselves they didn’t have time for me? It would take me a lot of time in the future to realize that sometimes parents are just not good people. The sad thing about this is that oftentimes you can never get a second chance at being a good parent as well. No matter how your childhood went, it is what it is. You just gotta keep moving forward. 

Oh yeah and the last thing that was consistently during this period of time was accordion lessons. Yup, you read that right. ACCORDION LESSONS. Accordion lessons being taught in a rural Chinese farming town by a random local musician. I have no idea how and why I was given accordion lessons but I am 100% certain I did not ask for this. All I knew was, for a few hours a week, a random dude came to our home with 2 accordions. One for himself and one for me. He would then tell me how to play it and teach me techniques to play. I do not recall a single thing he tried imparting to me. If I’m being honest, I don’t even really believe it myself. I would have chalked the entire thing up to a bad fever dream if not for the fact that I saw the old photos of this weird event. 

When I really think about it, I guess the main reason for these lessons was that my grandparents found out I was kinda lonely at home without my parents around. I would normally hang out with other kids as much as possible but when the other kids were busy, my grandparents wanted to occupy my time with something. Anything would have worked but it just so happened that there was a weird chinese farmer who knew how to play the accordion. I suppose it was as good as any passtime. 

Later my mom would tell me this went on for about 8 months only. Her timeline had set the list of events as such:

1988-1994:	Mom is done with her bachelors and starts her masters degree. She and Dad move in together at mom’s student house. After the masters degree was completed she continued on to do her PhD, still living in the same place.
1994-1997:	I was born. I lived with my mom and dad at the student house. My mom is still in school with aspirations of completing her PhD.
1998:	My mom finished her PhD at some point and is now teaching at the university. Due to the stress of the job, she pawned me off for 8 months at my paternal grandparent’s farm. Later in the year, I would move to my maternal grandparent’s place because my mom and dad would legally divorce and staying with my paternal grandparents didn’t feel right since my mom got custody.

The timeline doesn’t quite make sense and I would say that it’s not so much that it isn’t truthful but more so that there are missing some micro-increments of change. I think it’s got this effect like if you look at a big picture long enough, some of the fine details start to blur. This is also a direct pull from my mom and therefore, you should take it with some discretion. My mom has a habit of leaving things out.

So here is my adjusted timeline. Compiled after gathering data from all members of my family and extended family. Also, I have included some stories that were told by my dad.

1988:	The year my dad and mom got married. She would have been around 24 years old. In accordance to how long it takes to get a bachelors and masters in a Chinese University around that time, I would say this means she would have been around almost done with her masters degree already. It is likely that at this time she was already working on her PhD. My dad at this time would have been working his manual labor jobs.
1994:	I was born. Mom also must have been done with her masters and already working on her PhD at this point. Working as a PhD student, she must have had at least a small amount of income. I assume at this point, there was money coming in from both mom and dad.
1996:	Something happened this year between mom and dad. I think this is the year my dad left my mom and decided to go off on his own. MINI-STORY TIME: He told me a story about how he had an accident at work and mom was so busy taking care of me and working her own job that she just brushed it off without a second thought. This made my dad feel neglected so he decided to leave us. What are my feelings about this? I believe my mom could be very cold towards situations like this. I also know the expectations she could set for the males in her life. However, what kind of father abandons his kid simply because they weren’t getting enough attention from their wife? I think this is a poor excuse. Especially if you consider that not only did my dad leave, he moved to a different country.  I would later find out that in this period of time he went to New Zealand to be an unskilled laborer. Not a very bright nor enticing job opportunity. So what gives? Maybe it’s just to get away from mom and me. Regardless, I never thought of it much. But what I can tell you is that mom and I were alone from that point on. We never got a single penny from dad. I never even got a phone call either.
1997:	I think it started to dawn on my mom that doing her PhD, raising me, and working for the university was too much to handle. I suspect this was the 8 month period for which she said she left me with my paternal grandparents. As much as I want to believe mom that this was only 8 months. I think it may have been longer. Furthermore, these were not good times for me. As much as I romanticized my time on the farm in a rural county with some cool dogs, my most unforgettable memories from this period was missing mom every night and wondering where my parents were. I felt at times like I was abandoned by both mom and dad. Though dad is arguably much worse than mom here, I can’t help but think how little they thought of me. I don’t really like playing the victim card because it’s not really a useful card to have but for a 3 year old kid, I definitely had a deck of victim cards. Later on, I would realize I got cheated out of a proper childhood. Anyhow, however long I stayed there and however I was coping with things, time kept going on and on.
1998:	My mom finishes her PhD and decides to make 3 major life decisions.

