From the children (II) — Mother's sewing machine

As the eldest daughter, four years younger than my elder brother, I was shy and timid by nature and always stuck close to Mother, so in childhood I received rather more care from Mum and Dad.

I remember when my brother was at senior high boarding in Taipei; he came home every fortnight, and I would go with Mother to Boss Yang’s meat stall to buy ten dollars’ worth of pork for a better meal at home. When I was at nursing school and lived on campus, we were allowed home only once a month. I would get up at six on Sunday morning, find Mother who had already gone to the riverside to wash the whole family’s laundry, walk home with her, and we always had endless things to say. I naturally understood Mum and Dad’s hard work a little more than my younger siblings.

In the days before television and refrigerators, the living room held nothing but a table, a few chairs, and a sewing machine. Drawing on the experience she had gained in a garment factory at sixteen and two pattern books she had bought to teach herself, Mother made clothes for neighbours, altered uniforms for soldiers at the base, and earned money to help the household. She was often so tired she would pedal the machine and nod off. Innocent as I was, I would tell her to go to sleep; Mother would lift her head, rub her eyes, pull herself together, and keep treading the sewing machine.

Mother’s sewing machine grew up with me. It kept us fed and left my childhood full of happy memories — memories steeped in Mother’s wisdom and love for her children.

As a child I had four garments Mother had sewn by hand that I still remember clearly. One was a white puff-skirt for kindergarten, when our school dance was The Flower Girl; in it, with light make-up and a hair ornament, I felt like a little princess. Another was a big-floral dress in the same fabric as my sister’s but a different cut — low waist, bow, a delicate collar — which we wore to Dad’s air-force academy classmates’ gathering; our sister outfits won plenty of praise.

When my uncle married, Mother bought green-and-white checked cloth in Tamsui town, designed matching but different styles of dress and shirt with her own ingenuity, and took four smartly dressed children back to her family home in Changhua.

In junior high, for a Lao Mei elementary school reunion, with no money for new clothes, Mother unpicked stitch by stitch a coat from American aid donations, recut it, and made a short coat with distinctive pockets. Vanity and all, I stood among classmates in khaki uniforms for a lovely group photo I still keep in my album.

Growing up that way, Mother and I were close and talked about everything. In these years I have found that Mum and Dad are like children who need care: cooking homely dishes, chatting with them, taking them on outings, eating at small restaurants, going to the doctor with them — giving them a good quality of life is what I can do now.

Each time I ride the MRT back towards Tamsui and see Guanyin Mountain in the distance, I feel fortunate: a happy marriage, and at fifty-six still a parental home to return to. I cherish every visit and every chance to be with Mum and Dad. They cared for us without complaint; now it is our turn to cherish them, as I would my own dear children. I do it for no other reason than to spare myself the regret of “the tree wishes for calm but the wind will not cease; the child wishes to nurture but the parents are gone.”