Something that’s, lost, but more was, gained, I suppose…translated…
My mother had three sons and a daughter, in the countryside of the 1950s to 1960s, every time we’d gone home from a banquet, my mother loved saying to me, “Wait until you’re married, I shall prepare twelve items in dowry for you, a car, a house, and, your older brothers will give you a television, refrigerator, and washer, you must marry off with a lot, to be loved by your husband and his families too”, like we’re, that rich.
After I graduated out of college, I’d given most of my wages to my mother, hoped, that she would live on more comfortably, but my mother started having kidney failure. Knowing her time was limited, she’d invested all the money I’d given to her, and used the money she’d saved up privately, bought the gold jewelries.
Every time I’d heard her mentioned of my dowry, I’d worried that she’d let go of me too quickly, that she was to, leave me soon, and I’d often told her the exact opposite, “My education IS my best dowry, the rest, I don’t need.”, and my mother would, shake her head to that, said, “You will, regret it.”, and I’d still stated stubbornly, “No I won’t!”
Six months later, my mother made one last and only call to me, told me, “I’d loaned your uncle Kuen-Shan $200,000N.T.s, and invested into some things, the bracelets, the necklaces, and the jewelries I’d bought you, are all hidden behind the big stove, I’d told Jen about them, and, when you come back, she shall, give them all to you.”, Jen was a relative, whom my mother trusted very much, and, as I saw my mother again, she’s already, in a coma, sent to Tri-General Hospital already, and she’d, died twenty-two days later, and I was the one, bathed her, tidied her up, and changed her into her burial clothes, as well as applied makeup on her.
After the funerals, my eldest who’d come back from Taiwan for the processions, and found, that the dowry my mother saved for me was gone; Jen said she didn’t know anything about it, and because, the only one who knew who she’d given them to to keep was dead, there’s, no way of finding out. Until many years when we’d bumped into an old neighbor of my mother’s, and told us, that Jen used the excuse of how her mother was hospitalized and needed the quick cash, and just, got away with ALL of it, and had bought a three-story mansion close by. And although I’d known, that Jen had, stolen all of my mother’s savings, I’d not, busted her for it.
When I got married, my three eldest brother who’d lived in the U.S. sent the wedding gifts, but, the flashy scene my mother had hoped for didn’t happen, as the plans of urbanizations had, flattened out our old home, the only thing I’d taken that’s related to my mother was that scooter she’d bought for my second eldest brother. Back then, my second eldest brother worked really far away, and needed to have a vehicle, my mother knew he’d loved going into the mountains, and worried that he may be unsafe, and so, bought the 90 c.c.s Vespa, so he couldn’t ride it up onto the mountains.
This preowned motorcycle, I’d treated as my dowry, and took it to my new home, what it’d meant to me, was way more than that huge car my mother had, wanted, to buy for me when I got married. It’d been, almost forty years now, and that Vespa became, an antique now, I’d looked at it, and gotten reminded of my mother, and every now and then, I’d be, reminded of greed in human nature, along with my mother’s regrets, and I’d felt that sense of sourness rising up into my heart still.
And so, the woman trusted her assets to someone she shouldn’t have, and, the person who took the money and ran would not end up well, because that, is how karma worked, and, this woman still regretted it for her mother’s trusting someone who shouldn’t have been trusted.