• MOM’s 3 big decisions
  • First, my mom would divorce my dad officially since if he wasn’t going to be around, why bother? I have this theory that this decision also forced dad to pay alimony and maybe that is why he went to New Zealand but I could never prove this. Though it would give some more reason as to why he randomly decided to emigrate. 
  • Second, my mom would move me to live with my maternal grandmother. Since she divorced dad, it made no sense to stay with my paternal grandparents. My maternal grandmother is all we really had on mom’s side since my maternal granddad died of prostate cancer pretty early in life. I think mom hoped that I could ease some of grandma’s loneliness and in return mom would get help with raising me. I was most excited about this because mom being done with school and her moving me to another location implied that she was probably also move in with grandma and me. This meant I would finally get to spend time with mom. Like I said, I valued time with mom quite a lot as I never got time with her. On my dad’s side, I never even knew his dad’s face at this stage in my life. So in my mind, I was going to be living with a mom! What a very good turn of events!
  • Third, mom decided to….hmmmm actually on second thought, let’s just run this one like it happened…

I remember going to maternal grandma’s. I got on a plane from my rural county all by myself after my paternal grandparents dropped me off. I was on my own from that point on. Luckily, the flight attendant stayed with me. In fact, she stayed with me the entire time because I was a 4 year old and flying alone. She asked me about my toys and I told her I got some cool robot action toys from a previous visit with mom. We didn’t have television on the farm so I had no idea I was holding on to a KyuKyu Sentai GoGoFive robot. Like I said, I never cared for what it was but more so who gave it to me. After a while we landed and a taxi came and got me. Eventually, I made it to my grandmother’s place. I was super excited when I got there. I ran around all the rooms and completely ignored grandma. This was it I thought. Finally, a parent in my life. But I never found anyone.

I tired out quickly after realizing there was no one else there. All the rooms were empty. My hopes fell instantly. Was I tricked? Why did I leave my other grandparents if I don’t get to see mom anyways? All these questions came through my little head at a rate so fast I couldn’t really process it all. As I stood there frozen. Clinging on to my toys for comfort. A few strangers entered the room. They were my cousins and my uncle. This gave me a bit of hope.

My cousins asked me about how I was and asked to see my toys. I gladly shared. The toys didn’t matter if I could see mom. I hoped that in the same car my uncle came my mom would be there too. Instead, my uncle greeted me quickly then proceeded to dial our home phone. My mom was on the other side.

She wanted to tell me herself that she wasn’t coming, nor will she be coming any time soon. My heart sank. I had to hold it in though. I couldn’t cry in front of my cousins afterall. They were strangers to me and I just met them today. I asked her how long it would be before I could see her. She said it’ll be a few months. My heart dropped again. I started to lose it. I was gonna tear up soon. Then a different feeling started to fill in my stomach. It felt kind of warm. It felt like a black ball was embedded in my abdomen and pushing on my ribs. It was a good feeling though. A numbing feeling that let me block out a lot of other emotions. I wasn’t sure what it was but I calmed easily after this feeling took hold. I told mom I understood the situation and then hung up. The need to cry went away. I gave the phone back to my uncle. I turned to my cousins and kept talking about my cool toys. 

I didn’t know where my mom went. It didn’t matter to me. She wasn’t there. I would find out the truth later from grandma and uncle. She had left the country. Just like dad. She had decided to fly to Toronto, Canada. This was her third decision. I had no idea why she made this decision nor why she did it in such a manner that I never got to see her before she left. This was the first time I think I understood hopelessness and despair. That is coincidentally how I would describe the dark void I felt in my stomach. A miasma of toxic fumes that burns your entire body down and down into meaninglessness.

I wouldn’t join her in Toronto for quite some time. But for the time being, I was now under the care of my maternal grandmother.

Little did I know, she was anything but a good guardian.