Years ago as I held my new daughter in my arms, feeding her in the dark of our bedroom in the hopes that her fretful, busy body would settle into sleep, my heart welled with emotions and my mind turned to the woman who birthed this child. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I thought about the pain a woman must face in the giving away of her offspring.
Years later I still think about this woman who brought my daughter into the world but couldn’t keep her. And certainly her daughter, now my beloved youngest, has thought of her many, many times. This letter, written solely by me, is a compilation of some of my thoughts and some things my daughter has wondered about.
Dear Mama,
Can I call you that? Mama? I know you are not my mother, but that is what she would have called you if she had been permitted to; had stayed in your arms, in your home, never finding her way to that gate and thus, that spartan, sweltering-in-summer, freezing-in-winter room of crying, hungry, abandoned babies. Unlike me, she would have said it with the right tonal inclination, parroting back your words as you taught her in thought, word and deed who you were – her Mama.
Mama, I have so much to say. So many questions and so many answers. Some for me, but most her. Perhaps you have some too. You should.
First can you tell me, tell her, who you are? Entirely, in every cell of your being? Are you a wife, tied to your husband, and his family, in the traditional, filial way? Or were you single, not-ever-planning to be mother but left that way after some human-need-driven encounter amidst some pack industrial city in the great China.
Are you a mother of others? My daughter says you are. “Nine – five boys and four girls,” she still insists, though how she could know such information is beyond me. She is, I suppose, the missing tenth. But I, believing less in quantum physics and cellular memory, and more in cold, hard facts think, perhaps, you are mother to one by now – a boy born after her if you were lucky in the “Chinese way.” And, perhaps, the distant mother of other girls – living where?
Are you Han? Miao? Dong? Northern, Southern, migrant worker or rural farmer? Poor communist or emerging capitalist? Is your hair straight and course like a horse’s mane or dry and wavy like hers? Did you give her this soft, cool skin, the color of milk-tea and curling plump Buddha-inspired earlobes or are these her birthfather’s genes? And did you, before sending her off to her next life, kiss this skin, stroke this hair, and suck – as I am wont to do – those fleshy morsels called ears on either side of her precious face?
Next, tell me – her – us, why and how this all came to be? Why did you “abandon” her and how did you do it? Was it voluntary, part of some master plan to pass this child by in favor of another, a boy? Or was it a hasty decision carried out only after all other options had been ticked off as impossible? Was it driven by money, by power – his family’s and not yours – or by simple need?
And, perhaps most importantly to her, do you miss her? Do you think about her? Do you yearn with every part of your soul – as she seemed to do for years – to see her, hold her, and know her? Or have you set her aside in a dark, ill-used, part of your heart, pushing the memories of her down every time they try to surface above the din of your day because it is just too hard not to?
Now for the answers I promised you. Yes, she is beautiful, inside and out, from her wide-duck-like feet to her broad shoulders, from her full mouth to her double-crowned head, from her compassionate soul to her intuitive spirit. And she is a good daughter: helpful, responsible, and most of all so loving , though it took a while to bring down the wall that her heart had built to protect itself from further pain. She is smart, too, quick with her wit when in the mood, good with sums, and a real problem-solver. She is strong and athletic and musical too. She is in a word, a blessing.
And yes, she does remember you. How, I do not know, but some say our cells even have memories back to conception. Growing in you for nine months, being with you even for the few weeks she was, she came to know you –your voice, your smell, your body’s ways. And she has carried that with her to her new life, yearning for you to come back and be her mother. Why? Perhaps because she could not understand how it came to be that she was born of one woman in Asia and raised by another woman in North America. Perhaps because she had to grieve you before she could put you aside and love me. Perhaps because she believed, for a long while, you were the good mama (who birthed her) and I the bad mama (who “took” her from China), until she was able to accept me as a good mama too who did love her.
Sometimes I have wished we could find you. But I know that is next to impossible, and as she and I have talked she has come to know this too, as hard a fact as it is. Perhaps it is the impossibility of this that makes it safe to dream of meeting you, having you know her and her know you. Because as much as I want to heal her of whatever bits of loss still tug at her heart I would not, could not, give her back to you. She is my daughter and our bond after years of love and work is stronger than blood – I think.
Before I end this and tuck it aside, unmailed, I want to thank you. I imagine there were choices you could have made that might have been less open-ended and left you with a different pain. I hear that this is common in China, to find out one is carrying a girl and end the pregnancy. Instead you chose life for this child. And because of that choice I am blessed with her as my daughter. Please know I have loved her from before I ever met her and I will love her forever, never forsaking her, or treating her less than fully as a part of my being.
Xie Xie Ni,