The Story Gold Powder Told Me

The story of a migrant worker, translated…

not my picture…

Gold Powder smiled and told me a story about her and grandpa.

Gold Powder said, that although grandpa is elderly, but he’d still acted like a hyperactive kid.  He would smear his feces onto the walls, on the floor, the furniture too, turning the entire room into a house of “gold”, then, handed the diaper to Gold Powder, said, “it’s for you, I’m not wearing that!”

And, it seems, as though Grandpa’s biological clock is set up wrong, that, would be why in the middle of the nights, he’d shaken Gold Powder ‘til she woke, told her he’s hungry, wanted her to cook for him.  Although Gold Powder was questioning, but she’d still made the meals, called Grandpa to come eat, and, at the end, Grandpa told her, “Are you ill?  It’s the middle of the night, and people should be sleeping and not eating!” Gold Powder is so very tired, after putting Grandpa who’s too stubborn to bed, she’d tucked him in, hid out in her own bedroom, to get some shuteye.  But, not long thereafter, she’d started hearing, rustling outside, grandpa lifted up the toilet, opened up the doors to the fridge, opened up the electric rice cooker, called out into the items, “It’s not here, not there either………hey miss, where, are you?”, Grandpa kept on having difficulties, remembering Gold Powder’s name, he’d kept calling her, “hey miss”.

Gold Powder helped grandpa put on his coat, because he’d hollered that he wanted to go to the park for a stroll.  On the street with nobody else, before the dawn broke, there was, a pair of shadow, moving along, slowly, it was, Grandpa and Gold Powder, leaning in on one another, the daily life of a demented elderly person, and his nurse’s aide.

not my photo…

Since Gold Powder came to Taiwan, the first grandma she took care of already became a star in the heavens, she was also, Gold Powder’s Chinese teacher.  Grandma had been a teacher once, and when Gold Powder didn’t understand it, or answered the questions wrong, grandma would punish her by smacking her palm.  And now, not only is Gold Powder able to write calligraphy, she’d used the Chinese idioms real well too, when she talked about the grandpa she’d looked after for six years to date, she’d said, “we’re all one another had”; she would use old-school Chinese phrases, and when she was offered a compliment, she’d said, “I can’t accept your compliment of me”, or “You put me up in that high pedestal so”.

Gold Powder would always have on her warm smile, always spoken in a softer tone of voice.  She’d smiled and continued to tell her stories.

Said that she’d once hated her husband (yes, she’d used the word, hated!), forced her to leave her infantile daughter, causing her heart to shatter into so many smaller pieces, but still had to, break free of the three young daughters’ who were, crying all over the floor, hands.

For many years, she’d used her own strength as the needle, the gentle nature as the thread, stitched up the filial love she’d managed to establish away from home and at home, she is, the daughter of grandpa, and her daughters’ mother too.  And now, Gold Powder’s writings earned her an award, she’d become, a published author too, in a book called, “Drifting: the Moving Forces of Life, Taiwan in the Waves”.  As her book was published, the children from home, used the internet connections, gave Gold Powder the hugs, saying, “You are the Best!”

So this woman, just like all of the migrant workers in Taiwan, had made that special connection with the people she took care of, and, these women had made the difficult decisions of leaving behind their homes, their young, to come here, to make a better life for their loved ones, and, sometimes, their husbands don’t even appreciate it, but, for most of them, their young became their driving force for working even harder.