My paternal grandmother kidnapped me when I was one or so and I nearly died as a result.
There, that\u2019s the main content note. That\u2019s the lede.
As with many stories in our family, and I suspect in other families where abuse was rampant, a lot of trauma was obscured behind a combination of amnesia, forced reconciliation, and \u201cthis is what I saw, but I am one blind person feeling up an elephant, so I\u2019m an unreliable narrator\u201d.
I\u2019d known since I was small that I\u2019d gotten into peanuts when I was too young to have them, inhaled one because I\u2019d started crying when my older cousin snatched them away, and then had to have it removed.
My mother told me that story, just one of many of my \u201clittle mishaps\u201d that had happened because I was too curious, too precocious, too much of a handful.
See how that framing works for that narrative.
I didn\u2019t think too much about it, because, again there were many stories like that.
I\u2019d climbed a fence at a Japanese onsen hotel because I wanted to know what was on the other side, and came gaze to shocked gaze of my uncle. Who yelled and startled me so I fell off the bamboo fence, stark naked. Because that\u2019s how you enter an onsen in Japan.
Note how it was my fault I got into the peanuts. My fault I started crying when someone (rightfully) took the contraband away.
Then, a handful of years ago, I was at McKay Memorial hospital to get a physical done as a requirement for enrollment at graduate school.
I was prepared to set up a new patient profile and was told I already had one.
When I got into the car, I mentioned my surprise to my father.
McKay Memorial hospital is both out of the way for where I\u2019d lived as a child in Taiwan and its distinctive architecture would\u2019ve stood out in even my sketchy memories. That I had no recollection of ever having been there was out of the ordinary.
To my surprise, my father looked like someone had just socked him in the stomach.
Then, he said, \u201cMcKay was where you had surgery for that peanut.\u201d
And because I have no tact when curiosity is concerned, I asked him why he looked so ill.
Dad\u2019s turn to look surprised.
\u201cYou were so small and they had to put you fully under and it was so cold in the hospital you were purple and blue when they wheeled you out of surgery. It was the longest 24 hours of my life. I\u2019d barely eaten anything at all in that time. Then they told me it was a lucky thing we\u2019d brought you in when we did, because that peanut was disintegrating in your lungs. Even a few hours later and you could\u2019ve died. Probably would\u2019ve died.\u201d
And it was my turn to feel like someone had kicked me right in the gut.
Dad didn\u2019t say much more and even I, with my insatiable curiosity, left the story alone for the moment. Because there was the after-horror. And perhaps it was purely psychosomatic, but my chest was closing up and my stomach was rebelling.
Also, Dad looked like he was about to either burst out crying or something and that wasn\u2019t something I could cope with at the time.
That was perhaps eight or seven years ago.
Then, a few days ago, I mentioned to my mother that Dad probably had unresolved trauma and anger towards my paternal grandmother over \u201cthe peanut incident\u201d.
She looked surprised.
\u201cWasn\u2019t I under her care? Wouldn\u2019t it have been traumatizing for Dad that his firstborn nearly died while under the care of his mother?\u201d
Mom: \u201cNow that you mention it.\u201d
Her face darkened. \u201cBesides, she\u2019d taken you and left Taipei. Because she was angry at me for \u201callowing\u201d your father to apply to graduate school in the US. So she took you and a couple of your other cousins, and went back to the ancestral farm in Nantou. Which might be a five hour drive on today\u2019s roads with the highways and so on, but back then, it was dark winding country roads, some not even asphalt.\u201d
The sucker punches just kept coming.
I\u2019d always assumed I\u2019d been in Taipei.
But no.
Grandmother had essentially kidnapped me, but my mother had to let her because she and Dad were both working and couldn\u2019t chase her down and get me back because there was no other childcare lined up.
Then, Grandmother had lied. For two days.
Mom: \u201cI\u2019d called every single day and I was getting the impression something wasn\u2019t right. You didn\u2019t sound right and you didn\u2019t seem as lively as \u2026well, you usually were. But your grandmother insisted you were fine, that nothing was wrong, but I just had this feeling that wouldn\u2019t go away. Finally, it got to the point where I insisted that there was something wrong, you were wheezing so I could hear it over the phone, and then she admitted that you\u2019d gotten into the peanuts.\u201d
Here, I can\u2019t help but wonder at the narrative of \u201cyour cousin snatched them away from you and you started crying\u201d.
