If You Never Walk, You Never Fall

(The Power Of Purpose)
My Memories of My Magic Mother

Zhang Ci

“It is your brother, from China!” My husband handed me the phone tensely.
“Why did he need to call me at middle of the night?” I sound questioning both of us, and receive the phone with fear.
I could see my husband’s eyes closed and ready to go back to sleep again.
“Mother killed herself a hour ago!” My brother said.
I began to burst out with tears. So did my brother. I wanted to ask a million questions. Like, how? When? Where? But I couldn’t. I didn’t have a voice.

I found out she had died of taking two hundred sleeping pills . I could picture her struggling, but I didn't want to. She was at her bed when my brother found her. He took her to the hospital but it was too late.

For a week I was stressed, and didn't know what to do. The next week, I was still sad but ok. At home I could not concentrate. My two daughters‘ CYSO soccer practice and piano lesson schedules was forgotten. I was called by both coaches and music instructors. Everything was falling apart.
If Mom was there everything would be different.

Well, Mother is the Yantzi River for me, or should I say one of the most important resources of my life. For the River contains nutrients of all kinds for each and every Chinese. For example, food, like fish, and plants, like Bamboo, to make paper, boats, sandals, rope, and all kinds of everyday needs. Without the water filled, lively water of the Yantzi, China wouldn’t be China, but a famine, dry, dead land, with no community or especially life. My mother had lost her purpose of life. She took a hard way to leave and left her children in an unusual suffering, and tried to carry on a journey that full of questions and negative conclusions. My mother suicide on May 3rd, 2003.

I can’t describe my family’s past without talking about the contemporary Chinese history. My mother was born in 1940, nine years before the communist party took over the power. The Government was named The Peoples Rebuplic Of China. I mother basicly grow up under the red flag of five stars, working class, farmers, business, students, soldiers; and Party, was surrender in the center. The elementary school educated children to shape their life purpose as “Be ready, and carry on! To serve people, and to take over the revolution!” My mother was a young girl but serious idealist. She believed strongly in Communism. She met my father in medical school and both wanted to go to the remote areas after graduation to serve people and minority groups. Here are what they said, “We are pursuing hardship, that is because we need to practice our conscience in a tough, cruel environment.” This was my mother’s first step to show the party of the loyalty of hers. They both worked and survived in what the “The three great leaps”-- first hunger wave during the three years of starvation. My mother has told me, that she had only vitamins with her in days. She boiled two Gel Vitamin pills with water, that could comfort her stomach and to supported her to cross mountains to reach people who waited her for medical supply, or just simply a baby was waiting for her to deliver. Before the Cultural Revolution started, my mother had handed in her apply for becoming a communist member. The communist party has searched her back ground, and found out that her-in-law had problems. My grandfather was a business man, which wasn’t in favor of the party. My mom was told that she needed to present further excellent work and showing more faithfulness” My mother made no complain but hide a bit of disappointment. And then she had me, she couldn’t wait till I was two months old, rushed on the bus for twos trip, and sent me to her mother who lived in Menzi, where I stayed in next seventeen years. She hurried back to work. Soon she had my brother, and she did the same seem but this time my grandma rejected to take care of my brother. She took my brother back to work with her, and, Cultural Revolution started right after my brother was born. My brother was actually born the same day as the Centro Cultural Revolution Leading group formed by Chairman Mao‘s wife. By that time, my father just started to write his book about the history of Herbal medicine. My father is a typical scholar. He enjoyed my brother but he didn’t know how to take care of him; he enjoyed my mother but he didn’t know how to help her. He spent so much time writing, and doing what he liked to do, not knowing that happened to my mom.

My mother had handed in the application to join Communist party again during the Cultural Revolution. This time, she was rejected again for the same reason. Her father-in -law had problem in history. Not just that he was trading in tin business with French, he was one of the rich person the party would have prosecuted if he hadn’t had gone to Hong Kong before the communist came. In the thirtieth of twenty century, my grandfather was the secretary of the trustee of the boarder in a largest company in Ge Ju - a town surrounded mountains with tin mine which located in south west Yun Nan province. The worst thing was that the party found out that he was still alive. My mother fundamentally felt her politic career is put on trial.

