She Still Cuts

My mother-in-law’s come by for an indefinite number of days.  This sounds like the set up for a Henny Youngman joke.  But I’m very happy to have my daughter’s lao lao here with us in Beijing.  She’s in town from Shandong and she has, as always, brought enough crab apples, sweet potatoes and cabbage to last the winter.  And most importantly, she has brought a sack of steamed boazi. I've already had one, smothered in spicy bean sauce.  I'm telling you, Baozi will one day compete with pizzas and burritos in the US of A.   We’ll restart our Atkins effort some other week.

She lived with us for my first year of fatherhood, in a small apartment in San Francisco and it is a remarkably cyclical feeling to see her with my older daughter who she helped to raise during that critical year.  She’s a tall, stately woman with a full main of long black hair and though she doesn’t do Tai Chi in the back yard with a sword any longer she still cuts a mean figure.  And by now my daughter, whom I can still see crying in her arms, towers over her.

When she comes we break out the mahjong tiles.  I have an antique set that I bought in a flea market fifteen years ago.  I’d venture it’s from the 30’s or perhaps earlier.  The wood on the case is a bit moulded but the pieces are wooden with what might be ivory caps and they have remarkable old patterns painted on them.  It isn’t difficult to imagine someone throwing these around during the Japanese occupation or sitting beneath Jiang Kai-shek's portrait and the Kuomintang flag.  I don’t think we’ve had the set out since the last time she visited. 

And once again, the girls and I try to learn to play.  We all turn our tiles to her and ask if this three of a kind or that pairing is workable.  But my mother-in-law’s Mandarin is especially difficult to understand.  Shandong is part of the greater, northern China Mandarin belt, so it’s more of an accent than a dialect difference.  Perhaps like a Chinese person with strong English-as-a-second-language skills trying to make sense of a discussion in Glasgow or in Montego Bay.  She patiently tries to explain how different combinations can mean two-times or three-times the money were we to be playing for keeps.  I nod politely, and say “right” but I’m lost. 

This was how it was back-in-the-day in San Francisco in 2001.  My wife would come home to find us talking, laughing, doing the dishes and would interrupt us to say: “She’s talking about the weather, you’re answering about the traffic.  You’re not having the same conversation.”  But we were.  And perhaps it's the secret to our success.  It’s the subtle things, beneath our breath, that often lead to annoyance or regretted rejoinders.  If they happen here, neither of us are the wiser.  A big smile’s been good enough for us.