Was it really my cousin who\u2019d snatched them away?
Also the \u201cyou\u2019d gotten into the peanuts\u201d.
Yes, but I was barely one and a half.
Who was supposed to be watching over me and wasn\u2019t?
\u2026and, dark thought, would there have been more attention given to me if I\u2019d been a boy?
Remember when I\u2019d said my grandmother was irate I wasn\u2019t a son when I was born?
I remembered how my grandmother had nagged and nagged and scolded my mother until she\u2019d had another child. Despite how the first pregnancy had clearly deteriorated her health. Despite her clear ambivalence.
How the reason my grandmother and mother weren\u2019t on good terms was because my grandmother had visited us in Guam when my brother was a baby and had complained that my mother \u201cwas just lazy about having kids\u201d, driving my mother to post-partum depression.
And my mother sideways confirmed it. \u201cYour grandmother never liked you. Said you were too fierce. That you would snatch the toys from your (three year older) boy cousin. That you were too loud and talked too much.\u201d
\u2026
Yes. My mother\u2019s view of the situation is hardly objective. But it fit with what I\u2019d felt from that old woman the few times I\u2019d met her. It\u2019d fit with everything else I\u2019d heard.
And gods forgive me for the suspicion, but it fit with the entire timeline of why I hadn\u2019t been with my parents at such a young age, why that peanut had been allowed to rot in my lungs for days, why the story of my childhood so abruptly went from \u201cyou were taken care of by your paternal grandmother\u201d to \u201cwe almost exclusively hung out with Mom\u2019s side of the family\u201d.
I had asthma after that incident. We\u2019ll never know if it actually was inherited from my paternal grandmother, as they claimed, or if it was the peanut.
Was in and out of the emergency room as a child because I\u2019d get allergic, start sneezing, start wheezing, and the next thing you knew I\u2019d be unable to breathe.
I was an expensive child.
Not just the frequent ER visits or being sick constantly or even the expensive equipment (nebulizer machine in addition to inhalers) or inability to wear non-cotton clothing or, or, or.
But being allergic to everything meant there was no saving money in certain areas. No cheap hotels. No cheap rental cars because too many of them had smoke residue.
I\u2019ll never know how much of my parents\u2019 poverty was a direct result of my medical bills and I\u2019m afraid to ask.
I\u2019ll never know how much resentment I breathed in before I was even aware resentment could be a thing directed at me.
I\u2019ll never know how much of my childhood trauma and the nightmares were a direct result of picking up on my parents\u2019 stress and resentment and their traumas and feeling like everything was my fault.
But it\u2019s okay.
I can sit here, with my body that\u2019s held on through so much, and I can tell myself, \u201cyou\u2019re okay. It doesn\u2019t matter what that nasty old woman thought of you because she doesn\u2019t matter. What she thought, what she told you, what evil she wrought because of her own sad views on the world \u2014 that doesn\u2019t matter at all to you, today. That\u2019s over and done. We\u2019ve survived. And we\u2019re going to keep being fierce, keep speaking up, keep standing up for ourselves, and we\u2019re going to be happy because we\u2019ve outlived evil and being sad and angry would be giving evil more influence than it deserves. Literally nothing of that was my fault, be it being kidnapped or the peanut or whatever was a direct result of that incident. I refute and refuse any responsibility shoved onto a baby not even two years old. I get to be curious and to try new things and to exist without guilt.\u201d
None of that was my fault and yet I\u2019ve mostly been the person to pay for that old woman\u2019s sins.
That\u2019s done now.
Even if I can\u2019t change anything about the body dragged through hell facedown and sideways\u2026
That\u2019s done now. We\u2019re done with that.
I still love peanuts, so thank the gods for tremendous small mercies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My paternal grandmother kidnapped me when I was one or so and I nearly died as a result.There, that\u2019s the main content note. That\u2019s the lede.As with many stories in our family, and I suspect in other families where abuse was rampant, a lot of trauma was obscured behind a combination of amnesia, forced reconciliation,… Continue reading