City lights

We stood at the top, looking at the sparkling city lights and the famous landmarks in the distance. It was a quiet Friday night with few tourists around. Through the day, you showed me the places where you lived, where you went to school, your favorite spots as an immigrant in her early twenties in a foreign country and the memories of the hole-in-the-wall shops before the neighborhood changed in the past two decades. We drove to the spot where you saw Queen Elizabeth II looking out the window as her parade of cars drove through the city.

Listening to the stories of all the women in my lineage, I realized how lucky I am to be raised in a country that didn’t involve religious persecution, hiding and escaping for a better life. I remember the stories your mother told me about how she hid in the ground, looking at the faces of the enemies who destroyed her village. She spoke, with tears going down her face, of the fear she had each day, hiding and hoping she would stay alive. Through her words, she painted a picture of being in a packed train filled with people escaping their homeland. Everyone was given a small piece of bread for the entire trip, kids were crying and mothers were starving. She told me about how the man I never met saw her as she worked in a bank and soon they fell in love. She told me how she walked miles to school, demanding a college education when girls weren’t supposed to have education and the glory days when the man I never met was alive. One day I walked into the study and you were hovered over his letters and his writing.  Though he was a wonderful man I never met, he taught me how to write.

I wonder what stories I’ll tell my kids in the future. Stories from my mother, stories from my mother’s mother and the courage they had to pave the present.

When I went back to visit, the three of us sat in a room. Three generations of women and with similar inevitable mannerisms—simple things like love for simple photography, obsession over good coffee and tea, the arts and justice for all. They say as you grow older, you turn into your mother. And I agree, this is true. But that only means each generation, we all turn into the same women all the way up in the family tree. I can’t even imagine all the battles she must have went through.

When I left, I thanked you and tears rolled down my face. I told you I owed my life to you because it was the truth. Though my battle was nothing like persecution or moving to another country, you helped me through the darkest nights.

I can only hope that in the future, if the cards fall in the right way, that I have a daughter as well. And she will learn the stories of her mother, the stories of her mother’s mother, and the stories of her mother’s mother’s mother

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