the cassandra pages: Remembering in Chinese

Two Letters

Dear Beth，

It is a long time didn’t get any message from you. I think of you often. It is Mom’s memorial ceremony today. I miss her and all of you. I kept her letters this years written to me in my documents and read them again, as if she still lives with me. In these letters, she talks with me about to be a woman, a mother, child’s education, reading, knitting, and beautiful feelings among your family. I miss her so much... Not knowing in the heaven if she knew I still talk with her. But she must know, she's never in solitude, she has many friend with her, Y. is among them.

Dear Beth, please instead of me to say Y. miss Mom when you have the ceremony. Much love, Y.

Dearest Y.,

I have been thinking of you often and especially as Mom's anniversary grew nearer. I wonder if there has been some problem with our email. I wrote to you and heard nothing back for months... I thought maybe something was wrong, or you had been unable to write...it means so much to me that you were thinking of us and of my mother today, and sharing our memories.

I am with my father at my parent's home. Dad just came home from the hospital today - he had his second knee replacement surgery on Monday. He's doing very well. Mom asked us both to promise that he would have his knees fixed, and so today we were able to tell her, "OK, we did it!" On the way home from the hospital we went to the cemetery and spent some time there. There is a lovely small apple tree that my father planted near her grave, and it is covered with blossoms. Later we will make a small garden there for some other flowers, with the tree on one side. I have planned to put some yellow chrysanthemums in the garden for you...

In Vermont it has finally become sunny and warm, and I have enjoyed being in the garden and back yard. There are lots and lots of birds there, and so I decided to buy some bird food and put it in the feeder. Suddenly, so many birds came! They were all in pairs - males and nesting females. And special ones - beautiful yellow goldfinches, red cardinals, black-and-white woodpeckers, grey catbirds, purple finches, mourning doves, sparrows, bluejays, a Northern oriole which is bright orange. And then an indigo bunting - which is a small bird of the brightest blue, and quite rare. I was beginning to laugh - it was crazy, so many beautiful birds, some of which I had never seen in our yard!

On the last day before I came down here to be with my father, I was looking out the kitchen window and saw a streak of bright red - it was a scarlet tanager, one of the most beautiful birds in North America, and I have never seen one in all these years in Vermont. I burst out laughing. It really felt like my mother was sending all these birds to me to show me I should be happy and enjoy nature as she always did. I don’t think that is really true, but a little part of me suspects it could be. Anyway, it DID make me happy and I feel joy for being alive in this remarkable world, full of suffering and full of joy all at the same time.

Please let me know how you are, and all your family. I send my special love to you on this day; we are sisters when we think of Mom.

Beth

(Y. and I have been writing to each other for many years. She lives in Beijing. We have never met in person.)