For this week’s Translation Tuesday, writer and cultural critic Ping Lu illustrates the power of unspoken familial love in her memoiristic essay “The Tide of Time . . . and the Phone Receiver.” Through a sequence of personal anecdotes about the speaker’s stoic parents, we witness how a natural anxiety over the aging process can beget silence and emotionally oblique conversations. Affection is unuttered but demonstrably present through the speaker’s physical acts of care; in turn, her parents pass over the harsh truths of aging in silence, their aches and injuries covered as much as possible by a loving pride.
On the phone, Mother casually tells me that her back hurts. Then: an abrupt yelp, and I can clearly hear the phone being dropped, falling and landing, somewhere.
Mother has probably turned to talk with Father. One moment she is speaking to me, and the next, to him—it’s perfectly integrated, the flow of words seamlessly maintained. And where did the phone land? In the gaps between the cushions of the couch? On the corner of the coffee table? Or did it slip down to the floor? Mother won’t remember to pick it back up—she has all but forgotten the receiver, and the fact that I’m still on this side of the phone call. I can only keep my hold on the phone, waiting patiently, afraid that she will later remember and resume our previous conversation.
At my end of the receiver, as I wait, I hear it, with startling clarity: her conversation with Father.
In truth, it’s nothing much. Mother continues to talk about her sore back; their dialogue centers around domestic trivialities.
With my ear pasted to the phone, I become suddenly aware that I am eavesdropping, and that this doesn’t seem ethical. I want to put down the phone, but at the same time I feel a compulsion to continue. What if, after a while, Mother again picks up the receiver only find that I’m not here?
Moving my arm out, I hold the phone a bit farther, away from my ear. This way, when Mother finds her phone and shouts my name at the receiver, I’ll be able to hear her. As for her chattering with Father—well, now it’s inaudible.
I would rather not listen to it, I think. Is it because I am afraid? Or because I can’t bear to listen? What else is there about being old, about the details of old age, that I don’t already know?
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Is there anything else that hasn’t been made clear enough? Throughout these past years, there have been clear skies and stormy rains; all kinds of days have gone by. They get sick: I push the wheelchair, get on the ambulance, follow them to the emergency room, and then move into the hospital ward with them. They push through day by day, conditions improving week by week. Then I help them home on my arm—Look at me, hold on to my hand. Don’t be scared, it doesn’t hurt, don’t be scared of the pain. It’s just for a bit, we’ll be home in a bit. I’m here, hold on to me, lean on my shoulder. The floor is slippery, take it slow, one step at a time, let’s go a little slower.
There beside them, often even I have pieced together some answers for myself: in the bedroom of the elderly, does the clock tick faster than usual, or slower? I compare photos of them—forty, seventy, and ninety, what’s a gradual downhill, what’s a steep one . . . They walk in front of me, showing me the paths.
But even so, I think I still don’t quite understand—that is, the details of being old. Sometimes, when I take Mother and Father out for food, I would open the door to their apartment and find Father dressed immaculately in a nice shirt, a woolen vest, a jacket. His cane would be placed aside, a baseball cap would cover his head, and he would be sitting on the couch with his back held straight. Perhaps he had spent an entire hour prior to my arrival to painstakingly dress. Pants would be the easiest; the upper body would be more of a hassle—one sleeve at a time, slowly. The most difficult part would be the socks: how best to hook the sock over his foot? Old people have trouble bending, and even if they stretch their arm, they wouldn’t be able to reach their feet. Really, he could have waited until I arrived to begin dressing; really, I’m good at this sort of thing, at helping my parents into clothes—and besides, eating out doesn’t warrant such impeccability. Father puts on his cheer, sits neatly dressed in the living room, so that I would see this and not worry.
And the way he sits with his spine pulled straight, waiting for me, is reminiscent of my first day of school, when Father waited for me in the living room. He had leaned down to tie my shoelaces for me—brand-new red leather shoes—and locked our hands together and taken me to school.
I still love holding Father’s hands. They are warm hands; and they are a little thick with flesh, unlike his calves, which are so thin that the skin seems to be wrapped around his bones. I like having his hands placed in mine, feeling as if our lives depended upon one another.
Mother and Father try their best to hide from me the details of old age, those most awkward parts of being old. Is it because they worry that if I see it, I’d be alarmed? Mother and Father always made sure to let me know that they’re living fine—only because they don’t want me to see that what await at the end are not the most dignified moments.
Neither side bursts the bubble. That is how we comfort each other. It’s like how, whenever we see each other, I would tell them, you have to take care of yourselves so I’ll be able to work without worrying. None of us bring up how much we’ve missed the others since we last saw each other; none of us bring up how difficult life is. We would rather turn the conversation away to something else, even leave out the subject of our sentences so it seems like we’re simply stating objective facts. So, eyes not meeting theirs, I say, quickly, “Be well, all right? That way next time I’ll be able to take you guys someplace far away for vacation.”
Sometimes, I would speak too fast. Father would fix his eyes intently on the shape of my mouth, like he wanted very much to make sense of what I’d just said. But he does not cut me off, and seems as if he doesn’t want me to realize that he hadn’t heard clearly what I had said.
He understands, and I understand, too. Even now, Father refuses to put on hearing aids. He hates having the tiny things in his ears. He stares at the configuration of my mouth while I gaze into his eyes, and we have never once missed what the other wanted most to convey.
Translated from the Chinese by Pinyu Hwang
Ping Lu (birth name Lù Píng) is a fiction writer, columnist, and a firmly established voice of social criticism in Taiwan. Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Ping Lu graduated from the Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University (NTU) and earned a master’s degree from the University of Iowa. She worked as an editorial writer for The China Times, and has given several lectures on feminism, cultural criticism, and news commentary at NTU and Taipei National University of the Arts. She also served as ambassador-at-large for Taiwan for several years. Her work has won many awards and recognition, with her best-known works including 行道天涯 Love and Revolution (1995), 何日君再來 The Story of Teresa (2002), 黑水 The River Darkens (2015), 坦露的心 Heart Mandala (2017), and many others. Her work has been translated into English, French, Japanese, Korean, and Czech.
Pinyu Hwang is an undergraduate student at Yale University, with an interest in linguistics and computer science. With a childhood split between Taiwan and the US, she is fond of pinball machines in the night markets, crème brûlée, stories, and language. Her short story, “One-Way Tickets,” has been published as part of The Nature of Cities’ anthology, A Flash of Silver-Green (2019), by Publication Studio. She has helped translate a number of simulations on the online educational platform CoSci, created and maintained by National Central University (Taoyuan, Taiwan).
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