After the Children Grew Up

While the fifth son was growing up, much changed at home. In his third year of senior high, the eldest son and eldest daughter married and set up their own homes within a year of each other.

So when he was in hospital he already had a sister-in-law and brothers-in-law.

Then both the sister-in-law and eldest sister were heavily pregnant, about to become mothers, yet they came to the hospital every day to see their younger brother.

The third daughter, Chunfang, had a very close boyfriend at the time—later our second son-in-law. After the younger brother’s operation he stayed with us and kept comforting me. The third daughter’s long courtship lasted until her husband had his master’s degree before they married.

The fourth son married a year before the third daughter. After demobilisation from service on an offshore island he passed the entrance exam for the Mechanical Research Institute under the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Hsinchu. Once his job was secure, he wed the girlfriend he had known since university. The second daughter-in-law had waited for him several years, so half a year after he started work we held the wedding and settled his marriage.

When the younger sons and daughters married, we had already moved to the eldest son’s home in Taipei. The eldest daughter-in-law was still working when she gave birth; I came to help her through the month after childbirth. I had meant to go back to Laomei and the Catholic kindergarten when the month was over, but for the dear grandson I decided to stay in Taipei with the baby.

The eldest son’s flat in Taipei had three bedrooms and two living rooms. The couple did not want their father to keep working at the high-risk nuclear plant and asked my husband to resign and live with them in Taipei.

They also suggested Chunfang move in and that we rent the flat upstairs as well, so the whole large family could fit.

At the end of 1981 our Tang household left Mingde Village, where we had lived twenty-three years, and everyone came to Taipei.

We still kept the dependants’ quarters in Mingde Village for nineteen more years; the eldest son even had them renovated.

All five children often went back to that small dependants’ house, took their own children swimming at the Laomei shore, climbed the dunes behind the village, looked for beautiful gaillardia and wild lilies, gazed at the place where their father had stood watch and at the lighthouse, and retold stories of their childhood.

Mingde Village was finally demolished in 2000.

Though in the Veterans Affairs Commission’s old-village rebuilding plan ours was the smallest dependants’ settlement—only forty households—with the help of our unit’s welfare officer, the village head, Mrs Cui, and Miss Huang from the township office, a second-generation villager, the whole village was able to relocate together.

From application to approval took nearly two years. At last the entire village moved to the demonstration community the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency had just built in Tamsui New Town.

The new town was modelled on Singapore’s public housing: more than six hundred units and complete public facilities. My husband and I chose a good south-facing unit, paid the down payment, took ownership, and moved in.

It was the first property of our own since we married.

Because the whole village moved together, many old neighbours who had been living elsewhere for a time met again in this relocation. Good friends could live near each other once more, day and night—that made us very happy.

Still, after twenty-odd years apart we were all gentlemen and ladies in their seventies and eighties. Ah—time spares no one!

Yet now I have children and grandchildren in plenty. Every family gathering needs two or three tables.

What comforts me most is that all five children have happy marriages and smooth careers after wedding. All eleven grandchildren, ours and by marriage, have good schooling and prospects ahead.

Last summer my husband suffered a moderate stroke. Thanks to good medical care, full support from all five children, and the concern and encouragement of old neighbours in the dependants’ area—Mrs Cui, Meihua, Xiulan, and others—he recovered well.

The children also hired Ani from Indonesia to look after my husband and me. My husband and I cherish the health we still have, our children’s filial piety, and the warmth of the community.

This year I am eighty.

Since I married my husband at eighteen, the two of us have built our life by our own efforts.

Looking back, though we went through a spell of financial hardship, our spirits were light. The struggle we waged for the children was full of hope and sweetness.

Thanks be to God!