i'm lost in translation

As The World Turns - My "Liun Shu Ju [Soap Opera]"

There isn't a simple way of explaining some of the situations in my life....so I'll try explaining it as best as possible. Hopefully you won't get too confused.

My grandmother had five children in Taiwan- my mother was the oldest, then my three uncles and finally my aunt, who was the baby. After my mother married my father, she moved to the United States. She asked my grandmother to come over for a while and help her care for her soon to be born child. Then she asked my aunt to come over too. She convinced her baby sister that coming to the United States would be a huge opportunity for her and she'd be able to study here. Unfortunately, my mother really intended to start a business and needed my aunt to help her out. So, my aunt never made it to college in the United States.

My aunt came here and basically became my mother's servant. She was my babysitter and my mother's employee. I think every year she grew to resent my mother more and more. At some point she gave up her dream of going to college and just set out to find a rich man to marry her. She was young, pretty and funny...so she didn't have any trouble finding men to date. As a child, I barely left her side. She was my big sister and I loved her dearly. I'm sure she cared for me but looking back I was a huge pain in the ass. My mother and grandmother sent me out with her on dates so no "funny business" would happen. Unfortunately, she seemed to date a lot of losers. It seemed like as we moved farther and farther from New York City her choices of desirable men from the dating pool seemed to grow smaller and smaller. She didn't get to meet many men slaving away for my mother either.

When I was about twelve or thirteen my mother met a man that she began to date seriously. Let's call him Charles for now because I can't remember his Chinese name. She met Charles because it was time "she had a man in her life". She always felt that we needed a man around because things needed to be fixed or heavy things needed moving. There had been other guys before but this one moved in with our little family (my grandmother, aunt, mother and myself) fairly soon and stayed for a while. Things began to look up - my mother and Charles set up a little business together, we moved into a bigger house and things were calm and serene.

But at some point it turned and got really ugly. I don't really remember what happened...I was probably caught up in my own teen angst at the time. My aunt and this Charles started to become really close. I had heard them at night joking around and drinking tea in the middle of the night but I didn't know it was leading to. It seemed like my home was splitting apart and everyone was against my mother. Soon the business began to fail, we had to sell the house and move to a smaller one. When we moved I noticed that Charles moved from my mother's room to my aunt's. We didn't acknowledge it in the house - we tried to remain as normal as possible....but the tension was unbearable. One night my aunt came into my room and told me to not let my mother stop me from going to college...and then she left with that guy (who I am now assuming is my uncle?) I haven't seen her since. I think for a little while she kept in touch with my grandmother...but they soon lost track of one another. I haven't seen her for about twelve years and now I am desperate to find her.

She has no idea that my mother, her sister, died. She has no idea how depressed my grandmother was and sometimes is still. And it would just be nice if my grandmother had a child to rely on that could speak the same language. I had my dad run her info through some police computer but he came up with an address she is no longer at.

The saga continues tomorrow...........

posted by Jin @ 4:08 PM