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? READ MORE…