in retrospect, infinitesimal

my mom was here with us in germany for a few days, or rather over two weeks, a sliver of time which in retrospect seems infinitesimal but while she was here stretched out like melted caramel, bendy and soft and sometimes suffocatingly sweet.

she stayed in our bedroom and at night Ulrich and I rearranged ourselves temporarily in his office, sleeping on the futon that his kids use when they visit us. in the mornings she was up before us, her slippers shuffling on bathroom tiles as she clicked the lids on her face cream jars open and closed. instead of using an alarm clock i rose gradually to her sounds, familiar to me from back home yet alien in this apartment. by the time i emerged from the office she was either sitting at our kitchen table eating oatmeal and watching mandarin youtube videos (which i couldn’t understand) or standing in our living room with feet planted firmly on the rug, knees bent, her eyes closed as she twirled her arms around her hips like the propellors of a washing machine.

when we met my mom and sister and brother-in-law in amsterdam on the first day, i was quietly shocked by how small she looked, how hunched her back was, how slowly she moved and how she clung alternatingly onto my sister’s and my arms as we navigated cyclists and cobblestone streets. just a year ago when i’d visited her in the US she had seemed vibrant, buoyant, young for her 80 years. now she was shrinking, had embarked on the long, curling path inwards towards death - when you die of old age, it is inevitably a death by disappearance, i think. but as the days unfolded her jetlag and travel weariness eventually wore off and a noticeable spring returned to her step, her posture straightened, she began to fill out her body again.

we went on long, meandering walks to all the places i’d rehearsed showing her in my head. but instead of marveling at the flowers and buildings which i’d expected her to admire, she asked a slew of questions which mostly stumped me. “why are there so many trucks on this road?” “why are the police sirens in Germany so loud?” “do you think the person who owns this van painted the words on it himself, or did he hire someone else to do it?” “why do german chestnut trees have so many flowers, but when it comes time to harvest there are so few nuts?” her body had bounced back by this time, but i wondered if her mind was still slinking towards infancy.

as we cut vegetables for dinner one night, i asked my mom as casually as i could if she would consider recording a video or sound clip of her talking about her life, especially her childhood in taiwan. she’s told me such fascinating stories about her own mother and family, about betrothals and marriages and curses and disappointments in those years after World War II. i thought my siblings and i would love to playback the recordings one day after she’s gone, as a reminder of a lifetime we will never understand although we are only one degree removed from it.

my mother’s shoulders tensed. “videos can be edited and forwarded and passed around to other people outside the family, just like e-mails,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face. “no way.”

but - i said, my only attempt to resist - what if you had the chance to hear A-ma’s voice right now, wouldn’t that make you unbelievably happy?

“i don’t need a recording to hear A-ma’s voice,” my mother said, a smile passing like a brief storm cloud over her face. “I hear her voice all the time, from within myself.”

i both knew she was right and wished she weren’t.

one night, just as i announced that i was getting ready for bed, she plucked a sunglasses envelope out of her pocket and slid it over to me. peering inside i found a thick stack of 100€ bills, fluorescent green and rigid and not-yet-used. as i shuddered and began to refuse she launched into a shaky monologue: “you know, asian parents don’t like to give their children allowances…”

i know, i thought. growing up i had found it terribly unfair until i reached my twenties and then lost track of my opinion on it until a few months ago when i unexpectedly found myself criticizing allowances to ulrich and his daughters, extolling the virtues of working at a young age. anneliese said something about how receiving an allowance had taught her to save up and budget for things she wanted to have, and i waved my hand dismissively. “but then you grow up thinking that your parents’ money is your money,” i said. “and you feel entitled to things and start to take your parents for granted.” as anneliese tilted her head to consider what i was saying, i cringed at the shrill voice of my dad ricocheting from our dining room walls.