She would gave another try. Back then, Chinese nation work six days per week, and only took a day off on Sunday. So my mother used her off day, got up early in the morning to clean up the neighborhood ground; help other families moving; take care neighbor's children when the neighbors needed to. Everyone thought my mother was a member of the party. Once a friend of my mother has pass by, and asked, “Are you have meeting today?” “What meeting?" my mother asked. “The party member is having a meeting in the hospital at the luncheon room. Don’t you know?” My mother smiled, “No, I don’t know.”

My mother once donated her blood to the wife of the party chairman. The woman had severe bleeding problems while giving a birth. After that, the hospital allowed my mother to perform operations such as hysterectomies and Caesarian sections. Still, she is outside of the party, outside of the trust. My mother, a unhappy woman, going home, dumped her anger all on my father. Picking his case to fight, trowing thing on him. Hid my five year old brother. My mother has becoming a two faces person. Out side, she was called “An old sheep”--- nice to her workmates, neighbors, and all the patients; at home, she filled with turmoil, grief and rage. My father wrote to me, that “there isn’t any good furniture in this home no more. Your mother has bad temper. She is too emotional.”

I was born with confidence. I read Dostoyesky in elementary school. By the time I can read, Russian had broke up with Chinese. Many Chinese used Russian novel as toilet paper to go to bathroom with. I was fourth grade and read many books without seeing the cover pages. My father wrote to me often, and wrote him back. Soon, my mother had found out I like to write, she didn’t like that at all.

One spring, my mother took a long journey to came to visit grandma and me. I was sitting outside of grandma’s house when I saw this woman was coming. I sort understood that was my mother, because she has curly hair just like the woman who on the photo with grandma. She literally walk to me, without introduce herself, she abruptly said, “Give me your books.” I hold my books tight. “Give me your books! I don’t want you to be some kind useless body like your father! Book, book, intellectual, trouble, bad, give to me, come on, give to me, otherwise, I will tear your dictionary!” She picked up my dictionary which was next to me, and started tear it up. I screamed loud, and more louder. She hit me hard on my face with her hand, just one hit, I saw few gold stars above my eyes, then I lost all the sanity.

I woke up in the hospital. My grandma, an old, peaceful and clean woman, the one always gave me unconditional love was there. As soon as I saw my mother, I immediately sit up. Grandma gently pushed me back down and told me everything is ok, except that the tissue in my left ear was broke, I might have hearing problem. My mom handed me couple of eggs, I liked to eat eggs, I excepted. She didn’t apologize, instead, she informed over and over not to read any foreign navels. “It’s useless! You will see, it‘s a bad influence!”” She emphasized.

It wasn’t. While my mother spending all her life miserably, created intense family environment, I was the world of imagination and creation by reading books. I went to high school then, while my goal of going to college was forming, my mom’s third application was handed in to the party towards to end of the Cultural Revolution.

Dr. Ma, that’s what the patients and neighbors called my mother. She lives in a small town named Meng Zi in Southern China, it’s about two hundred miles from Viet Nam. The house she lives in was my grandma house.
My mother has tree children. I’m the oldest, and my brother and sister. I live in Bay Area, California; my younger sister lives in Paris, France; my brother, the middle child and my mother’s only son, lives in same town with my mother. In all these three children, my sister is the one closes to her, admires her, and helps her the most. My brother has tangled relationship with my mother; and I never know much about my mother, she abundant me when I was a baby.
As a ___doctor, my mother worked all her life until she retired. According to many hospital record, my mother delivered __babies.

It was the May 3rd, my brother has bought a motor cycle. He wanted to see my mother. He sees her routinely. But today, he just wanted to go and show her his motor cycle. When he got there, the house was locked from inside, so he tried to peek from the window. It was to dark to see the inside. He thought mother was asleep, and didn’t want to wake her up. He left.
My brother’s phone ring.

Last Updated: August 3, 2004