Translated…
She was, my mother’s younger sister, and, don’t know when, she’d become, the “Auntie Tiger” in our minds. We’d carried a love and hate relationship with her, we loved how whenever she’d come over to visit, there would be, an assortment of great foods on the table; and, we’d hated her, because she’d disciplined us even more severely than our mother had, and yet, she’d come over every two, to three days at a time. Toward her, we’d all just, dodged all we possibly could, it’s just when my mother told me how much Auntie Tiger was bringing more seafood (that, was from my grandfather’s seafood shops), and how many new clothes she’d bought for us, sisters (Auntie Tiger was a seamstress!), or how much extra cash she’d given her, we’d all felt, very awful about what we’d thought of her.
My mom, who married a bookmaker, was originally a rich girl, but for the sake of love, she’d gone against her parents’ wishes, and married my pops, a poor guy, and had five kids, one right after another; my mother who’d not known how to nickel and dime had often, spent everything up, and every time when we ran out of money in the house, Auntie Tiger would come to the rescue, and my mother would smile once more.
After I’d gotten into the university in Taipei, Auntie Tiger wanted me to live with her, and I’d used the excuse of how far her house was from my school to turn her down; on the holidays, she’d always invited me to her home to dine, it’s just, that she’d nagged me on and on, and my appetite was lost, after the nagging.
As I got married, I’d asked her, and my seventh aunt with whom she’d never gotten along with, to take my hand, to walk me out in place of my mother, and for that, she’d gotten mad, and not shown up at my wedding, and as I’d taken my husband to Taipei to visit her, she’d shut us all out too, and, we’d become, more, and more estranged since.
Until two years ago, my third eldest aunt started talking about the past, said that never been married, she’d wanted to take one of us as a goddaughter, and I was, the one she’d wanted as a daughter, and at that moment, it’d gotten to me, why she was more strict with me than the rest of my siblings, as I’d gotten into the university in Taipei, she was more ecstatic than the rest of my families, thought that I could accompany her, as I married, my own mother was ill, she’d originally thought I would allow her to walk me down the aisle, and I’d chosen my seventh aunt to do it, and, in all the mix-ups, her maternal love had been, erased by me.
from the papers…
And although afterwards, I’d wanted to make it up to her, but, we were separated by the distances, and, as I’d called her up to show my cares and concerns, her unrelenting tongue had, scared me off again, and it was, out of my expectations, that when I saw her again, she was, in a coma, lying in bed.
And now, all I can ask, is for the heavens above, to give both of us more time, to patch up everything that went unspoken between us.
And so, this aunt DID love the niece, it’s just, that her way of showing her cares and concerns were unaccepted by the niece, and, although this woman felt a lot of love toward her niece, she’d not shown it, in the way that her niece can accept it, which made them more distant from one another, and, now, the woman’s run out of time………
Life, the Obstacle Course 