“…well, the reason why is because children might spend their allowances on bad things like candy or drugs,” my mother continued. “instead, we give our children money at important moments in life, during times of big change to show that we are proud and happy for them, like when they move away or start their own business or get married-”

she was fishing for an excuse to give me money, and my jaw and shoulder muscles clamped down on the scaffolding of bones holding them in place. i don’t want your money! screeched the scaffold. besides, my mom had taught me to always refuse gifts from our taiwanese relatives while i was growing up; it was impolite to accept a gift without protest. so i refused the money steadfastly, although this time i had no plans to accept it, and my mother sensed this and became testy as well. she tried another path.

“i exchanged too many euros before coming here, and i don’t want to go through the hassle of exchanging back to dollars…”

we chased each other in emotional, then cerebral loops, arriving at no agreement. ulrich switched on the noise-cancelling function of his headphones as the pitch and volume of our voices escalated. “fine,” my mother finally declared, standing up from the table. “you don’t have to take the money. let’s go to sleep.”

we took my family to the local garden center on the day before they left. my mom had offered to help us pick out a couple of cherry tomato plants for our balcony after watching us blow through overpriced cartons of them from the farmer’s market. the garden center was packed when we arrived and i felt myself being swallowed by the throng of workers and customers weaving in between each other, a hurricane of demands and expectations and bothering vs. not-wanting-to-be bothered. my mother bent quietly over a series of organic seedlings and tugged at my arm as she pointed at various tags; what does this one say? she asked. and this one?

she pointed at one tag which said that the tomatoes should be covered against the rain. my mom frowned and shook her head. “that doesn’t make any sense! you should ask somebody why it says that,” she said, the urgency in her voice sending a slight prickle across my skin. “i’ve never heard of protecting tomatoes from rain before.”

i brushed her comment aside. she didn’t understand; in germany you couldn’t just ask store employees anything you wanted the way you could in the U.S.! instead of looking for an answer i zoomed around the store in search of a problem, wondered where my sister and brother-in-law were, considered the normal clay pots vs. the plastic ones which recycled excess water back into the soil.

eventually my family converged around the pots, my sister debating my mother on the merits of a 20-cm vs. 30-cm diameter. ulrich motioned at us from the other side of the store, pointing at a rack of trellises and wondering aloud if we needed to get one. my head throbbed and my vision swirled as i struggled to respond to ulrich in german, my sister in english and my mother in taiwanese. eventually we settled on two 20-cm pots and my mom told us to get the trellises another time. before we left the store, ulrich found a lonely-looking employee who was re-arranging a grass display and asked him about the tags on the tomato plants we were planning to buy. the employee explained that the idea was to avoid putting the tomatoes in a place where they might easily be knocked over by strong wind or thunderstorms. “Ah yes, that makes sense!” said my mom, satisfied.

when we arrived at the ibis hotel at Schiphol airport the next day, i asked ulrich to take one more picture of my mom and i. our arms extended behind each other’s waists like old school friends, we smiled and squinted our eyes into the dazzling sky. then ulrich and i accompanied my family into the hotel lobby and before i knew it we had already slipped back out through the revolving front doors, our goodbyes and rushed hugs a fading aftertaste on the tip of my tongue.

how many times will i see her again in real life? the question trailed me back across the border from the netherlands into germany.

the day after my mom left i found two strands of her silvery-white hair in the guest bathroom, one in the shower and one underneath the sink. the first one i mashed into a ball of my own fallen-out hair which i stuck to the wall like a wad of gum while i showered and afterwards tossed in the trash. the second one i discovered later, while vacuuming under the sink, just milliseconds before it might’ve disappeared forever. i gathered it and taped it into my journal, weaving it from the upper left to the lower right corner of the page, the rough silhouette of my mother’s zodiac animal the snake.

the day after that, i took my violin case out of the corner of our bedroom and got ready to practice for the first time in weeks. as i unzipped the top compartment where i keep my sheet music, a small, leathery rectangle grazed my fingertips. it was the sunglasses case which my mom had repurposed as a red envelope. inside was the stack of crisp €100 bills which i had so steadfastly refused several nights before.

“為什麼啦?? 😭😭” (“why??”) I messaged her, thanks to the help of google translate.

“那就就是無法形容的母愛❤️❤️❤️🥰🥰🥰😘😘😘”, she responded. According to Google translate, it means: “That is the unable-to-describe motherly love.”