The Backseat

The coming of age, the growth of a woman, translated…

Daughter, lover, and wife, these different identities became like a relay race, with the batons being handed off to the next person in life, and made up the backseat of my life.

In my childhood years, my mother who married into the Hakka villages had, kept guard over that huge dual stove made from the red bricks, and took the time of shopping with me at the marketplaces for the produces, to find her breather from the strains of being the eldest daughter-in-law. I’d hugged tightly onto my mother’s waist, gotten close to my mother’s back, and my nose would get tickled by her blown-in-the-wind long hair.

On the year of the major earthquake on September 21^st, my father rode his motorcycle, picked me up, headed back to our small town with the paralyzed traffic, the Eastern Bridge that’s become broken, the heartlessness of the disasters made the journey home lasting even longer. And, I’d noted how my father’s originally thick and strong back was no longer that huge as I’d remembered, and that there’s that slight hunch in his posture too.

“Hold tight!”, simple and ordering people around, that’s always been the way my father talked to us, he’d never become intimate with the children, no hugging and kissing, although back then, I’d wanted to wrap my arms around his waist, I’d not dared, challenged his boundaries of love at all. My father noticed how I was looking all around, and he was shocked at how much worse the destructions from the earthquake was compared to the media’s reporting it, my father who’s now, with a heaviness on his expression finally started again, “Everything’s become totaled, do you still want to return here?”, his lowered tone of voice with that hint of blame had that scent of feeling sorry for what’d happened, and it’d showed his concerns for how broken his hometown became too.

In college, I’d gotten a ton of pen pals from BBS, of all these friends, the person with the ID of “Peterbug” wrote with such ingenuity, and truthfulness, he’d stood out to me. After exchanging ninety-nine letters, we’d agreed to meet up like in “You Got Mail”.

As I set on the back of my boyfriend’s Sanyo green motorcycle, I’d had a taste of what it felt like, to be cherished by someone who loved me.

A few years later, I’d switched from the back of his mo ped, to the backseat of a limo, with the headdress draping over my face, tears started falling. And, the bride’s secretaries’ reminders resonated in my ears, “You will cry for sure, but, remember to cry, with your head lowered, that way, the tears would drop to the floor, instead of rolling down your cheeks! Otherwise, it’s going to ruin your makeup………” my father stood on the back of the car, with a wash basin full of water, as I tossed out the fan that symbolized my bad temper out of the car windows, my mother turned toward my father, hollered at him, “Splash that water already!”, but I’d heard my father, like a stubborn child, replying, “I’m not going to!”, I’d started, crying, even harder then, and, the limo sped off, in the sounding off of the firecrackers outside, leaving behind, the fan I’d tossed outside of the window, lying there, on the floor.

I’d started feeling that transfer of time and space in the backseat, the memories of the traditional mansion and the time spent shopping for groceries at the marketplace, it’s the intimate time shared by my mother and me. My father and I sat in silence from Shengang to Dongshih, the bumpiness of the roads showed our longings for a safe and sturdy roof over all our heads. Later on, my father’s second youngest brother built a three-story mansion himself, which took the place of the red-shingled traditional house matter-of-factly. Then, I’d moved up north, in with my lover, to Nanshijiao, holding each other at fishers’ wharf, and in the end, started our family together.

As a daughter, meeting my husband, falling in love, to becoming a newly married daughter-in-law who’s now, cooking for the house, these moments had all happened, in the backseat of the car, connected together, illuminating the various stages of my life.

So, this is a review of one’s own life, from the very beginning, to growing up, heading off to school, leaving home, starting to work, to getting married, and, the backseat bore witness to ALL of that…